California is the only blue state that is warm year round. That makes sense. What happened here?

There's an important paragraph tucked in towards the end of the article :

"HUD’s point-in-time count, conducted by shelter workers and advocates nationwide on the same night in January, is widely considered to be an undercount of the actual problem, and is highly dependent on local resources. Martin Hahn, the executive director of the Vermont Coalition to End Homelessness, which spearheads the effort in Vermont each year, said it’s possible that the high rate of sheltered homelessness in Vermont allowed the state to get a more accurate count than other states, contributing to its poor ranking. "

Regardless of where Vermont stands relative to other states, it's clear to me that something should be done to help people without permanent housing. However, if the goal is simply to rank Vermont next to the other states, I think this is a mere snapshot and probably not the final say in how we're doing. I'd like to see the data from before the pandemic and relative trend lines here and elsewhere.

50 years of NIMBYism.

According to the article VT also provides temporary shelter better than anyone else. Perhaps that's at least a region draw.

Lack of well paying jobs and housing shortage are definitely a problem in VT.

There are a number of things wrong with using this sort of data to try to paint any realistic picture.

1. The count was done in January when it is freezing outside. Homeless people are mostly migratory. Those that couldn't find shelter somewhere, probably got on a bus and headed south or west for the winter. They may be back when the weather warms up, so using this as a benchmark for how good we are doing sheltering folks isn't really giving us a proper picture.
2. The housing crisis isn't a Vermont issue or a California issues, it's a national issue. Again, homeless people are migratory. They move around. The homeless folks living on the cliff in Santa Monica are mostly from other places. I even met a fellow Vermonter there while doing outreach in the 2010s.

The idea of dumping money into landlord's hands "in exchange for temporarily keeping rents affordable and prioritizing people exiting homelessness" is completely insane. We need permanent affordable housing. This program would pay for repairs for the people who are partially responsible for the problem in the first place. It's completely bonkers.

Gov Scott isn't wrong to point out this is an issue bigger than VT, but I don't see any mention of what his administration is doing to build bridges with neighboring states and/or bringing this issue to the federal level (which is what we need to do if we want to find actual solutions). Again, this is a national crisis, not just a Vermont crisis.

Trying to look at this issue on a local level is fairly pointless. It is a national crisis. Homeless people are migratory. I'm sure there were plenty of folks who hopped on a bus and headed south for the winter, or west to California. It's what they do, and then they usually try to get back to their "local netwrok" when they can.

We also know there are plenty of folks from neighboring states who have landed in hotel rooms here because they couldn't get help where they were (to be clear, I am personally very ok with this).

Taking the count in January is actually fairly idiotic, imo. This is useless data that serves no purpose other than taking a snapshot of January. They need to do it again in the summer and get people out to the campsites and other places folks make their homes. Then we could compare those numbers and get a better idea of the actual issue here, but only doing a count in the dead of winter is silly.

Again, the most important point is that this is a national issue and we need to discuss it and address it as such.

Thank you. This is a really important point. While nobody should underestimate the seriousness of Vermont's housing problems, the stunning "second worst" ranking in the HUD report is almost certainly an artifact of idiosyncratic data collection. All bar graphs are not created equal.

This is a fatally flawed method and honestly should not even be allowed to be used. The data from it is next to useless.

The hotel voucher program is absolutely a contributing factor.

This is not a statistical error. The Point in Time count runs every January, and if you look at the other states that ranked high in homelessness, it tracks. This is real.

Unsheltered people are counted in January, campsites are visited.

> The idea of dumping money into landlord's hands "in exchange for temporarily keeping rents affordable and prioritizing people exiting homelessness" is completely insane. We need permanent affordable housing. This program would pay for repairs for the people who are partially responsible for the problem in the first place. It's completely bonkers.

