by Ross Connelly
A quick look at the Internet provides ample evidence a lot of people in Vermont and around the country don’t have a place to live or enough food to eat. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development reports about 653,000 Americans experienced homelessness in January 2023. That’s a 12.1 percent increase from the same report in 2022.
The research shows Vermont has the second highest rate of homelessness among states, with 50.9 people per 10,000 people. From 2018 to 2023, homelessness in Vermont increased from 20.6 per 10,000 people to 50.9, the biggest increase in any state. (The official poverty rate, according to the U.S. Census, in 2022, was 11.5 percent, with 37.9 million people in poverty.)
The data are there. How easy it is to forget real people make up those numbers. People who live in small towns and the state’s cities but don’t have their own apartment or home, don’t have enough money to put needed food on the table. Homelessness and going hungry exist all over Vermont.
Film maker Bess O’Brien gives people — who are homeless and don’t have enough food to eat — their voice in her new film, Just Getting By. The people speak powerfully as they recount their lives living in motels, in emergency shelters, couch surfing, staying with friends and relatives, sleeping in their cars, in tents and on the street.
The people are Vermonters and their stories are compelling. They are our neighbors, invisible and seen, in all our communities, in Hardwick and beyond. They comprise the data policy makers study but too often forget that, yes, those numbers are real people. They are people who are working hard, often holding two or three jobs, but jobs that come with a paycheck too small to pay the rent, if a place can even be found. The money people earn doesn’t add up to what it costs to also buy the groceries, fix the car, clothe the kids …
It is too easy to blame homeless people for not having a place to live, for not working hard enough to live “like we do.” Too easy to worry they are dangerous. Too easy to blame them for making us feel uncomfortable.
Feeling uncomfortable and in danger need to be turned around. Better to feel uncomfortable and in danger living in a society that accepts homelessness and going hungry as normal. That says a lot about us.
The people who spoke with O’Brien had courage to share their experiences with her, with us. They dispel the stereotypes and the easy out of blaming the victim. What they impart is important for all of us to hear, for all of us to consider, for all of us to not ignore.
A system that tells people to make do until more houses and apartments are built is a broken system. Contact legislators and let them know the tax structure is unfair and needs to be changed. All people need a secure place to live that is affordable, now. Refusing to change needs to be uncomfortable.
The author is the former editor and publisher of the Hardwick Gazette.
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Categories: Commentary
What amazes me are the people who can afford homes and cars. They may have a mortgage, some kind of heating system bills, electric bills, water/sewer/well/septic, property tax, insurance, lawn maintenance, snow removal, trash removal. Then if they are unfortunate enough to own a car they got registration fees, annual inspection where anything from tires to brakes may need immediate attention plus if the body has a rust hole you may not pass inspection. Then there’s gasoline. Did I mention car insurance? I must have left out a few other expenses.
Meaning? Or are you trolling?
I’m thinking the troller is accusing me of trolling.
A HUD report found more than 650,000 people were experiencing homelessness on a single night in January 2023, a 12% increase from 2022. We have a president whose executive actions during his term so far have welcomed another 10 million migrants to enter our country, all of them needing a cheap place to live. Vermont’s high per-capita “homelessness” numbers, second only to California are a direct result of our overly-generous free motel room program having attracted people here from afar to take advantage. Places in Vermont where the free motels are concentrated, such as Shelburne Road and the Hilltop Inn in Berlin have been subject to an outrageous level of property and violent crime inflicted on the neighboring residents and businesses. Keep in mind that to avail yourself of that program, all one needs to do is to claim to have nowhere to go. That is a powerful attraction to give away a service that ordinarily costs a lot of money to be disbursed based simply on the honor system. Regardless of how we deal with the problem, homeless military veterans should always be given top priority as they have EARNED such benefits. At the very least, criminal background checks should be initiated on anyone seeking to live in highly subsidized or free housing situation and those with a track record of antisocial/criminal behavior should be rejected.
No one is entitled to anything except the opportunity to have housing and food, not to have these items provided at the expense of society. You appear to believe that housing, food and other resources are automatically provided as a human right, which is aligned to the United Nations broad definition of equality, as understood within the socialist/democratic socialist contract, as stated the UN.
try building your own house//// it will keep your mind busy and you can show some pride in what you have built//// oh, i forgot/// nobody wants to work//// more goat herder housing coming your way/// thank you tax payers///
…..And let’s go through all this yet one more time, as the past 500-plus times haven’t obviously accomplished a dang thing in getting leftist lawmakers, aging hippie/college-aged filmmakers, and MSNBC-viewing militants to even vaguely understand that the homelessness crisis is and always has been primarily caused by:
1.) Drug/Alcohol/Substance Addictions
2.) Severe Mental Health Illnesses & Disorders
According to the APA, at least 60% of homeless individuals suffer from psychiatric conditions alone. And according to the US Housing & Urban Development’s Report to Congress, approximately 2/3 of all chronically homeless individuals suffer from often lifelong histories of drug/alcohol addictions.
