When I’ve had conversations with someone in Vermont officialdom and the name “Brenda Siegel” comes up, it usually elicits a bit of a grimace. Siegel isn’t a comfortable character. She’s direct, some would say abrasive. She’s a fierce advocate for an unpopular cause. When she walks into a legislative hearing, the assembled lawmakers brace for impact. When she earned the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 2022, the party offered some support but endorsements were few and the donor class shunned her campaign.
And now that H.938 has become law as Act 143, she ought to be taking a nice long victory lap. She did issue a press release; otherwise I suspect she got right back to work.
Act 143 is far from perfect, but it’s a much better law than any of our political leaders really wanted. It’s an attempt at creating a comprehensive response to homelessness instead of the box of Band-Aids that is the hotel/motel program. Crucially, it requires for the first time that the state’s homelessness response system must comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. I bet you thought that was a given, but apparently not.
There are other heroes in this story — House Human Services Chair Theresa Wood and Rep. Jubilee McGill for starters — but it wouldn’t have happened without Siegel’s tenacity and willingness to be unpopular in the service of her cause.
And in the category of poetic justice, End Homelessness Vermont, the nonprofit she founded and ran on a shoestring, is now part of the official system. The state’s FY2027 budget includes a $200,000 appropriation for EHV, which will now work alongside state agencies to try to lift the unhoused into safe, productive lives.
Gee, maybe she could have been a good governor after all.
For years, official Vermont’s response to our homelessness crisis has been, in a word, shameful. The Scott administration has been solely focused on cost — and on fashioning a system seemingly designed to frustrate the eligible and limit access. The Legislature has fought against the most miserly aspects of administration policy, but has consistently tightened the spigot and forced thousands of Vermonters onto the streets and under the overpasses.
And Siegel was fighting back every step of the way. She buttonholed lawmakers who didn’t want to talk to her. She made “lived experience” an unignorable part of the legislative record by curating testimony from those who’d experienced homelessness and suffered from the cruelty and carelessness of a system that was (supposedly) there to help. Their voices exposed the bland assurances of the Scott administration for what they were: convenient fictions.
Our Political Betters kept grinding away at the hotel/motel program without offering any real substitutes, and Siegel fought and fought and fought for years. She camped out on the Statehouse steps for almost a month of late fall weather, risking her own health in the process. Every time there was a mass unsheltering due to hotel/motel cuts, Siegel was out there connecting reporters with those losing their housing, making sure the story got the coverage it deserved — and at the same time, running a statewide hotline trying desperately to find shelter for all those affected.
Again, she’s not the only hero in this story, and she does have her flaws. But Brenda Siegel should get a goddamn medal for her public service.
In lieu of a shiny honorific, her organization End Homelessness Vermont is getting $200,000 from the state. The budget appropriation states that the money will allow EHV to ““continue providing statewide housing navigation, case management, service coordination, technical assistance, appeals, and permanent housing support for individuals living with complex needs and disabilities who are experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity.”
In short, as Siegel couldn’t resist noting in a press release, the money “is allocated for us to do exactly what we do every day.” Yeah, bit of a victory lap there. Also this:
End Homelessness Vermont started as a hotline, born out of necessity, to make sure people weren’t left outside when they had nowhere to go. Today we… answer thousands of calls a year. We walk alongside people from the moment of crisis through permanent housing. And we don’t give up on anyone.
Which is, I must note, what the state should have been doing from the start.
The famous words of historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich could have been uttered with Siegel in mind: “Well-behaved women seldom make history.”
The Vermont Political Observer. 
Long overdue kudos for one of the hardest working advocates in the state. She deserves multiple victory laps for this and I expect she’s not even close to being done yet.
Bravo!! just … bravo, for telling it like it is with her work.
Thanks, John. Barry from Brattleboro (also …)
“But Brenda Siegel should get a goddamn medal for her public service.”
I fully agree, especially as the state generally (there are many specific exceptions here, just as heroic) wanted to sweep this problem that has been created by our corporate-political system. The homeless/poor aren’t profitable so who cares if they sleep under bridges, like I have done before, or on park benches in the rain. Siegel should get a medal for pulling this off.
Many many thanks for telling this story about how tough things sometimes have to be done…. and to Brenda for being a tough advocate, with a vision that fueled her tenacity and perseverance. That nonprofits have their feet on the ground and are the best ears and eyes of a constituency, and are a crucial part of any state program is not well understood, though an essential concept when developing state infrastructure for any cause. Bravo.
Brenda, so glad the state is finally recognizing the validity and importance of what you’ve been doing. Maybe this isn’t p-c but I hope some of that funding will go to you to make your life a little easier as well. Bravo and glad Political Observer is taking some column space to appreciate your accomplishments!
Dear John —
Today is the final day for public comments on DCF’s draft rules on Act 143. I don’t know if you have seen the ACLU’s take on these rules, but they rules essentially ignore both the letter and spirit of the law, regardless of what the legislature passed and the governor signed. They are essentially negating the law and creating their own program.
Below is the letter I wrote as a public comment. You may want to reach out to Brenda Siegel and/or the ACLU for more information. The DCF gave only a week for public comment so advocates are scrambling to meet today’s deadline.
