Houselessness
The Emergency Shelter General Assistance Motel program has housed thousands of people since its expansion during the peak of Coronavirus. Currently, 1,800 households are utilizing this program. The Vermont Senate’s $8.5 billion budget approved funding for child care, health care, and other services and needs. However, less than 1% of those households currently served by the Motel program will remain qualified for emergency housing.
$60 million has been allocated for building shelters and for grants directed at landlords to improve vacant or uninhabitable units. An additional $10 million is dedicated to procuring manufactured homes and purchasing motels for permanent supportive housing. These critical investments are essential to a sustainable solution to our housing crisis. that the current dependence on General Assistance emergency housing is merely a band-aid— not a long-term solution. We are grateful to Rep. Taylor Small for her leadership in helping to secure this funding and for trying to find a path forward from this terrible situation.
At this point, however, more than 1,000 households will end up on the street until these longer-term options are ready for use. The emergency housing program will revert back to pre-COVID eligibility, when housing conditions for our most vulnerable Vermonters only become available in the most adverse weather conditions. This is not the first time our state has faced this crisis. Thedifference now is that there are twice as many houseless people in a state where we recognize that homelessness is truly a policy choice. It’s time for us to make the right choice to end homelessness.
Advocate Brenda Seigel has been documenting the realities of Vermonters in the GA Motel voucher program. It is clear that many will risk death or face immediatementally and physically distressing situations once forced out of their temporary housing in the coming months.
The emergency shelter program has existed for years and, by no means, does it offer a sustainable option for the increasing need for affordable housing in our state. Progressives have been pushing for real investments in long-term housing for the houseless for years. In an attempt to prevent people the abrupt end to the program, Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (P/D) and Sen. Nader Hashim (D) proposed an amendment on Thursday that would have restored funds to the program until March. This amendment called on the Senate Committee on Appropriations to return the bill to committee in order to find the necessary allocations to make certain that Vermonters can be housed long-term. Following are quotes from the floor speeches on Thursday, while proposing an amendment to fund the program.
“There is never a time when living the streets is not dangerous, traumatic and destabilizing . . . I agree that the motel program is unsustainable, and absolutely not the best housing option. In fact, it is strange for me to be standing up in support of this program, as I have advocated for more than a decade to invest in less traumatic, more permanent solutions. But that has not happened yet - and a hotel room is better than living on the streets. I still support investments in these long term solutions, and advocate strong investments in this. But, I do not believe that while we wait for these investments and solutions to come to fruition that we should allow thousands of Vermonters to live on the streets.”
-Senator Tanya Vyhovsky, Chittenden-Central
“I'm certain for the people who already exist in the outer regions of our socioeconomic circles that losing access to their already tenuous housing situations will make things far more challenging for those individuals and surrounding communities.”
-Senator Nader Hashim, Windham
Public caucus
Join us at noon today for our public caucus on homelessness and the GA Motel Voucher Program with Houseless Vermonters Cheri and Rebecca, Kathi Partlow — Housing and Community Development Manager of the Family Center of Washington County, and Rick DeAngelis—Co-Director of Good Samaritan Haven, a Vermont Shelter Network for the Unhoused. You can watch in person at Pavillion 270 next to the State House, or virtually from the House Caucus Youtube channel.
Senate Update
H.222 will be voted on this week, with Drug Checking included — a provision that will save lives, including the ability for people to test their drugs for contaminants and lethal ingredients before use. Sen. Vyhovsky fought hard for this provision to be included in the bill.
“We have to fundamentally change the paradigm right now. The many social challenges that we associate with substance use are in fact by-products of criminal justice involvement. Plenty of adults engage in vices to cope with the challenges of their lives; whether it is a craft beer after work, a vape pen after a hard meeting, or a shopping spree to engage with retail therapy, but because these things are not illegal they do not destroy their lives, families and communities. We can make everyone safer by treating substance use as the public health crisis that it is.” -Senator Vyhovsky
Action Alert
A few months ago, Progressives in and outside of the State House pushed and won to take some of the most egregious parts out of the elections bill — including eliminating the ability for candidates to run with fusion party labels. The legislation would have restricted the ability of candidates to run as independent candidates and would have increased the maximum contribution a candidate could transfer to a political party. The existing limit of $10,000 would have been raised to become unlimited. The bill was partially amended to eliminate the ban on fusion candidacies and limited the increase of the contribution limit to $60,000. However, $60,000 is still far too exorbitant an amount for candidates to donate to political parties. Restricting the ability of any candidate to run as an independent is undemocratic.
This bill is up for vote on Wednesday. Contact members of the Senate Committee on Government Operations and send them a message calling on them to vote NO on the Elections Bill, H.492.
Progs in the Press
Montana State Representative Zooey Zephyr was banned from speaking on the House floor for speaking out against legislation seeking to prohibit doctors from performing gender-affirming care on transgender minors. She said, “I hope the next time there’s an invocation, when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood in your hands.”
Representative Taylor Small spoke out in solidarity with her friend and fellow transgender lawmaker,
“After people had misgendered her on the floor, after people had said horrific things about our communities, after they had lofted their own attacks against LGBTQ people — they had the audacity to say that she was the one breaking decorum at the end of the day for this one comment.”
NBC 5: Vermont lawmakers call for reform in the US Supreme Court
Progressive legislators Rep. Emma Mulvaney Stanak and Lt. Governor David Zuckerman gathered outside the State House to call for reform in the United States Supreme Court. Citing the overturn of Roe v. Wade and an undemocratic imbalance of power, Vermonters joined the national chorus of calls to reform the United States Supreme Court.
