There’s a great deal of desperate history-rewriting going on after the disheartening political debate over emergency housing. Everybody is shifting blame. No wonder; the outcome was not a solution to the crisis, but a patchwork of compromises intended to carefully balance the suffering of the unhoused against the comfort level of Our Political Betters. It’s nothing that anybody can take pride in.
The Scott administration is blaming the Legislature for, I don’t know, failing to defy the governor’s insistence on ending the program as scheduled. Legislative leaders who were happy to kill the program until it got too embarrassing are now blaming the administration for failing to plan a transition, which is true enough but doesn’t absolve Statehouse leadership from their failure to heed the warnings coming from housing advocates and, well, people like me.
There’s one thing both sides can agree on: The real villain is Brenda Siegel.
Two stories on a common theme appeared Monday morning on VTDigger. The first was about a “spate” (their term) of deaths in Vermont’s prison system, mainly at the Springfield facility. The second was about another rise in opioid-related deaths that puts us on track to break the all-time record set in 2022.
In both, I heard echoes of the lamentable deal struck by the Legislature and Scott administration for a partial extension of the motel voucher program — an extension loaded with poison pills. Not only does the program leave 800 or so households without shelter, it also makes the voucher experience as unpleasant as possible for its clients from now on. Who are, just a reminder, some of Vermont’s most vulnerable. You know, the ones Gov. Phil Scott likes to say he’s committed to protecting. Echoes also of a fundamental approach toward human services programs for the poor: Make the experience difficult and unpleasant so recipients are incentivized to GTFO, one way or another.
It’s like a soup kitchen that dumps vinegar into its food because if it tastes good, people won’t be incentivized to get their own damn dinner. Mind you, not enough vinegar to make anyone sick; just enough to discourage them from partaking unless they’re truly desperate.
This approach is all too common in our social programs. It’s a lousy way to meet the needs of our most vulnerable. It’s morally questionable, and if you’re not into the “morality” stuff, it’s also counterproductive in terms of financials and outcomes. People suffer needlessly and face tougher barriers to achieving self-sufficiency, which I think is what we’re supposedly aiming for.
One of the lesser aftereffects of The Great Unhousing (Abridged) is the fact that the fine old Vermont pastime of “camping” is now a euphemism for “no shelter for YOU!” So there’s that.
Otherwise, I’m sure Our Political Betters are hoping that the issue will Just Go Away, Already now that they’ve managed to squeeze out a partial, inadequate offramp for the motel voucher program.
News flash: It’s not going away. We may have avoided unhousing 2,000-odd households, at least for now, but we’ve done nothing for the 800 or so households who were kicked out of their motel rooms this month. And the deal between the Legislature and the Scott administration sets the stage for a drip, drip, drip of unhousing over the next several months due to the mean-spirited restrictions put on the extended program. You know, avoid the big one-day eviction events, the media doesn’t notice, the unhoused disappear into their cars or unsanctioned campsites or wherever the hell they go as long as they go somewhere, and the political headaches are manageable.
That’s right, our goal is not to help the vulnerable and alleviate suffering, it’s to keep the issue off the radar. But some of us are planning to keep making noise.
Well, that didn’t take long. The Legislature had scheduled a three-day session to try to override the eight vetoes delivered this year by Gov. Phil Scott. Turns out they only needed one single day.
In that day, the Legislature overrode five of Scott’s vetoes and deferred action on the others. They failed exactly zero times. They didn’t come close to failing. Five overrides in one day sets an all-time record and, as Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman pointed out in a post-session press release, “In Vermont’s history, there had only been 14 veto overrides. With these five overrides, the legislature has increased that number by more than 33%.”
All in a day’s work. Facing down the most popular governor in America.
Oh, and there was also the indignity of attaching metaphorical training wheels to Scott’s administrative bicycle. In the bill to extend the motel voucher program for some recipients, the Legislature imposed strict reporting requirements on Team Scott, as if lawmakers didn’t trust the admin’s ability or inclination to do its frickin’ job.
I mean, all they had to judge by was two years of administration failure on that front. No wonder they’re demanding receipts this time.
On the eve of the Legislature’s veto override session, we now have the text of the bill extending the motel voucher program. It’s more or less what we thought it would be; its biggest shortcoming is the exclusion of the hundreds of Vermonters unsheltered this month. Ain’t a damn thing in it for them. And as we saw earlier, these may not be the neediest of our neediest, but they’ve got some pretty extreme needs and they’re going to suffer greatly as long as they’re unhoused.
The real sin of it all is that it wouldn’t cost much to include them, and we’ve got the money. Our fiscal experts continue to forecast revenue declines in the future, but for now we’re still collecting more than predicted every month. And the FY2024 budget puts $14 million in cold storage against future federal match opportunities. That seems like prudence except that we always find money for federal matches! Wait, let me put a little stank on that:
We. Always. Find. Money. For. Federal. Matches!
Missing out on federal largesse because we couldn’t come up with the scratch? It’s just not a thing that happens.
Banking funds against that highly unlikely occurrence while we’re sentencing hundreds to indefinite unsheltering? That’s a goddamn crime.
But this deal is almost certain to go through. It gives the House dissidents most of what they asked for, and they’re likely to give in and support the override of Gov. Phil Scott’s budget veto. Well, most of them will. The rest, in the world of legislative dealmaking, don’t matter. Nor do the unhoused who aren’t being helped.
So let’s take a closer look at the bill, including a few unexpected and unwelcome twists.
The Legislature’s veto override session convenes tomorrow. Multiple override attempts are likely, but the biggest deal is the FY2024 budget. With some Democrats and Progressives on record saying they won’t support a budget override without funding for the motel voucher program, leadership is putting together a plan to bring the dissidents back on board.
