The latest edition of “Brave Little State,” Vermont Public’s question-answerin’ podcast, addresses a widely-held belief that our homelessness problem is largely caused by people moving to Vermont to take advantage of our motel voucher program. And addresses it poorly, incompletely, and at great length.

The episode is entitled “Is Vermont’s motel program a ‘magnet’ for out-of-staters experiencing homelessness?” There is no evidence for the notion. In fact, there is a body of research showing that people in distress don’t cross state lines in any real numbers in hopes of accessing better benefits. Reporter Carly Berlin, whose work is co-published by Vermont Public and VTDigger, gets there eventually, but takes a godawful long time to do so. In the process, she manages to distort the basic issue, omit crucial aspects of the story, and get some key facts wrong.

The fundamental problem isn’t with Berlin or her many co-producers and overseers. (A total of seven Vermont Public staffers are cited in the closing credits.) The problem is that the issue was subordinated to the format. This wasn’t a story about homelessness and benefits; it was A Reporter’s Journey In Search Of Truth, filtered through the highly developed process of long-form public radio storytelling pioneered by Ira Glass’ “This American Life” and refined in this age of public media serial podcasting. The end goal of the production is more esthetic than journalistic.

This question can easily be resolved, but that’s not how you build a podcast. A long-form narrative needs a build, a measure of suspense, unexpected twists and turns, even if the actual path is pretty straightforward. Which is how you wind up with a 38-minute-long piece of audio that kind of bungles the assignment.

The episode begins, not with an abstract question, but with a single individual — because that’s how you grab the listener’s attention. Berlin introduces us to Priscilla, who’s living in a state-paid motel room in Bennington. Priscilla is presented as the living, breathing embodiment of the title question.

Except she isn’t.

Priscilla didn’t move to Vermont to get a free room. She and her husband came here because he had a job offer in Bennington. A job he continues to hold to this day. They wound up in the motel because on his paycheck, they couldn’t find housing they could afford.

Berlin says she has spent “hundreds of hours” exploring homelessness in Vermont, interviewing experts, officials, advocates, and voucher recipients. And in all this time, Berlin couldn’t find a single individual who moved here for no other reason than the prospect of a free motel room?

Apparently not. Priscilla had to be crammed into the role.

Which kind of proves that the out-of-state opportunist exists mainly in the minds of Vermonters seeking excuses for an unconscionably high rate of homelessness — the second highest in the nation.

At this point, about three minutes into the podcast, we get to the question that Berlin says she hears all the time: “How many homeless people are really from here?”

What follows is a more than 10-minute parade of people repeating the out-of-stater idea. A guy who hears it from his golf buddies. A lawmaker who gets an earful from constituents. A state staffer involved in the voucher program, who vaguely recalls hearing something about posters or billboards urging poor people to move to Vermont — a recollection she cannot substantiate.

Even the official who oversees the voucher program, Miranda Gray, deputy commissioner of the Department of Children and Families, is acquainted with the story. But her department can’t verify it.

I must point out a major risk of addressing a commonly held belief: By repeating it, you are driving it home in the minds of your audience. Berlin devotes nearly one-third of her time to person after person reiterating the idea, which gives it plenty of room to take root before we even begin to figure out whether it’s true or not.

Berlin doesn’t even start answering the question until the 18th minute of the podcast. This is when she introduces Brenda Siegel, former gubernatorial candidate and executive director of End Homelessness Vermont, who is identified only as “an advocate for unhoused people in Vermont.” Siegel says she has heard of a survey showing that only a small fraction of recipients are outsiders drawn to Vermont by the voucher program, but she doesn’t know the details.

Eventually the survey is uncovered by Anne Sosin, Dartmouth public health researcher and former advocate for the homeless. It was, in fact, a survey conducted by the state a couple years ago, showing that only 4% of program recipients came from out of state.

Siegel then shares preliminary findings from a survey done recently by EHV. Smaller sample size, but almost identical result: 4% came from elsewhere, 96% became homeless while living here.