Could not agree more! Landlords are raising prices so we're going to give them money so that they stop raising prices? This is your brain on neoliberalism, and exactly the kind of color-inside-the-lines thinking I have come to expect from the Scott administration. If you keep going in that paragraph in the article, it's even more frustrating:

>The high number of Vermonters who are unhoused but sheltered is also an indicator of a likely crisis to come. For now, the state is relying on motels and hotels to temporarily house the vast majority of people who are unhoused. But to do this, it has been using the large — but temporary — infusions of federal cash that flowed into the state during the pandemic, and state officials now estimate that these pots of money will run dry March 31.

Vermont had a one-time opportunity with a temporary infusion of federal cash, and we gave it to landlords. Awesome. It's almost like half the legislature are landlords or something.

That doesn’t change the fact that most homeless folks are migratory and hop a bus to warmer places for the winter. Doing the count only in January and making any conclusions from it is very shortsighted.

The point in time count is always done in January. It's a federal requirement. Why they picked January is unclear.

We need affordable housing, certainly, but for people with literally zero income not much will ever be affordable.

VT is grotesquely corrupt. Ugh.

Which is why we should have a UBI and make housing and healthcare human rights. Especially as we continue to put more robots into the workforce taking human jobs.

Edit: I’d be curious to know who made the decision to do the count in January only. Again, homeless folks are mostly migratory. They move around with the weather and with any opportunities or hope that springs up for something better than where they are. Folks that move for the winter to avoid the cold, often head back in the summers. We know this. So why do the count when the most people are not in their original “home” networks. It’s silly.

It relies on people self-identifying as homeless, with all the stigma and shame that comes with that. It can't count people surfing on couches nor someone who just became homeless the day after the count was done. The people doing these counts admit its a flawed system, you don't need to defend it.

Vermont is not corrupt—it’s one of the most transparent states when it comes to governing. And I’m very proud of our state despite its shortcomings.

Government programs while often necessary are always inefficient and partially effective. And legislations is often poorly written to prevent these problems.

I'm not defending the count, sorry that was unclear. Not all of what you say is true but my point is not to defend the count, my point is to counter the denial in this thread that the problem isn't real.

Someone at HUD made that decision, not at the state level.

A lot of the cash was through the Emergency Rental Assistance Program. It had to go to landlords, it was a condition of the funding.

The person you're responding to wasn't saying the problem isn't real, seemed to me they were complaining about the shit system we have to try and measure the problem. It's been called a snapshot by others and advocates don't see much value in the count, but it's the only way to get HUD funding so they play along.

Imo they can fuck right off and go back to whatever state they came from. Not my concern to house those that actively ruin my community and make it a worse place for everyone else.

Very telling about VT that most of the comments in here are about how the count isn't accurate and VT's problem isn't really this big. No comments about how we got here or how we get out. VT in a nutshell. Let the down voting commence.

It seems that people are shocked that we are ranked so high and want to minimize it.

One third of that number are Vermont families with children.

I'm sure there is some of that at play, as well. It's something I see quite a bit in Chittenden County, too. Vermont offers services other states don't which draws people here to use those services. Then the naysayers (conservatives) get to point out how big of a failure the services were because demand was too high and grew the homeless population here. It's easier to say "look at all the problems your services caused" than "if everywhere offered these services, there wouldn't be such a concentration here."

And the weird part of this is advocates have a perverse incentive to go along and paint it as a local problem rather than a national problem. They will minimize the people coming from out of state, even going so far as to say that people who are homeless in Burlington are from Burlington as opposed to Rutland, for example. Obviously the reason is the pushback against helping outsiders, so it's portrayed as a local issue when it really isn't.

VT towns are EXTREMELY corrupt. State level might be slightly less so, but oh boy are you being incredibly naïve if you believe what you typed here. That, or you're a landlord. You're a landlord aren't you?

In my time here I've experienced this. I'd do some research on something about Vermont and when the answer, from data and reliable sources, was at odds with what some of my Vermonter friends and neighbors grew up believing they often just dismissed the information.

Again, I'd be curious to know WHY. Winter isn't exclusive in VT. Though, if I wanted to paint a picture of this being an issue in California and a few other states and not a national issue, I'd probably choose to only count in winter too.