And in the process, rescue some actual living humans from the scrap heap we’ve consigned them to.
As best we know it, leadership’s plan would allow extended motel stays for the roughly 2,000 Vermonters scheduled to be unhoused in July. But it offers nothing to the hundreds who’ve already been evicted from motels — some on June 1, some last Friday.
These are people who can supposedly get by without state-funded shelter. But when you look at their circumstances, you realize two things: (1) These people are in desperate situations, often through no fault of their own, and (2) they have hopes, dreams, intelligence, and insights. They have value. They should not be discarded simply because it’s too hard to help them. When, in fact, it’s not too hard. Not at all.
The reality of the people we have chosen not to help has been chronicled by, you guessed it, housing advocate and 2022 Democratic gubernatorial candidate Brenda Siegel. She’s done the hard work of speaking with the folks we have abandoned, something the state hasn’t bothered to do. I’ll attach her findings to this post, and go over some key points after the jump.
I don’t know exactly what changed their minds, but after months of insisting the motel voucher program was going to end on schedule come Hell or high water, leaders of the House and Senate are working on a deal to extend the program.
My reactions are all over the place. Wow. Finally. Thank goodness. What took you so long?
And… let’s not get carried away until we see the fine print.
Here’s what we know, courtesy of VTDigger’s Lola Duffort. The extension would apply to roughly 2,000 people scheduled to be unhoused in July. It’s an indefinite stay, meant to allow people to stay in motels until state officials can identify “alternate stable setting[s].” There will be a mandate for the Scott administration to regularly update lawmakers, which is embarrassing for Team Scott but utterly necessary due to its complete failure to plan any sort of transition before now.
And it will not apply to anyone unhoused on June 1. So, not only are those people SOL, it also means there will be another mass eviction on Thursday Friday. You may recall that hundreds of June 1 evictees were offered free two-week extensions by some motel owners. Those extensions expire tomorrow Friday. No reprieves on offer for those folks.
I don’t know why leadership is so firm on excluding the June 1 and June 16 unhoused, who number approximately 800. I guess that’s an acceptable level of human suffering.
The city of Rutland is home to a number of, shall we say, budget accommodations. That’s why Rutland has more motel voucher clients than any other Vermont community… and why it has a big problem on its hands with the end of the voucher program.
According to state data cited by VTDigger, nearly 500 households in the voucher program were located in Rutland. Roughly 200 were evicted on June 1; the remainder will be on the streets as of July 1 or July 29. It’s not too great a surprise, then, that part of the city’s plan for dealing with the outflux is to encourage the newly unhoused to leave town. This is part three of the city’s four-part plan for the June 1 cohort, but the same ideas will be in place for future evictees:
Yep, the answer is to ship ’em out of town. This is nothing new; communities across the country have actively sought to export their unhoused. And I understand Rutland’s position; the state took advantage of its cheap lodging supply and isn’t offering any help in dealing with the consequences. But still. This is not going to help people, it’s just going to shuffle them around.
In situations of dire emergency, triage helps guide the use of available resources. When there are no other options, it’s a logical way for those resources to have maximum impact. A battlefield, a weather incident, a disaster of any sort.
But when resources are available or the situation is predictable, triage is not appropriate. And that’s the situation we’ve got with The Great Unhousing. Vermont doesn’t have to end the motel voucher program and throw thousands of people out on the street. We don’t have to create the worst homelessness crisis in living memory.
And yet our official policy, both executive and legislative, is to ignore easily affordable and comprehensive solutions in favor of triaging the unhoused — providing shelter for those with extreme risk factors and leaving the rest to go hang.
In this situation, triage is not only unnecessary. It’s inhumane.
Note: Several hours after this post went live, I got a complaint from someone in Mayor Weinberger’s office that I had mischaracterized his proposal. After multiple text exchanges, I got some additional clarity on his plan. I’ve tried to accurately reflect it with notations to the original post. Newly added text is in bold type.
However, the thrust of the piece is unchanged. Weinberger’s plan would provide for the most at-risk of the unhoused, but not nearly for all of them. Also, it must be said that while Weinberger’s plan would mitigate the worst effects of The Great Unhousing in Chittenden County, I’ve never heard him lobbying for a broader solution. He has not called on the governor or Legislature to restore the voucher program while alternative housing can be brought online. He is one more political leader who’s trying to limit the damage rather than address the whole problem.
Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger has come out with a plan to deal with most of Chittenden County’s share of The Great Unhousing. His proposal is to create a 50-bed shelter and a day shelter with space for 75 in an empty state office building, and extend motel voucher eligibility for 318 people due to be evicted at the end of July until alternative housing can be found for them.165 households with significant risk factors including families with minor children, adults with disabilities receiving home health and/or hospice services, seniors (60 years+), and pregnant households.
Left off his list: Anyone already evicted on June 1 (almost 200 people in Chittenden County) or about to be evicted on the first of July.
This would include some households that were evicted on June 1 and others due to lose their motel accommodations on July 1 or July 28. But it would far from cover all of those being evicted; the total in Chittenden County, according to Weinberger’s proposal, is 354 households encompassing 512 individuals.
Even so, the estimated price tag for the office building conversion and the extended motel stays is somewhere around $4 million, per VTDigger. The source for that money, if state officials accept Weinberger’s plan? The $12.5 million allocated by the Legislature to make the end of the voucher program slightly less catastrophic.
Perhaps you can see the problem here. If the state says yes, it will have committed one-third of the statewide total for Burlington alone. For a partial solution to Chittenden County’s share of The Great Unhousing.
And according to VTDigger, Weinberger’s is one of 44 proposals submitted to the state on June 1 alone — the first day the state was accepting proposals.
The Vermont Political Observer. 