Tag Archives: Brenda Siegel

We Still Can’t Wind Down the Motel Voucher Program

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The Scott administration has published its monthly report on the GA emergency housing program (as mandated by the Legislature), and it’s nothing but bad news.

The report is downloadable (look for “Pandemic-Era Housing Reporting – October”) from the website of the Legislature’s Joint Fiscal Committee, which will take up the report at its meeting on Tuesday, November 7. I suspect we’ll be in for more earnest expressions of concern, sad head-shaking, and fresh statements of determination to find answers.

The numbers tell a story of stasis. Barely any discernible progress in creating new housing or shelter, only the slightest dent in the number of people staying in state-paid motel rooms, and only a relative handful who managed to find alternative housing in October. This, despite an evident push by administration officials to move people out of the prgram, as reflected in the continuing efforts by former gubernatorial candidate and housing advocate Brenda Siegel, who just received the ACLU of Vermont’s David W. Curtis Civil Liberties Award. Her Twitter feed continues to feature stories of people who are obviously and painfully needy, but who are nonetheless losing their eligibility for motel vouchers.

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“Lived Experience,” What a Concept

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Two legislative committees got a metaphorical bucket of cold water dumped over their heads today by people who are trying, and largely failing, to deal with Vermont’s crisis of homelessness. And then a pair of just plain ordinary folks took the stage and tossed an equally metaphorical grenade into the room with their real-life experiences of homelessness and the frustrations of dealing with social service bureaucracy.

Guys like Bryan Plant, pictured above, are rarely featured in legislative hearings, and that’s a damn shame. He’s smart, articulate, and his input is crucial. The absence of voices like his makes for myopic policymaking, with no attention to how the system affects those on the receiving end.

Plant and Rebecca Duprey were the two witnesses labeled as “Lived Experience” on the docket for today’s joint hearing of House Human Services and Senate Health & Welfare. The two committees were examining the implementation of Act 81, the extension of the motel voucher program hastily negotiated at the end of June by legislative leadership and the Scott administration.

Plant and Duprey told stories of encountering barrier after barrier: “a mountain of paperwork,” much of it incomprehensible and repetitive, an unresponsive bureaucracy, poor to nonexistent coordination between government programs, constant turnover among case workers (Plant was assigned to 11 different “service coordinators” in three years, so you can imagine how coordinated his services were). It all added up to, in Duprey’s words, a system of “inexcusable cruelty” to people in the direst of circumstances. “You have no idea how damaging this is to people,” Plant told the committees.

The topper: Plant and Duprey are two of the rare success stories of Act 81. Unlike the vast majority of voucher clients, they have managed to find good housing. They struggled their way through a system that seems more designed to frustrate its clients than to help them regain their footing in life.

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Man, the Agency of Human Services is Really Bad At This Emergency Housing Thing

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Well, in this context, “incompetence” is the charitable interpretation. The alternative is that the responsible Scott administration officials are deliberately biffing the emergency housing effort and obfuscating slash lying to try to cover it up. Fortunately, they’re pretty bad at obfuscation, too.

Actually, there’s a third thesis, and my money’s on this one: The administration has so thoroughly starved AHS of needed resources that its staff can’t possibly handle the workload, and its leadership is tap dancing around the inconvenient truth.

Let’s go back to last week’s appalling performance before the Legislature’s Joint Fiscal Committee, where AHS leaders presented their first mandatory report on the disposition of motel voucher recipients. For those just joining us, the last-minute budget compromise reached in late June continued the voucher program for most recipients, set some stringent conditions for those receiving vouchers, and mandated that AHS report once a month on progress toward ending the program and providing alternative housing for all recipients.

The report was an embarrassment, starting with a rundown of the 174 recipients who left the program in July. Of those 174, a mere 34 had found apartments to live in. (There was no breakdown on how many were helped by AHS in finding new housing and how many managed the trick on their own.) That’s less than 20% of those no longer in motels. The vast majority — 113 in all, a staggering 65% — left the program for destinations unknown because they had failed to renew their benefits, a process that appears to be devilishly difficult.

AHS Secretary Jenney Samuelson told the committee that “we had not been able to make contact with” those 113 despite multifaceted efforts. But a very different story was told by advocates for the unhoused.

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Our Shadow Governor at Work

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People occasionally tell me that I “like” a political figure I’ve praised, or “don’t like” one I’ve criticized. It’s a way of consigning my views to little boxes of emotion. It’s not about policy or character, it’s about “liking.” Or not. I find it subtly demeaning.