It's easier to sell helping your neighbor down on his luck than a dude from Missouri who just showed up looking for help. People should just be people, but as this sub routinely shows, a good portion of people in this state will only give a shit if they think you're a "real Vermonter."

Well, there's a reason for that. Gentrification is making it very difficult for regular people to live here. Obviously that is far from the only factor but when a bunch of people with money show up at the same time it's almost impossible to find housing, people are going to be pissed. That's not a surprise to me. The gentrification is certainly contributing to homelessness, particularly family homelessness, because families typically have access to vouchers and can find housing if it's available. There are other huge problems like Act 250 and NIMBYism but covid era gentrification has hurt Vermont's ability to house its most vulnerable.

It could be that, could be tied to funding, could be as simple as someone chose January to do an annual count.

If someone wanted your opinion they'd give it to you.

Anything that paints VT as something other than a liberal utopia welcoming to all is dismissed. The cognitive dissonance of a state that is increasingly exclusive and the desire to be welcoming to everyone is too much for some people.

That and humans are tribalistic by nature, something we still haven't been able to work around in 2023.

What I hear is a lot of frustration with VT turning into a version of Aspen. In my opinion, people and politicians ignore that frustration at their peril.

I think rich people moving here to work from home is creating a boring, stuffy, homogenous VT that is becoming a difficult, terrible place to live. On the flip side of that, if someone wants to move here from Ohio to be a teacher, or work in a local business, that's great. Please come. For me it's not about tribalism, it's about VT being a place for more than one group of people.

You're right. The hotel voucher is our own homegrown landlord giveaway, whereas this is a federally mandated landlord giveaway. So many wonderful landlord welfare programs.

The hotel voucher program is not a landlord welfare program, it's what the legislature prefers to do rather than build housing.

Landlord welfare program with more steps.

The homeless population isn’t as migratory as you seem to believe. In my experience as someone who had been homeless and also worked for a nonprofit organization to help homeless people in central Vermont. Many would stay because they wanted to be close to there family, Stay close to where they work, or lack the means in order to move.

So is Make Exile Great Again the archaic catchphrase of this upcoming election cycle? I'm not so sure id be ok with that considering we have sorta run out of planet to claim. This could monkey's paw pretty fast if codified into law.

> this is a national issue and we need to discuss it and address it as such.

Well yes and no. You are right in that it is a nation-wide problem and needs national scale resources to get solved. Id prob agree that some work at and reform at the federal level desperately needs to happen too. The solutions are going to have to come from as close to the local level as possible though imo.

I have to wonder what happened to those building trades hs projects of the 90's and before? Did those programs stop? I hate to even mention it because it reeks of exploitation but has anyone considered bringing back the 'poor farms' of yester-year? These are solutions that can only come from local action backed by federal funding.

Oh absolutely. Most folks do try to stay closer to where they may have family, friends, any sort of network for as long as possible, and often come back if they need to go somewhere warmer for the winter. People in general tend to also prefer to be in places they are familiar with.

That said, about half of the homeless population in our country lives in 3 places, California, New York, and Florida. The majority of those folks are not from those places originally. They migrate there because of the weather or available help/community.

While it is true that most folks TRY to stay where they have a network, they also tend to eventually burn bridges and use up available resources and they wind up moving on. Others, like yourself, stay put and eventually lift themselves out of it. I also think a lot of folks underestimate the way homeless folks utilize trains and busses to get around the country. I even met a dude from Bennington while doing outreach in Santa Monica on that cliff where everyone camps. He told me his family stopped offering any help (shelter) after a while so he made his way out there to embrace living the rest of his days on the beach (this is what he told me).

If you want to drop a link to the org your work with in central VT, I would love to donate and volunteer myself. I have done homeless outreach in NY, FL, and Los Angeles and would love to get involved here.

Thanks for the response. The article didn't include info about past years, so it wasn't clear to me if it was an anomaly or not. And if it was a significant difference from before the pandemic then I'd suggest housing the homeless is a really great way to keep track of the problem .

