“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.

I have said, repeatedly, that the cost of not providing enough shelter is, in fact, greater than the cost of sheltering all of Vermont’s vulnerable. The state saves money, but others are left holding the bag. The municipal leaders made it clear that those extra costs fall predominantly on local communities: parks, churches, libraries, schools, police, fire and sanitation services, downtowns, and health care providers.

The leaders offered a long list of actions from immediate to long-term. To meet the current crisis, they called for:

• The opening of state land, buildings and facilities for encampments and shelters.
• An active state effort to site, create, and operate more shelter space.
• The state to take “ownership” of its human services responsibilities.
• A change in judicial and prosecutorial approach “for those individuals who are compromising public safety.”
• Right-sizing the motel voucher program.
• An influx of operating capital for nonprofits and municipalities serving the homeless population.

The longer-term fixes include boosting clinical capacity to meet needs in mental health, substance use and addiction, stronger support services for the unhoused, new funding for communities with large numbers of homeless people, and an all-out effort to increase the supply of housing.

Your humble correspondent asked if the city and town officials had already tried to get the attention of state leaders. “We’ve been in touch with our legislators for years,” Fraser replied. “This situation was foreseeable. We are not aware of a plan. We suspect it will fall 100% on municipalities.”

Barre Mayor Thom Lauzon noted that “All of us are well past our capacity,” with nothing to spare in the face of a mass unsheltering.

Lauzon is a longtime friend and supporter of Gov. Phil Scott. I asked Lauzon if he’d spoken with the governor about this. “I have,” he said. I asked if he’d gotten a response from the administration. “No,” he replied. “They hear us. The state doesn’t exactly have excess resources. But this is a problem we’ve got to figure out.”

As VTDigger reported, Scott held an unrelated press conference today, and offered little to nothing. He expressed reluctance about opening state land or setting up more shelters, and fell back on his insistence that we need to “wean ourselves off” the voucher program.

I don’t think the municipal leaders would disagree. ““The General Assistance housing program was never intended to be a program,” just a stopgap, said Doenges. Their issue isn’t with vouchers; it’s with the complete lack of a plan for Scott’s much-desired weaning process.

The administration and Legislature have failed — for years and years — to make anything like a real plan. The result is a crisis that’s already overtaxing our cities and towns, and is about to get substantially worse. If the governor and Legislature care about this, they sure have a funny way of showing it.