To address this edit you made:

> I would bet my paycheck you’ve lived here less than five years, don’t live within five miles of one of these and don’t get a local paper where there is news about local crime.

I do in fact subscribe to a local paper with news about local crime. It costs $43 a year (if I remember correctly) and it’s some of the best money I spend. Local journalism is essential and, unfortunately, hugely undervalued in the US. VT is lucky to still have a lot of independent local papers.

Since you lost the bet, in lieu of sending me your paycheck please donate it to a shelter or food bank in your hometown, whether that’s Rutland or somewhere else.

It is nativism to complain that the program puts the needs of people who “often traveled here from out of state” over “local residents”, and to argue from the position that those people are not “local residents”.

If you’re upset that someone who doesn’t live in Rutland has an opinion about Rutland policy, that’s fine. But you can make that argument based on whether you think I or any of the state-level government workers who created the program are from Rutland or understand local issues well enough to have an opinion. You’re bringing in irrelevant and, frankly, made-up information about where you believe the hotel residents are “really from”—and that’s nativism.

I don’t live in Rutland. I’m a flatlander who moved to VT a few years ago and who previously lived primarily in big cities with pervasive issues around housing availability, affordability and security, drug use, and crime. I’m not naive about any of these issues and I don’t think they’re simple problems to solve. I just haven’t seen any evidence to suggest that ending a program that’s currently providing shelter to actual at-risk people without a transition plan for those actual people is going to be good for those actual people. It sucks the state created this problem.

> 18,000 residents in rutland who deserve to feel safe and don’t want a crack den behind their house.

Im not sure a literal NIMBY argument is as strong as you think it is.

> It is also inappropriate for someone who only recently moved to vermont to feel that they should be able to tell us locals what sacrifices we must make for their pet projects.

Not sure a nativist argument is that strong either.

> When people are spending over a year living unemployed with no kitchen, no job training,

Sounds like we need more programs to address these clear failings. Rather than just booting people to the street.

> It is very silly to value the lives of a few dozen people who often traveled here from out of state over almost 20,000 local residents. It seems like you are completely discounting their concerns.

Again, nativism is far sillier than anything you’re criticizing.

I am not discounting anyone’s concerns. But I am 100% discounting - and will 100% always discount - any argument about how to address those concerns that is based on “we were here first”. That’s just childish.

Beyond which, I have only your assertion that all “20,000 local residents” agree with you. I suspect you are exaggerating.

Anyway I’m not telling you that it’s all roses and we are doing the best possible job here. If you and the “20,000 local residents” are all agreed on the best path forward I’m confident you will develop and execute a plan to address the problems you face. I hope you do a great job.

> As it is structured it is maintaining their inability to function independently

I’m not convinced this is meaningful. Are you saying that the existence of the hotel program is specifically inhibiting people from becoming independently self-sustaining? That it is somehow worse for their path to stability than being on the street?

It seems to me the problems the people in the program face that prevent them being self-sustaining in independent living situations are independent of the hotel program itself, and that having shelter - bad as it is - is better than being on the street.

If they need more support to transition then let’s focus on that, rather than sending them to the street because local people who have housing are uncomfortable.

As to this:

> maintaining the status quo is no longer acceptable for residents.

Which residents? I would bet the residents in the hotel program find the status quo not only acceptable but vital to their continued survival. Perhaps you are discounting their opinion for some reason.

I’m not trying to look at homelessness at all - I’m asking if anyone has serious ideas for how to help these people in hotels when the program the state already created comes to an end.

I’m not particularly interested in debating our respective views on what does or doesn’t create or increase homelessness writ large. I don’t think you know the answer to that any more than I do. And I don’t think either of us will convince the other of our personal politics. For what it’s worth I don’t think you’re crazy or necessarily wrong, I just don’t think this forum is particularly conducive to a nuanced discussion.

That’s a lot of straw men you just totally destroyed with your wisdom.

I’m gonna continue caring about what happens to the real humans who have (suboptimal) shelter today and will not when the hotel program ends.

