Anything for the Unhoused? Anything at All?

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The news is full of stories about the aftermath of the great flood. Our political leaders are fully engaged on the issues of flood relief. We hear about the plight of homeowners, renters, small businesses, and the various public and private efforts to help them in time of need. But there’s one group we hear little to nothing about.

It’s the people who had no home or shelter when the rains came on July 10.

The attitude among our leaders appears to be that after all, the unhoused had nothing before the flood, so did they really lose anything?

That may strike you as an unfair characterization, but it’s kind of baked into the disaster relief system. People and businesses get help based on tangible, reportable property losses. No property, no losses, right?

This includes the 750 or so households we sentenced to homelessness on June 1 when Gov. Phil Scott and Legislature tightened eligibility standards for the motel voucher program. The state made no particular effort to track those people after their forced exit. No one seems to know where they are or what their living conditions are like.

WCAX-TV just ran a story entitled “Where are evicted hotel-motel program recipients staying?” Unfortunately, it made no real effort to answer its own question. There were estimates from Burlington about the increase in the unhoused population since June 1, but nothing beyond the city limits.

And now we’ve added God knows how many more to their number. I’m sure God knows, but I don’t see any effort by our earthly leaders to track the newly unhoused. Have there been any efforts to expand shelters that were at or near capacity before the first drop of rain fell? Has anything been done for them besides handing out tents?

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Private Generosity Is a Wonderful Thing. It Has Its Limits.

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Scanning through the (literally) hundreds of flood-related GoFundMe campaigns is an exercise that inspires and deeply saddens at the same time. A search for “Vermont” on GoFundMe returns more than 500 matches, and the vast majority are flood-related.

That in itself is an indication of the scope of our disaster. The results of all those campaigns are evidence Vermonters’ generosity — and proof that generosity itself is not enough. Because while GoFundMe is a marvelous platform and every dollar raised will help someone in need, the returns are inconsistent and the need far outstrips the response. The meat and bone of recovery must be an organized public effort.

This has been shown by a study of GoFundMe campaigns launched during the early months of the Covid-19 epidemic. It found that “crowdfunding was most effective in areas with both high levels of education and high incomes.” In short, GoFundMe tends to “exacerbate inequalities and further benefit already privileged groups.”

I looked at several dozen of the flood-related campaigns. There were definite signs of social inequity; as of last night, a campaign intended to help the residents of the Berlin Mobile Home Park (profiled in a brilliant Seven Days cover story by Colin Flanders) had raised only $2,310 toward a goal of $145,000, which would be $5,000 for each household. Kind of explains why one resident told Flanders “”Nobody gives a fuck about a trailer park.”

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The VTGOP Is “Helping” Phil Scott Again

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Gov. Phil Scott is kinda busy these days with, among other things, talking to the Biden administration and our Democratic Congressional delegation about federal flood relief.

So naturally, Vermont Republican Party chair Paul Dame thought this was an ideal moment to flog the “Biden Crime Family” nonsense. Dame’s weekly commentary, delivered today to the select few on the VTGOP mailing list, is loaded with conditional assertions and misleading phraseology, all in service of the long-discredited narrative that Joe and Hunter Biden are international racketeers of the basest sort.

Good thing for the governor that nobody takes Paul Dame seriously outside his tiny band of true believers (who, unfortunately, occupy most of the leadership positions in the state party). Otherwise, Scott would have some ‘splainin’ to do the next time he picks up the phone to talk to administration officials.

Dame does his level best to whomp up some outrage from the steaming “Biden Crime Family” pile of Santorum. And fails. But his effort is yet another stain on the reputation of a once-respectable political organization — one that ruled Vermont for more than a century and produced remarkable figures like George Aiken, Bob Stafford, Dick Snelling, and Jim Jeffords.

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Malloy Deploys Him Some Word Salad

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You could be forgiven if you’re confused about whether Gerald Malloy’s Twitter feed is a maladroit attempt to articulate his views or a piece of anarchic performance art. Lately, the unsuccessful 2022 Republican candidate for U.S. Senate has been deploying a mish-mash of anodyne observations and conservative talking points with plenty of ALL CAPS thrown in for good measure.

We’ll run down some of the more entertaining examples, but first I must address the above Tweet, which prompted me to write this post. Malloy posits the late musician/composer/activist Clifford Thornton as an exemplar of THE AMERICAN DREAM, I guess? Based solely, it would seem, on the fact that Thornton titled his first album Freedom & Unity. I seriously doubt that Thornton had Vermont in mind when he made that record, and I suspect that if he knew he was being championed by Gerald Malloy, he’d be spinning in his grave.

The real Clifford Thornton was a practitioner of free jazz, the radical mix of cutting-edge art that cared not for melody or harmony or traditional structure. He was associated with avant-garde greats like Archie Shepp, Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, Sun Ra, and Anthony Braxton. A critic wrote that Freedom & Unity was “a natural extension of the music of Ornette Coleman.” There is precisely zero chance that Malloy has actually listened to any of Thornton’s music.

But that’s not the weird slash ironic part.

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This Is the Easy Part

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Gov. Phil Scott is getting positive reviews for standing tall in the public eye, projecting an aura of confidence and strength, displaying leadership in a time of crisis.

