Tag Archives: Shelby Lebarron

The Groundhog Day of Our Disgrace

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One month later, nothing much has changed. Except that the humanitarian crisis then foreseen by advocates for the homeless has become a reality that ought to scar our consciences and lay to rest any claim we have to moral superiority, to the comfortable myth of Vermont as a better, more caring place.

It was on September 15 that a group of advocates gathered in the Statehouse to sound the alarm about the completely predictable unsheltering of close to 2,000 vulnerable Vermonters due to new limits on the GA emergency housing program. They gathered again on October 15 to sound the alarm yet again, as the unsheltering has proceeded apace and state leaders have refused to lift a finger to stop it.

“We are working frantically to keep people from dying,” said Julie Bond of Good Samaritan haven (pictured above, with former Brattleboro town manager Peter Elwell and Frank Knaack of the Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont looking on). “The situation is impossible, it is immoral, and it is untenable.”

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So Why Isn’t “Lived Experience” Part of Every Legislative Process?

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The House Human Services Committee did it again Friday. They went and injected the experiences of homeless Vermonters into the normally dispassionate exercise of lawmaking. The results were, as usual, breathtaking, heartbreaking, and disruptive.

Which begs the question, why is this such an unusual event in the halls of government? Why do we rarely hear from those directly impacted by policy decisions made on high? Modest Proposal: Require every policy committee to hear “lived experience” testimony, especially those that deal with our tattered, inadequate, often cruel, social safety net. (Credit to End Homelessness Now, which has helped these folks remain housed and enabled their testimony in the Statehouse.)

Hey, maybe even we could establish “lived experience” advisory committees for the Agency of Human Services (including the Department of Corrections, you betcha). Not now, of course; it’ll have to wait until sometime after Phil Scott’s disembodied head in a jar loses its bid for a twenty-seventh term in office.

Those pesky “lived experiences” do inject a sometimes brutal dose of reality into the proceedings, making it more difficult to justify byzantine social service policies that are seemingly designed to punish participants and limit demand more than to actually address a real, tangible need.

Then again, they also display the indomitability of the human spirit, the intelligence and resourcefulness of those who live their lives on the edge. Giving them a seat at the table wouldn’t be an act of pity; it would be taking advantage of an underutilized resource.

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