Former gubernatorial candidate Brenda Siegel is one of those I supposedly “like,” and Gov. Phil Scott is on my perceived “don’t like” list. Neither is true, really. With Siegel, it’s not about liking or not liking, it’s about respect. She acts on her principles. She’s the only political figure who’s put herself on the line for our most vulnerable. The much more “likable” Phil Scott has not, not at all, not ever.

He did help out a neighbor with his backhoe, an action posted on Twitter by a former member of his cabinet. The tweet triggered a widespread fluttering of hearts in #vtpoli circles. What a great guy! What an authentic Vermonter, helping out a neighbor in time of need!

Yes, well, I’ve always thought Phil Scott would make a fine neighbor. I’m sure he’s always ready to help out, especially if it gives him a reason to haul out one of his big-boy toys. But there are no circumstances that would find him slogging through floodwaters, rescuing unhoused Vermonters from a riverside encampment as Siegel has done.

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Sure, Hundreds Have Been Unsheltered, But Let’s Not Forget the Real Tragedy: Important People Have Had Their Feelings Hurt

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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.

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This Is Not Going Away

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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.

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When They Start Making Deals, Remember the Lives of Real People Are at Stake

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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.

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With Every Passing Day, Vermont’s Disgrace Gets Worse

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Day Two of The Great Unhousing passed with far less fanfare than Day One, but the human toll was just as high and the consequences just as shameful. Our area of central Vermont was hit by a tremendous rainstorm yesterday afternoon, and I had to wonder how many of the newly-unhoused were being thoroughly soaked and their possessions destroyed by the downpour. Too bad the state’s “Adverse Weather Policy” is only designed to minimize the number of people who actually freeze to death. Dangerous heat and severe storms? Eh, that’s okay, I guess.

(The image above is taken from a video posted on Twitter by Brenda Siegel. I used a screenshot where the person’s face is obscured because I want to be illustrative without being exploitive. We do need to be reminded of the humanity behind the statistics and the policy debates without reducing our fellow Vermonters to political props. I appreciate Siegel continuing to bear witness; somebody’s got to.)

There was little media coverage on Day Two because there wasn’t anything “new,” just another day of unnecessary misery. Just another day when people who were living on the edge come closer to falling over. Just another day when the bland professions of our political class ring hollow. Heck, the only thing that’s got them hot and bothered is a bit of vandalism on their doorsteps.

At this moment I have a hard time ginning up any outrage on their behalf. We’d all like to feel secure in our homes, and I understand that. It’s just that some people don’t have homes at all, and our leaders played an active role in making that happen.

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Dignity: A Modest Proposal

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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. conceived of the Poor People’s Campaign as a way to bring the voices of the poor to Washington. D.C. It was one of those radical ideas conveniently memory-holed by conservatives in their annual one-day co-opting of Dr. King, but it was central to his efforts to bring a measure of economic justice to America. He never got there in person, thanks to an assassin’s bullet.

The debate over extending Vermont’s motel voucher program has made it clear we need a Poor People’s Campaign right here in Vermont, because it’s obvious that the voices of the poor need to be heard as loudly as any other in the halls of the Statehouse.

Well, to be fully accurate, one part of the debate has made that clear. It’s the part provided by Brenda Siegel, who’s been bringing the stories of voucher clients to our attention and, in so doing, forcing The Comfortable to feel a wee bit less comfy.

So, modest proposal: A lobbying organization which, for placeholder purposes, I’m calling “Dignity.” Anyone who does the actual work gets to take as little or as much of this idea as they want.

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Blessed Are the Policymakers, For They Shall Be Insulated From the Consequences of Their Inaction

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As the Legislature steams toward adjournment in, what, 48 hours from now?, efforts continue to find a way of solving the homelessness crisis staring us in the face. Or at least a face-saving way of putting a Band-Aid on that brain tumor.

There may have been an outcome by the time you read this. The House-Senate conference committee on the FY2024 budget has held multiple meetings this week. Each time they’ve skipped over the housing issue; at the close of yesterday’s meeting, Senate Appropriations chair Jane Kitchel alluded to negotiations on an unspecified issue holding up the completion of the compromise budget. One has to assume she’s talking about housing. It’s the only issue that’s sparked a last-ditch revolt by lawmakers who’d rather not be responsible for mass evictions from the motel voucher program. At least, they’d rather not be perceived as responsible.

But no matter which way this goes, it’s already a policymaking failure of epic proportions. We’re approaching mid-May. Eligibility standards for the voucher program will tighten in three weeks, and the program will virtually disappear one month after that. Decisions should have been made long ago. If the budget includes reasonable funding for vouchers, there will be a mad scramble to implement the extension. If it doesn’t, well, it’s all hands on deck, five alarm fire, Defcon One, and the little dog saying “It’s Fine” in the middle of a conflagration.

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