I also want to make it clear that I'm not trying to minimize the scope of the problem. Even if Vermont were 43rd instead of 3rd, 2000 people homeless is 2000 too many.

Can VTers ever just accept that there is something, anything, wrong with the state without trying to distract from the issue? This comment is basically “yeah there’s a homeless problem but look at other states”.

I'm not familiar with the program you mention from the 90s, but will check it out.

Otherwise, we seem to be on the same page. Yes, we need federal funding/support but of course the action part of it happens locally.

To this day, I don’t understand the reason for such disdain towards less fortunate people.

Agree with you. I work with homeless populations and can tell you that this data absolutely tracks with my lived experience. And for all the people saying the HUD count is inaccurate (which it is), that likely points to the real homeless population being even larger than the count suggests it is - NOT smaller. This is a major problem that folks need to wake up to. Everyone working in my field has been living in a state of crisis for the last year + and I’m glad to see VT Digger acknowledging the problem as it really is.

Completely disagree with you. There are limits to who can enter the emergency housing program and you can’t simply walk into the state and get housed the next day. If there even is an appeal to the emergent housing program for homeless individuals in other states, the reality hits the second they arrive here and realize they can’t get housed.

~ someone who works with the homeless population

Thievery, meth labs, heroin needles strewn about and the massive trash piles they leave everywhere.

Make being homeless illegal and punishable by being kept drug free and fed/sheltered in a work program in one place where they have to produce something for themselves like food and clothing. I'd be into paying more in tax to fund no more homeless people allowed here period.

Funny enough, I don't live in Vermont nor work with that organization anymore because of the reasons you stated above and I even took a train to were I currently live.

Anyway if you do want to help here's their web page; https://www.anotherwayvt.org/

Their main objective is to provide support for those whom have suffered from mental illness but they also help those who are homeless since it is such a huge problem and there's a bit of a correlation between the two.

3+ years really.

Yeah, apologies. Rereading some of the comments, some people who are saying inaccurate are saying it's an under count. No argument on that.

How are payments to motel 6, quality inn, etc a landlord welfare program? These are hotels, not landlords. The payments go to hotels because they're aren't apartments to put people in.

I’ll take your word for it. I just can’t personally speak to more than a year because that’s about how long I’ve been in this field.

Huge correlation. Thanks for the link! I’ll check them out and go from there. Access to mental healthcare is a major issue and something I am passionate about as I have many loved ones who have struggled / are struggling with getting care in VT.

I wish you well wherever you landed!

"Once data becomes a metric it no longer functions as data."

Such programs like that have been done before going all the way back to the 1800's. All it did was abuse those who were in that situation as cheap labor and as such gave no incentive for those running such programs to allow the homeless to be able to improve themselves.

Homeless or not, people have the right to self determination and sweeping the problem out of public site wont solve anything.

Many of these hotels are not viable as businesses otherwise. Sometimes they go to places like motel 6 and quality inn, but usually it's places like the Shady Lawn in WRJ, which at this point is functionally a substandard apartment complex for people with state temporary housing vouchers.

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

Absolutely. I was just debating that the people being paid are landlords. They are not, they're hotel owners.

Thank you. I wish the same for you as well and your love ones. :)

Ah I see. Yeah, I was being a little cheeky, but you really only need to squint a little to see it that way.

So what's your idea to fix it? I'm all ears, it's not fair to me or anyone else making it work, to have to suffer injustice at the hands of those that won't better themselves. You say that those programs stopped people from the ability to better themselves, I challenge that with less than 10% of those that choose homelessness ever better themselves even briefly even when handed the tools with instructions on how to do so. And it is a choice.

Thats a disturbingly accurate quote.

I had to go read the article bc I'm in Seattle and there's no way Vermont is worse than here. The number and ranking is counted as a per capita unit which is fine because it does tell a story but it shouldn't be used for the ranking imo. And VT has only 2% that aren't sheltered. I'd say VT is doing a much better job than most places. We have so many unhoused, unsheltered ppl here. Giant tent cities , massive piles of garbage. Its like whackamole here cause they finally clean one up due to a fatal stabbing or fire, and then they just pop up somewhere else.