All good things, to be sure. But I remember in 2011 when his predecessor Peter Shumlin got the same kind of plaudits for his handling of Tropical Storm Irene. But it turned out that Shumlin was a much less skillful administrator in the absence of a crisis. From this I learned that crises are not the true test of a leader. You need definite skills in such moments, but they are not the same skills that make someone an effective manager in “normal” times or a visionary who can steer the ship of state in a positive direction.

Phil Scott’s true test will come after the immediate crisis, when he will have to learn the right lessons from the Flood of 2023 and craft policies to minimize the chances of similar disasters in the future. And to do so even if it means re-examining his own beliefs and preconceptions, something that hasn’t been his strong suit in the past.

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Have Our “Most Vulnerable” Become Our “Most Disposable”?

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The scene above is on Elm Street in Montpelier, one block over from Main. It’s a low-lying stretch running parallel to the North Branch of the WInooski River. And it’s one of thousands of similar city and town streets where poor and working class people live.

Or used to, anyway. Where they live now, I have no idea.

Vermont’s cities and towns were largely built along waterways, which were used as open sewers for industries of all kinds. That’s why your typical Vermont town has its back to the river. Nobody wanted to be anywhere near it.

So, of course, that’s where the poor and working class people lived while their bosses took the high ground. You didn’t see any mounds of trash, each one representing a ruined life, in front of the stately homes on College Street, now did you?

And still today, the poor and working class people live in low-lying areas prone to flooding because that’s where the affordable housing is. Those areas are more and more flood-prone as climate change bears its fangs. It’s a huge and largely unspoken climate justice issue that we have yet to address in any comprehensive or meaningful way.

In the meantime, how many of those people have just joined the ranks of the unhoused — just as Our Betters have shut down eligibility to the motel voucher program except in rare circumstances?

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This Is Our Monster

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The first draft of history is being written about The Great Flood of 2023 or whatever we’re going to call this one. It’s all about doughty Vermonters stepping up in the face of adversity, banding together as communities, helping each other working day and night, and generally being the very definition of noble, selfless Vermonters.

There’s a lot of truth in that narrative. But.

Well, two buts. First, I’m not sure how different we are from anywhere else hit by a devastating event. Did the people of the Hudson Valley turn their neighbors away? Did the emergency responders in New Hampshire clock out at 5:00 after putting in an eight-hour shift? I don’t think so.

Second, and this is the big one. The Great Flood of 2023 should be the bellwether event that forever lays to rest the polite fiction that Vermont is immune from the growing effects of climate change, that this lovely little theme park is uniquely blessed by God or the Gods or Mother Earth and if only we commit to preserving its every jot and tittle, the Vermont of our fond imaginings will go on forever.

Nope. The monster we have created is on the move, and it cares not for your precious Vermont exceptionalism.

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Oh Great, Here Comes the Next Energy Panic

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Hey everybody, meet BESS. Comely little lass, no?

BESS is short for Battery Energy Storage System. Inside those modular-home-lookin’ boxes are lots and lots of lithium-ion batteries. (The technology is changing; some newer BESSes have other kinds of batteries.) These installations store energy produced during off-peak times, often from wind or solar arrays, and save it for times of peak demand. They can also provide emergency power during outages.

These things, it says here, are poised to become key components of the electric power grid of tomorrow.

I hadn’t been formally introduced to BESS until I spent a few days in Long Lake, New York, a tiny town in the heart of the Adirondacks. While driving around town, I couldn’t help notice bright yellow signs along the roadside that said “Stop the Lithium Battery Farm” with a URL at the bottom. Following the link, I discovered that a group of local residents is trying to block the installation of a BESS.

Oh great, I thought. Another energy panic is upon us.

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Will the EB-5 Settlement Be an Open Window or an Escape Hatch?

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Congrats to former governor Peter Shumlin, who will be spared the indignity — and potential legal peril — of testifying under oath about the EB-5 scandal, thanks to the state’s universal settlement of lawsuits by investors in the fraudulent scheme.

Regrets for the rest of us, who’ve been wondering for years what he knew and when he knew it

At the same time, hopes arise for the fullest possible disclosure of documents hitherto barred from public disclosure because of the state’s legal exposure. Well, that threat has been removed, right? So now we can expect a big press conference any day now where state officials will pull a curtain away from a mountain of documents and eliminate all the suspicions.

Right?

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The Loneliest Overwhelmingly Popular Governor in Town

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At last week’s press conference, Governor Nice Guy spent much of the time wearing his Frowny Phil mask. Lots of unpleasant subjects: The still unsettled emergency housing program, all the veto overrides, plus Auditor Doug Hoffer’s scathing report on his pet administrative project, the Agency of Digital Services, which gave him the opportunity to unfurl an obviously scripted and vigorous defense of ADS. (Outgoing ADS Secretary Shawn Nailor was in on the presser for no reason at all, just in case some reporter asked about the agency. When the question did arise, Scott and Nailor just couldn’t stop trumpeting the former’s vision and the latter’s execution.)

On top of all that, he had the opportunity to wallow in his profound political isolation. Not a lot of fun for a politician with an approval rating of, what was it, 163 percent or something?

Gov. Scott was clueless about how we’ve arrived at the point where an historically popular leader is on the short end of historically lopsided legislative supermajorities, and had no idea what he might be able to do about it. Plus he made it clear that his divorce from the Vermont Republican Party is complete and irrevocable.

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