Category Archives: Housing

Triumph of the Shill

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In a way, you’ve got to feel a little bit sorry for the Scott administration functionary who’s obliged to carry water for some sad bit of policy or other. They’re adequately compensated for putting their soul in storage, but they do run the risk of ascending to the gates of Heaven only to confront an angry-looking St. Peter demanding an explanation for their craven shillery. Today’s case in point: Shayla Livingston, policy director for the Agency of Human Services.

Per VTDigger’s indispensable “Final Reading,” Livingston was defending the administration’s desire to end the emergency housing program as quickly as possible, sending thousands of the unhoused off into the night with no plan. And she trotted out a brand-new, never-heard-before rationalization.

It’s not that the money is running out. It’s not that we can’t afford to extend the program into the warmer months, which until now had been the administration’s sotto voce position. No, they’re doing it out of a twisted sense of fairness.

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How Serious Are the Democrats About Our Homelessness Crisis?

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The current debate about the emergency shelter program has very narrow parameters. The Senate Appropriations Committee is pondering the House’s addition of $21 million to the Budget Adjustment Act, that would extend the motel program from March 31 to June 30. The Scott administration, staring down the barrel of a losing battle which would (rightly) paint Governor Nice Guy as a heartless Scrooge, has proposed $11 million to shelter some people during those three months.

$21 million versus $11 million. That’s the debate.

Well, it shouldn’t be.

This week, to absolutely no notice from Our Political Press, a coalition of housing advocacy groups presented a plan that would actually provide a bridge for the unhoused instead of a cliff. It is, in fact, called “Bridges to Housing.” The plan isn’t meant as gospel; the groups decided to lay out one idea of what a solid plan would look like, just to show that it can be done.

Because, you know, the current debate still involves a cliff. It’s a matter of when we let recipients fall off the edge — March 31, June 30, or a mish-mosh in between.

This plan ought to spark some serious discussion, not to mention soul-searching, in the corridors of power. Will it? The fact that it got zero press attention would suggest that it will not.

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Vermont, Home of the Homeless

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Here’s something I didn’t know about our Brave Little State: Vermont has the second highest rate of homelessness in the country. Only California is worse.

That little tidbit appeared in a story posted by The Guardian on Friday, February 3. But it wasn’t new; it came from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s 2022 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report. Which also noted that between 2007 and 2022, Vermont experienced the highest increase in homelessness of any state.

Did I miss the widespread outrage? Did I miss our media’s in-depth coverage of this? Did I miss the hastily-called meetings and press conferences where Our Leaders expressed dismay and promised immediate action to make it better?

No?

May I take a moment to be retroactively appalled?

This is not the kind of ranking I expect from our green and pleasant land. Quite the opposite, in fact.

There was one significant piece of good news in the HUD report, but that news may get quite a bit worse in the very near future.

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And By “Those Populations” I Mean, You Know, People

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Huzzah, huzzah, the great amorphous bipartisan centrist policy apparatus has burped out another moral failure. I’m talking about Gov. Phil Scott’s plan to wind down rental assistance and emergency housing, which belies his perpetual commitment to protecting the most vulnerable.

Well, yesterday, the Legislature’s Joint Fiscal Committee, including its Democratic majority, signed off on the plan.

Does this help explain why so many Democrats were happy to vote for the Republican governor, or why so many were uneasy at the prospect of fierce housing advocate Brenda Siegel becoming governor and putting everybody’s feet to the fire?

Yep.

To be fair to the distinguished panel, they didn’t have much choice. The Legislature isn’t in session, and the JFC (unfortunate acronym alert) doesn’t have the authority or time to craft a replacement policy. But it would have been nice to hear a little more kicking and screaming.

We did get some pushback from Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, vice chair of House Ways & Means. “I am having trouble seeing my way towards March, April, when a lot of people will be handed tents.”

Tents. And we like to call ourselves the greatest country in the World.

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The Great Emergency Housing Post-Election Newsdump

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A curious thing happened one week after Election Day. The Scott administration, after much delay, released its rules for this winter’s emergency housing program. This is the thing that puts shelterless people in available motel rooms at state expense. .

The rules appear designed to minimize cost by putting strict limits on the program and giving the state plenty of reasons to reject applicants.

Hmm. The governor was running against Brenda Siegel, best known for her 2021 Statehouse protest over emergency housing… and his officials didn’t issue these rules until she was safely out of the way. The timing is too convenient to believe it was pure coincidence.

The delay does have consequences. These rules came out just as the program was opening for business. Recipients and administrators have had no time to digest them. It’s especially bad since we’ve slammed headlong into the first winter storm of the season.

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I Think Phil Scott Grades His People On a Curve

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Another day, another managerial faux pas from The Scott admini — sorry, there’s two of ’em this time.