I have empathy for the ppl. I used to work in a women's and children's shelter in the area. But the news stories trying to humanize the situation are frustrating to me because even if the unsheltered say they weren't always like this, then why do they leave garbage and trash and poop everywhere? They go to the store for food, they can buy a trash bag and keep their garbage collected if they really haven't always been like this. (The ppl is shelters are not generally the ones doing this though, just to clarify)

The affordable housing situation is a problem everywhere and it's so frustrating that at almost every level of government no one who has the power and funding will do anything about it.

You absolutely can walk into the state and get housed that day.

There used to be yearly or bi yearly high school building trades projects that would use hs students to build a house complete from start to finish. Granted these programs were not present in every school district i went to but many had them. idk the details of those programs in particular but friends and acquaintances were in them and it always struck me even back then that this should be widespread to combat homelessness. We could do a half dozen tiny homes in every county seat for the cost of a few dozen hotel vouchers.

VT is doing a good job of sheltering people temporarily but that is going to come to a sudden end sometime in the next few months when the federal money dries up.

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Yea, I read that. It sucks; still, we're doing a worse job of it here in WA.

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You are wrong. Pretty much no one who is homeless is getting housed the very same day right now. Period. Don’t believe me? See yesterday’s availability per Economic Services: https://outside.vermont.gov/dept/DCF/Shared%20Documents/ESD/EA/Housing.pdf

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Doesn't mean they aren't eligible. There are no durational residency requirements for state benefits in VT that I know of. I can guarantee there aren't any durational residency requirements for housing benefits.

We have a tiny population. Any federal money we get is divided among a much smaller group of people so we can do more with it.

Yes it's a problem, what's your suggestion on dealing with it in real time? Mines already on this thread.

Yes there are a few that choose to be homeless for various reasons. but like you said its no where near the majority. I would argue that nearly 60% of Americans are one paycheck away from losing their homes and that's not even touching on those who are forced to be homeless due to discrimination. So no, it's not always a choice nor is it "fair" to those who are put into that situation.

The way to fix it as many others have pointed out in this comment section is to provide affordable housing, decent paying jobs, and strict anti-discrimination laws to help prevent the problem in the first place. Along with providing programs that assist those who are homeless to be able find sustainable housing, work, and substance abuse treatment if needed. Such programs and organizations do exist both in Vt and nationally. but a lot of times they have to run on a shoestring budget, deal with convoluted bureaucracy, and face discrimination by those who are ignorant of the problem or choose to ignore it.

Makes a whole lot of sense to me. Also teaches good home repair skills, I’d imagine. Something we all could hopefully use.

One major hurdle I see though is where to build. Towns, counties, states, etc will have to buy the land this happens on I’d imagine. Not too many people are donating land to help others these days.

Though, building tiny homes on trailers might fix this as they can be moved when agreements about the land they are on shifts.

I don't think the HUD is deliberately setting out to deceive people. But if Vermont is rigorously counting every person in a shelter, hotel room, and encampment than it's data will be more accurate but appear worse then some one from, say Nebraska, idk, who sends one person out to an encampment and says,"well this seems like 200 people."

This is correct, at least in other states, idk about Vermont. 18% of California's homeless come from out of state.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/us/homeless-population.html

They are all in mass denial because nothing can go wrong. We have foliage and maple syrup.

Keep in mind we have the second highest RATE of homeless per our population. In that regard we are worse overall than the STATE of Washington

Until the opioid issue is solved this is only going to get worse

Everyone in this thread is in mass denial.

How about going outside instead of trying to disprove the statistics based on minute points?