If you would like to make a public comment, the email address is: AHS.DCFVHRCPublicComments@vermont.gov
Best (and keep on watchdogging!),
Therese Mageau 6 Mountain View St. Montpelier, VT 05602 718-986-7307 therese.mageau@gmail.com
“I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.” —Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King
I write in public comment on the Department for Children and Families (DCF) draft rules regarding Act 143. I have no particular horse in this race, except that I am a Montpelier resident who cares about the marginalized people in our community whose circumstances have forced them into being unhoused. I was very heartened that the legislature and governor FINALLY passed an important and potentially effective piece of legislation to address the homelessness problem in our state – only to discover that that DCF has drafted rules that exceed their authority as an implementer of the law (as it is written) and that furthermore disenfranchise people with disabilities of the protections that Act 143 and the ADA afford them.
Before I begin, I wish to object to the very short public comment period — one week! — on these rules. I just learned this weekend (July 25-26) that the comments were due on the 27th! I would not have known about the draft rules and the due date for commenting on them, had I not been friends with a provider. One week is a perilously short period of time for public comment on an issue that is so critical to the well-being of ALL the people in our state.
Now to my comments: The rules the DCF has proposed are problematic in many ways but particularly in the following two ways: They at times take away protections for people with disabilities. They allow Department of Children and Families to violate or exceed its authority
Here are only some examples of the way in which the draft rules exceed DCF authority and endanger the safety, well-being, and dignity of people with disabilities: The rules require people who self-attest to a disability to provide paperwork right away, whereas the law that was passed gives the self-attestors 30 days to provide paperwork if asked. The law does not ask for a scored needs assessment, yet DCF is asking for one, which exceeds its rule-making authority. The rulemaking is using the scored needs assessment to narrow who qualifies for an extended motel stay. The law clearly defines under what conditions an extension could be made. DCF is overstepping its authority by narrowing those conditions. The scored needs assessment further violates the written statute by mandatorily placing people with a certain “score” into separate facilities. The law specifically stipulates that people with disabilities must not be isolated from everyone else in the program. The hotel and motel draft rules do not allow that hotel and motel participants can participate in services to the extent that they are able to, which is what the law says. That omission leaves open the possibility of DCF requiring people to participate, which violates the statute as written. The DCF limit on which hotels can be used does not allow for any accommodation for accessibility, which not only exceeds rulemaking authority but violates program access under the ADA. DCF has stipulated a review system that isn’t in the law, and the review system itself drops the disability protections which are everywhere in the law, a clear violation of disability protections and further evidence of DCF exceeding their rulemaking authority. Termination notices don’t make accommodations for people with disabilities, nor are they explained in plain language, both of which violate the statute. The same thing is true for the appeal process as it appears in the draft rules: it neither explains appeal rights in plain language, nor does it make accommodations for someone with a disability who is trying to go through a hearing. The draft rules distort the eligibility stipulated by the law by turning no-room availability into an eligibility criteria. The law specifies paper and electronic application options; the draft rules list only phone and in-person. DCF draft rules create eligibility categories for hotels and motels that legislators explicitly rejected when asked by the administration to include them. Yet DCF ignores the law. The DCF draft rules ask people to verify their homelessness status; there is no language in the law that requires that step. Another example of DCF exceeding their authority. A particularly egregiously overstepping rule is that DCF can assign someone a level of care before that person even has a case manager. The law sets a 70 day motel stay limit. Somehow DCF interpreted that to invent a 7-day, 14-day, and 28-day stay authorization. The whole point of Act 143 was to supersede the GA Hotel and Motel Program and to create one system. But DCF wants to go back to a tiered authorization, despite both the letter and intent of the law. Another violation of the law and legislative intent: DCF rules say that it can review a household at any change, whereas the law intends for people in the program to work with a case manager, not a state bureaucrat. The draft rules add new rules for removal that are not in the law! The law asks DCF to create a process of allowing people to return to the program. The draft rules create an arbitrary 12-month ineligibility period, which totally exceeds the intent of the law and the authority of DCF. Given all the mismanagement of the US Postal System at this moment, how can DCF create a rule that assumes a person has received a notice from them three days after it was sent? This just seems like another bureaucratic roadblock to remove people from the system. The law could not be clearer that the shelter schedule is based on cold weather alone; the DCF rules create a fixed window calendar. The word “shall” is used throughout the rules, establishing a system of mandatory requirements, even as the legislators wanted the program to run flexibly, to ensure that common sense and common dignity prevail.
I could go on but I will stop here. After reviewing all the ways in which the proposed DCF rules outright violate the letter of the law, disregard the spirit of the law, ignore the ADA, and exceed DCF authority over and over again, I am left with only one conclusion: that the DCF has no intention of following the law and intends to run the program as they want to.
The voters of this state did not elect the personnel in the DCF. They elected the legislature and the governor – who, respectively, passed and signed the law.
The DCF’s only responsibility at this point is to create a process by which the law can be put into action. They have no authority, indeed they have no right to go beyond that.
Given the absolute lawlessness that is happening right now with the executive branch in Washington, D.C., I expect that the executive branch of our “Brave Little State” will obey the law as passed by our duly elector legislators.
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