The initial version of this piece, co-published by Vermont Public and VTDigger, included a dismissive disclaimer about the EHV survey: “Brenda’s an advocate, so she’s got an agenda.” At some point, the disclaimer was removed from both sites without explanation. (You can still see the disclaimer by visiting The Wayback Machine.) Berlin’s surrounding narration aimed to minimize the import of both surveys, perhaps to maintain some level of suspense in a podcast now almost 20 minutes long.

And then Berlin takes something of a turn and the debunking begins in earnest. She reaches out to someone who was around when the state survey was conducted: David Riegel, Director of Housing Policy and Planning at the Vermont Agency of Human Services. He affirms the survey’s results and says of the out-of-stater idea, “I think that that narrative has been out there, you know, for a while, but I don’t know that there’s ever been any evidence to support it.”

Berlin expresses surprise at Riegel’s take, which seems at odds with what she heard from DCF staffers. Berlin fails to point out that Miranda Gray isn’t exactly an impartial witness; she has been spearheading the Scott administration’s efforts to cut back, or even kill, the voucher program. If Berlin felt free to characterize Siegel as having an agenda, she sure as hell could have said the same about Gray.

Finally, a mere 27 minutes into the podcast, we get to the clincher. Berlin connects with Gregg Colburn, a researcher on issues surrounding homelessness. Colburn has lived in multiple states, and he’s heard the same thing everywhere he’s gone: People claim they have a homeless problem because of outsiders taking advantage of their putatively generous assistance programs.

Colburn has studied the issue thoroughly. He’s co-author of Homelessness is a Housing Problem, a 2022 book that examines the popular ideas and misconceptions around homelessness and the actual causes. He found no evidence to support the out-of-stater idea. Instead, he found one simple factor that correlates with homelessness: “Places with really high rents and low vacancies, places where housing is expensive and not abundant, have much higher rates of homelessness.”

That’s it. It’s not benefits or laziness or outsiders exploiting Our Better Nature. If you don’t have enough housing, people end up homeless. End of story. And Vermont, as you may have heard, is suffering a severe housing shortage that’s particularly acute in the affordable realm.

The episode closes with a brief postscript. You remember Priscilla, the person cited as an example of the “out-of-stater” notion but who really wasn’t? Well, turns out she and her still-working husband have managed to find housing and moved out of the motel. Which is what they wanted to do all along. They came to Vermont seeking opportunity. They found it, but even so they couldn’t find housing they could afford. They didn’t want to be in the motel. They moved out as soon as they could.

Priscilla isn’t an example of a loophole-riddled program open to abuse. She’s an example of precisely how the voucher program should work. And she ought to be a poster child for the urgency of building more affordable housing in Vermont, instead of a convenient excuse for showing the back of our hand those in need.

There’s another big issue that Berlin never bothers to address. The voucher program is far from an attractive nuisance. It’s a rigorous, demanding program with strict eligibility standards and rules. As the program exists now, only people with defined vulnerabilities are even eligible. You can’t just show up and demand a room. And the program can’t even serve all those who qualify, so some are left out.

Also, the program is inconsistently managed and subject to frequent change. Siegel and her fellow advocates, who help people navigate a confusing system, will tell you the process is a nightmare. The state doesn’t communicate well with clients. People can be moved out of motels with very little notice if alternative housing is found. Pending cutbacks are going to see several hundred vulnerable people evicted from motels in the next few weeks. The voucher program isn’t a draw for shiftless flatlanders; it’s a deeply flawed and punitive program that seems designed to frustrate recipients and limit access.

You won’t hear that in Berlin’s 38-minute report. Neither will your hear that two of the three states bordering Vermont, New York and Massachusetts, have better programs for housing the homeless. You should have. It’s directly relevant to the question at hand. But even with the open temporal canvas offered by the podcast medium, she didn’t manage to get around to that. It’s a shame, and a missed opportunity. But hey, the podcast sounds pretty and follows the long-form storytelling script. That’s what mattered most.