For anyone that is interested, here is the link to the 2022 Point-in-Time(PIT) report the article is talking about: https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/2022-AHAR-Part-1.pdf

And the Vermont 2022 PIT report with the raw data and county breakdown: https://helpingtohousevt.org/2022-point-in-time-count/

Vermont has no real desire to fix this. Clearly, we need to build housing. A lot of housing. Like another Burlington, or close to it. What the legislature and the moneyed class want is a VT that looks like it did in the 19th century, plus maybe an apple store. They want VT to be a tourist mecca and a place to live for those who are independently wealthy. That's why VTs "fix" is to put people in hotels and anytime the clock runs out on that the legislature extends it because they want nothing to do with a permanent solution.

Opiates and lack of mental health care are what drives 95% of long term homelessness. There are a smattering of alcoholics as well. One of the biggest myths of homelessness is that you or I or anyone else is just a job loss away from homelessness. This is simply not true for most everyone. Most people have support networks, they haven't burned all their bridges. Almost all of the long term homeless have addiction or mental health issues or both.

I'd also like to add that anyone who can't afford to feed themselves should be shot. We could use the food stamp recipient list to get started. That would open up a lot of low income housing once they're all dead. /s

Man, I really want to believe democracy can work in the 21st century but we keep churning out dumber and dumber people whose singular goal in life seems to be to make the US a worse place to live in.

They literally said the opposite in the comment. Literally.

>Regardless of where Vermont stands relative to other states, it's clear to me that something should be done to help people without permanent housing.

Are you just wanting to be upset at someone pointing out that there is a flaw in the data? It is ok to hold both the idea that Vermont needs to correct the issue, and that the data being used could be misrepresenting the actual numbers.

Data integrity matters, it dictates where funds are directed.

Surely wherever this phrase originated wasn't very important /s

I'm sure the party that actively hates poor people and social programs would never back such a work of literature that would contain such a phrase

Absolutely false. I work with the homeless population and it takes days to weeks to even find an opening, especially in the winter

You're missing the point. There is no rule that bars people new to the state from housing. Whether or not there is availability is totally different.

I also work with the homeless population

No, I’m not missing the point at all. I know how the system works. I’m telling you that there is a waiting list long enough that when new people come to the state without housing already set up, it takes weeks or months, plural, to find placement for them, and that’s if they don’t die to the elements or something else first. I do this for a living every day. I see it every day. You’re talking about a theoretical that has absolutely no application whatsoever to the reality of the situation. You quite simply just do not know what you’re talking about, at all.

EDIT: If you work with the homeless population, I feel even more sorry for them than I did before.

Nothing about this is true. We have had an unhoused person freeze to death in Vermont in many many years. People can come to Vermont and be eligible for housing that day. That is a fact whether or not you choose to believe it. I'm not sure you understand what a durational residency requirement is but we do not have them.

Yer just dead fucking wrong about that. You absolutely *cannot* walk into this state and get housed that day. I don't know why you're saying this shit - what's your source?

There may not be a room available for you but you could be eligible on your first day in Vermont. My source is DCFS publicly available rules

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You said "you absolutely can walk into the state and get housed that day." That is completely untrue. You didn't say "you could be eligible for housing on your first day in VT," which may be true. You just said some untrue shit and now you're claiming you never said it.

The comment above was about whether or not people come to the state and can be housed right away. They can, if there is space. I would imagine in the summer a room is available right away. In the winter, it's not. I promise you i know more about this program than you do.

Ha! Likewise bro. You're making shit up. If you're an advocate you're doing more harm than good. When people who know this stuff hear you talking about people dying in the elements, they know you're full of shit. That hasn't happened in a decade or more. Another clueless person on a self righteous rant. When did you get here from jersey?

What you said, and everyone downvoted, was that you can "walk into the state and get housed that day." You're "imagining" what the circumstances are, not "knowing" what the circumstances are.

And for what it's worth, you might know more about this program than me, if you mean the technical rules or how it was put together. But if you think you're on the ground finding housing for more people than me on a daily basis, knowing how the program *actually* works and how people *actually* get a warm bed at nightI'm gonna call bullshit because I'd fucking know you if you were.