We’ve got the sort-of discovery of money to partially restore the sudden and severe cut in the Vermont Emergency Rental Assistance Program (VERAP), plus a very belated mandate that recipients of pandemic-related unemployment insurance must produce proof of their eligibility. Yeah, from two and a half years ago. Hope you kept your pay stubs!

The latest on the VERAP bungle is the news that they’ve found $20 million they can use to patch up the program a little bit.

Oh wait, they haven’t found it — they “anticipate” finding it.

And assuming they do find it, it will only postpone (slightly) what the administration says is inevitable: assistance cutoffs for thousands of households by the end of November. Even if that “anticipated” money comes good, roughly 3,000 households will see their assistance end [checks notes] nine days from now.

Also, future cutoffs are likely to arrive with less than 30 days notice.

Because the administration can’t predict any farther than that?

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It Was All So Easy Back Then

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I dunno, sounds like socialism

There is still much more to be written about the Scott administration’s VERAP mess. (Whether our ever-diminishing political press will cover it or not, we’ll see. Anyone filed a public records request yet? Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?)

What’s clear so far is that the administration somehow failed to discover that the emergency rental assistance program was running out of money until drastic action was required to prevent it from going immediately bust. Or possibly they discovered it earlier and covered it up until it was too late for anything other than emergency action. (That’s what a public records request could determine. Bueller?)

But there’s another whole dimension to this situation, and it has to do with the perils of bounty. Remember way back in 2021 and 2022, when Vermont was (metaphorically) flooded with federal Covid relief funds? Yeah, those were good times.

And what happens in good times? Prudence is abandoned. Abundance seems endless even when you know damn well it’s not. Policymakers in the administration, with buy-in from the Legislature, made a bunch of choices about how to spend all that money.

In retrospect, some of those choices look awfully unwise.

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Somewhere, Arthur Laffer Nods His Approval

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Ah, supply-side economics. That oft-discredited relic of the Reagan administration. The failed policy that has done more to create income inequality than anything Sam Walton could dream up. You’d think that if anybody still believed in it, the Sam Brownback crash-and-burn would have convinced them otherwise.

But here we are in the Year of Our Lord 2022, and somebody from the “moderate” Phil Scott administration has the gall to trumpet a policy as “supply-side.” Yikes.

“This is a supply-side proposal to build more homes, literally to subsidize contractors, home developers and builders to build more homes at the price point that working Vermonters can afford,” [Housing Commissioner Josh] Hanford said.

That quote, which didn’t age well from the moment it left Hanford’s mouth, is about Gov. Scott’s proposal to spend $5 million on a pilot program to pay contractors to rehabilitate decrepit housing stock.

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I’d Hate to Call It Lying, but…

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At his Tuesday Covid briefing, Gov. Phil Scott was either lying or uninformed when he answered a question about the hotel/motel emergency housing program. Neither is a particularly good look.

Scott was asked about a claim by homeless advocates that the state has more money for emergency housing but isn’t using it. Meanwhile, they say, some people are being turned away. “I just don’t believe that that’s the case,” Scott replied. “We do have a program. We are taking care of those in need… We are protecting those who need our help.”

Sounds good. But a few moments later, Human Services Secretary Mike Smith undercut those bland assurances. Smith was asked about expanded access to emergency housing when the weather gets cold.

“it’s gonna be limited because we still are housing 1500 people,” Smith replied. “The Issue is the availability of hotel and motel rooms as we move forward. We are scouring the state right now for buildings we could use as temporary shelter sites for those individuals.”

And then the kicker:

We’re turning away some people, unfortunately, that do qualify under existing program because we don’t have the hotel and motel space that we would like.

Well now. Scott says we’re helping all those in need. Smith says we’re already turning people away, and that could get worse when cold weather increases demand.

Which is it, boys?

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It’s Shitkicker Time

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Way, way back in January 2015, I proposed an addition to then-governor Peter Shumlin’s executive team: the post of Shitkicker-In-Chief. “The duties would include pointing out the flaws in administration reasoning, deflating egos when necessary, and the occasional loud guffaw,” I wrote.

Despite his brush with electoral disgrace in the 2014 election, Shummy quickly reverted to the kinds of bad habits that helped derail his once-promising administration: “One of his worst is his almost-complete inability to admit that he was wrong about something — even if it’s something trivial. It makes him appear small-minded, overly defensive, duplicitous, and condescending.”

Gee, that sounds a hell of a lot like his successor, doesn’t it? Phil Scott, the former Nice Guy, is now prone to dismiss any questioning of his Covid policy, make demeaning remarks about those who disagree with him, and make transparently false statements. (His latest: his contention that he hasn’t changed his position on emergency housing when, in fact, he’s shifted considerably from his former demand that the program be ended by a date certain.)

So, it’s time for Scott to hire a shitkicker. He needs someone willing to tell him inconvenient truths such as “You’re wrong” or “That’s stupid” or “Bullshit, Mr. Governor.”

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