Really good piece of work by the cross-media combo of Carly Berlin and Lola Duffort on the humanitarian toll about to occur thanks to cuts in the state’s emergency housing program. They went out and did the work, speaking with numerous recipients of state-paid motel vouchers who are about to lose their places. The stories are heartbreaking, and dismaying for those of us who’d like to believe we’re capable of better than the planned unsheltering of up to 900 households, all of which fall into one or more category of “vulnerable.”

By the customary multiplier, that’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,500 individuals, including people with disabilities, children, and those fleeing domestic abuse. And where will they go? That’s “unclear,” per Duffort and Berlin.

Area shelters were full, affordable housing waitlists were a mile long, and towns and cities across the state have grown more aggressive about evicting campers from public land.

Full credit for a job well done. And now I have a suggestion for a great follow-up.

This pending crisis was foreseen months ago, quite clearly, by advocates like Brenda Siegel of End Homelessness Vermont* and Frank Knaack of the Housing & Homelessness Alliance of Vermont. They knew that the then-existing voucher program wasn’t enough to address the need, and they knew what the proposed cuts to the program would mean.

*Among other things, EHV is buying tents and other survival essentials for those who face eviction from the motels. If you’d like to help, here’s the link.

And official Vermont didn’t listen.

So maybe an enterprising reporter or two could go back to those officials and ask why they were so wrong and how they feel about the choices they made in this year’s budget. The choices that promise to unshelter 1,500 or so vulnerable Vermonters.

And don’t accept bureaucratese as an answer. Press them on what they would tell someone in a wheelchair or who takes medication that must be refrigerated or relies on oxygen.

Here’s a short list of people who should be made to answer for their policy choices.

In the Scott administration: Chris Winters, commissioner of the Department of Children and Families; Miranda Gray, deputy commissioner; Nicole Tousignant, DCF functionary last seen bloodlessly explaining why the state is unsheltering the vulnerable; and Shayla Livingston of the Agency of Human Services. You might also give it a go with Gov. Phil Scott, who is ultimately responsible for his administration’s reprehensible efforts to end the voucher program altogether, but he’s well practiced at ducking and dodging so I predict little of substance would arise from that encounter.

Then we get to the majority caucus in the Senate, who pushed for a FY2025 budget including substantial cuts in the voucher program with little visible dissent. (The budget passed the Senate by a 25-to-3 margin. The “No” votes came from Sens. Nader Hashim, Martine Gulick and Tanya Vyhovsky. The latter two’s reward for their courageous stand was a generously-funded primary challenge from former TV guy Stewart Ledbetter, which they managed to survive.)

This list could start with Senate President Pro Tem Phil Baruth, who not only leads the caucus but sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee, which crafted the voucher cutbacks. Sits, but does very little besides stare resolutely into the middle distance while a fellow Senator makes unfortunate comments and committee chair Jane Kitchel rams through an inhumane budget. Next on the list would be Sen. Ginny Lyons, chair of the Senate Health & Welfare Committee, which did nothing to counter Kitchel’s bigfooting of the process. Lyons also sits, in all senses of the word, on Approps.

The other Democrats on Approps joined Baruth and Lyons in allowing Kitchel to dominate the discussion and ram through the voucher cuts that led us to where we are today. Dick Sears is no longer with us. Bobby Starr is blessedly on the verge of retirement. Andrew Perchlik will remain, assuming he wins re-election in November ha ha ha; he didn’t raise a fuss about the voucher cuts.

If reporters don’t quiz our solons, perhaps the constituents of Baruth (Burlington), Lyons (South Burlington) and Perchlik (Montpelier, Barre) will ask why their communities, already struggling to deal with the unsheltered (or in SoBu’s case, studiously looking the other way), are about to see a significant increase in unhoused people with nowhere to go.

Again, the consequences of the voucher cutbacks were plain as day last spring, when the Senate majority was spurning the House’s intent to sustain a more robust voucher program and administration officials were Pontius Pilating the situation. They knew this day would come. They should be held to account.