Hearty congratulations to the good people of Hyde Park, who have “amicably resolved” a dispute over the siting of a homeless shelter. “Amicably” is the word chosen by VTDigger’s social media poster to describe a deal that will severely restrict the civil rights of shelter residents, so the amicability does not extend to the unhoused.

The story as a whole, originally posted by the News & Citizen of Lamoille County, betrays a complete blind spot where the unhoused are concerned. Nowhere are their thoughts or feelings expressed, nowhere are they seen as anything other than pawns in a game. And I must confess a similar blind spot; the import of the story didn’t hit me until housing activist Josh Lisenby pointed it out on Twitter, which I refuse to call X. In fact, I borrowed the headline of this post from one of Lisenby’s tweets.

The tale of this amicable resolution is a tawdry one all round. It begins with Lamoille Community House proposing to open a shelter at what is now the Forest Hill Residential Care Home. That much is fine; cue the tawdriness, in the unshocking form of a California tech entrepreneur who looks, well, exactly how you’d expect he looks.

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