“All of these municipalities here would give the shirts off of their backs to help those in their communities, and in fact we have,” said Rutland Mayor Mike Doenges, seenv above alongside Winooski Mayor Kristine Lott and Montpelier City Manager Bill Fraser. “The problem is, we’ve run out of shirts.”

Municipal leaders from every corner of Vermont gathered in Montpelier this morning (or signed onto a joint statement) to plead with the state government for help in addressing our worsening crisis of unsheltered homelessness. (Video of the press conference can be seen here.) The urgency was driven by looming cutbacks in the emergency housing program that promise to unshelter hundreds of vulnerable households. But the leaders went beyond the current situation to issue a wide-ranging, comprehensive critique of the state’s entire system for helping the unhoused.

That system, including the Agency for Human Services and its network of nonprofit service providers, is “broken,” said Mayor Lott. The resultant “unsustainable pressures,” she added, are being borne by Vermont’s cities and towns.

“We need immediate and decisive action from all three branches… executive, legislative, and judicial,” Fraser said. This, to fix a system that fails to provide enough shelter, transitional housing, support services and outreach, and accountability in the judicial system for those who break the law.

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