Lol, it's a reddit fight. I don't care. I could have been more clear, sure. My apologies. It does sound arrogant to say I know more but in this case I do. There's some nonsense in the original post about an emergency housing board. That doesn't exist. Lots of sort of correct info in this thread. It's funny.

The self righteousness is a little much.

Why not just lead with that? Why put it at the end of the comment like it’s an afterthought?

Example: vermont has a homeless problem, we should deal with it. Also, this data may not be accurate, but still VT has a homeless problem.

They did not literally say the opposite, you dunce. Still, you’re slightly better than the other commentor who thinks forced labor camps are a solution to homelessness.

So making the homeless take food, shelter, life skills/technical training and making them stay sober because they can't seem to figure it out on their own in a centralized location is wrong because other people abused the system before?

That's exactly why we have literal crazy people everywhere now, the aclu pushed for the deregulation of the mental asylum system till it happened in 1976, because the aclu decided it would be better to have no mental healthcare for anyone beyond private, than to install checks and balances in the mental health asylum system where abuse had occurred.

>Can VTers ever just accept that there is something, anything, wrong with the state without trying to distract from the issue?

>Regardless of where Vermont stands relative to other states, it's clear to me that something should be done to help people without permanent housing

They absolutely, and literally, addressed your complaint. You just don't like the order of their comment. That sounds like a you problem.

Not everything has to be a full throated yell, it's ok to be measured in responses, and critical of studies that deserve it. Even if those studies prove the point you are trying to make.

Are you okay?

Highest rate of homeless people, simultaneously the lowest rate of "unsheltered" people. Let me break it down for you: VT provides shelters for homeless people, this atttacts homeless people to VT to get access to the free shelters, and since VT has low population density to begin with, that influx of people is enough to skew the numbers so that VT gets listed high on homeless people per capita. Basically, VT is the only state that's trying to actually help the homeless.

I think so? Thanks for checking!

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I think there's a specific reason VT is "the only state that's trying" related to the amount of funding per capita but I don't disagree.

Spoken like a person who hasn’t literally received an email about someone they worked with dying in the elements. Fuck off.

I'm sorry to hear that happened, but it didn't happen in Vermont.

You’re a genuine piece of shit, you know that?

https://www.wcax.com/content/news/Homeless-man-freezes-to-death-in-Middlebury-469587423.html

Huh, must have missed that one. From one piece of shit to another, I hope you are able to work off your trust fund and feel better.

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The Venn Diagram of the reality you seem to live in, and delusion, is a circle.

I have a friend that lives in a hotel and has been homeless. He also has a job. He claims he’s tried Capstone and all the major venues for being housed, and he cannot find an affordable place to live. He’s also a native VTer and has epilepsy. He can’t drive, and I do not think he has a mental issue or he’s an addict. I am not sure what’s going on with him.

Both states have highly restrictive housing policies and extremely expensive real estate.

It seems unlikely to be a coincidence that rents and home prices have nearly doubled in our state at the same time homelessness has shot up.

The mountains, the cold , and low population density make it bad for business -- but popular with those that value natural beauty. The valuing of beauty is an empathetic trait. Thus our more liberal policies. Liberal policies create a snowball effect that bring in more liberally minded people like being the first state to recognize gay marriage. Trying to help the homeless is also a more liberal policy

the joys of tourism econ

> Can VTers ever just accept that there is something, anything, wrong with the state without trying to distract from the issue?

Oh I do. Crime is up, more homeless folk than ever, cost of living is fucked, and most natives are moving out and flatlanders are moving in. Shit is real fucked.

HUGE bummer too, I loved growing up in VT and the landscape still takes my breath away when I drive home to my parents. Unfortunately I was one of those people who were pushed out. Part of my comment comes from the frustration I feel when talking about VT with friends and family who are still in-state. It feels like they are actively trying to ignore a lot of the major issues VT is experiencing.

Ahh shoot. You win.

No one wins, because you will keep getting angry for no reason.

I read this as hungry (not angry) for some reason.