The root causes and solutions for homelessness continue to remain unaddressed and thereby resolution will never be forthcoming – only an increasing steady stream of taxpayers subsidizing low-income & “free” housing for an ever-increasing demographic who will never have the opportunity to live more healthfully and independently. And perhaps that is exactly what this government hopes for to begin with.
Homelessness, why?? from what I see, most need drug rehab or a mental institution or both, and all you have is our elected officials or bleeding hearts just enabling them not helping…………………….just hurting them.
First off, Vermont is second per capita with homeless, which sounds a little strange, Oh wait, that’s right we have enablers and the words get out with vagrants and they flock for the handouts………………… pretty pathetic !!
I believe in helping Vermonters, and just Vermonters, not every swinging D that flocks here for the handouts, Vermont’s elected powers to be, the ” enablers”, that think drug injection sites is a good idea also, promoting illegal drug use, where do we get these people, I think they need some sort of mental intervention !!
Wake up people.
CHenry, however, my own experience of being homeless with an invisible diability indicate the flaw in assuming “mental illness” as a catchall. In many cases it actually impairs habilitation. It also costs more in cash and other resources.
Is the real intention building housing or building government and government dependency? Could the 15 million+ illegal immigrants in past three years have anything to do with a lack of affordable housing? Seems to me entrusting the same government that created this problem to fix it is pretty counterintuitive. But if the government is the only solution, then they need to start a massive deportation program immediately.
Communism is all about government dependency and government control. Of course this is who this frantic push for “affordable” housing is for in blue states and particularly in VT. The entire premise of “affordable”, low-income”, “workforce”, & “public” housing will be the final death blow for Vermont.
First of all, non-profiteers and the government/corporation cannot and will not fix a problem their policies created in the first place. If there was genuine intention to fix the problem of homelessness, it would and could have been fixed decades ago. It does not suit them to fix a problem they are profiteering from…period, full stop.
The monetary system set up by the corporation (Woodrow Wilson, banksters and robber barons) is designed to profit the top 1% and the rest are nothing more than indebted servents to the corporation. Fifty years ago, Nixon took our currency off the gold standard which was the beginning of debt is an asset nonsense. Soon thereafter, society spent and borrowed beyond their means all by design. One medical issue, one divorce, a disability, a job loss and the pile of debt of one individual spirals out of control. Keeping up with the Jones’ became the all life encompassing carrot dangled from their devious, fraudulent stick (mortgages, credit cards, car loans, equity loans, utility bills, more taxes, more fees, insurances, ect.) Can anyone honestly say they can live without paying someone else for the priviledge of just existing? Apparently, only the homeless at this rate. Everyone has their hand in our pockets by design – we live in a debt/credit dependent system and it is collapsing – as it should and should have twenty years ago.
If the corporation of the United States of America was never allowed to be created, I bet we would not have the issue of homelessness plaguing the United States. We would not have had the Great Depression, WWII, or the oil wars in the 1970’s, 1980’s 1990’s, or 2000’s+. We would not be sending our money to foreign countries. When did Isreal or any other country go flat broke? Why is the United States sending our money to other countries and for what? Leveraged here and abroad – that is the American way and it is abhorrent, unconstitutional, fraudulent and criminal.
Our human history is riddled, biblically, and historically, with ‘us’ vs ‘them — who THEM happens to be in any given era depends on the whose hands are on the pursestrings, and what the agenda is… power, lust, greed… and, our history is littered with bodies and broken nations of people whose lives were shattered for nobel causes that were distractions and even coverups for…how badly we treat people.
The Bible doesn’t need to be re-written.
The basic tenets of how to live with one another, not just to get by, but to thrive, are all there, and enough examples of what goes wrong when we choose the wrong path (ad nauseum is seems: we never learn), are all there. Its pretty simple.
The two basic principles Jesus made as the new covenent were:
Love thy neighbor as thyself; and house, feed and clothe the poor, widows and orphans.
If we stick to that, all else falls away, and we start to live WITH each other, instead of against one another, in constant frission and suspicion that someone else has more than we have…
When we pool our resources, make sure everyone has basic needs (and I am NOT talking socialism but humanity — or what the Son of Man would have us do), and those whose greed for power and addictions are winnowed out by sheer negligence… bullies get sidelined… and we can get on with living a healthy life.
We don’t need to make laws or legislate behavior: we have the Bible.
And its STILL not wrong, and the ONLY straigh path towards LOVE and PEACE.
Why?
Because love begets peace.
Its simple really.
Then, no one is homeless, foodless, or clothingless..
Hmmmm…someone should write that down…