You’re the one making idealistic arguments about what the optimal way to deal with homelessness in a vacuum is. The problem we actually have in front of us is the real people in hotels who are going to be facing homelessness. Not your imagined influx of still more homeless people if we gasp help the people in the hotels.

> Nobody cares about a hypothetical dollar amount

Really? The below quote from the above commenter seems to care:

> Vermont cannot spend its way out of this issue.

As to this:

> The hotel program generates more homelessness and does nothing to advance the people using it towards independence.

[citation needed]

We are literally spending our way to having this population housed currently. Every person in the hotel person is not homeless, so it is ludicrous to suggest it’s somehow increasing homelessness. Making this housing permanent - or even improving it by building higher-quality public housing to replace hotels - is a “viable solution” for this population. It’s just expensive. Maybe it’s more expensive than we are willing to accept. But it’s definitely just a “money problem” in that case.

If you’re suggesting that treating our homeless population well is attracting more homeless people to the state, that’s entirely irrelevant to concerns about what happens to the people currently in hotels.

> They are saying that the hotels are a problem separate from Vermont’s homeless problem

Why would that need to be said? It’s irrelevant to the article.

Individuals in the hotel program aren’t homeless. They have housing, it’s just at risk. Their problem would certainly appear to be a money problem, since they clearly will make use of housing if it is within their means.

If you want to argue about root causes of increased long-term homelessness that’s an entirely separate issue. And not one relevant to the people living in hotels.

The people in hotels need money so they can continue to be housed. That’s literally all they need to stay housed. I guarantee you there is a dollar amount large enough to provide every one of them a stable living situation without building a single additional structure. It’s probably just a way bigger number than anyone would support.

I don’t think that’s what they said, because they said:

> Vermont cannot spend its way out of this issue.

If they meant:

> a problem that is getting worse and more expensive

That would be an issue VT could, by definition, spend its way out of.

I too am curious what the commenter actually meant.

Yeah absolutely. Tourism is great and all (and I moved here because I loved skiing here, I’m a flatlander), but we won’t thrive as a community if the only people who can afford it here are second-home owners, retirees, and white-collar remote workers. We desperately need infill development to bring the cost of living down.

I don’t know if you’re a MRV local but there really aren’t enough locals who want these jobs to fill demand for restaurants - we’ve had 2 well-loved local restaurants close in the past year due to staff shortages. One of them was actually trying to build out more staff housing to make it work, but ran out of funds due to an untimely septic failure. We desperately need municipal septic, which is currently under study & will come back for vote pretty soon.

It was in Waitsfield (Irasville) and it closed thanks to the impossibility of finding housing for staff in the Mad River Valley. It was awesome while it lasted though!

> The WA CO Sheriff is the only LEO that I’ve ever seen in Warren/Waitsfield.

That’s because they are the only LEOs in those towns.

The problem is he'd have to actually come to Vermont to do that.

Much as I’d hate to see a bunch of 1-acre plots with single family homes, I’d take it over no housing options at all. And it’s still better than a subdivision of ~1/8 acres lots with single family homes, which is extremely common in MA.

Edit to add: what I mean is I want to see town center build wastewater systems so we can build denser houses than septic allows, as well as more multi family and attached houses, and not build suburban sprawl houses.

That sounds like a plan that’d work well in a country less fanatically devoted to unchecked capitalism, but would be a hard sell in the US.

There are some types of housing where the state caps profitability to the owner, but it’s almost universally in cases where the owner can’t make more than some fixed profit on sale, not on rent. This is how a lot of grants to assist low-income house purchasers work.

It’s also reasonable to think that doing so would reduce many potential builders’ interest in making more housing. Which is maybe a sign that we should have more “social housing” built by the state or nonprofit groups. But, again, lots of Americans think that’s communism and, well, they may not know what communism is but they sure don’t like it.

That’s fair - i actually think your idea of a cap on rental increases whether renewal or new is an interesting idea that might avoid the pitfalls of classic rent control. I agree with you that the cost of acquiring new tenants probably means that landlords would have minimal incentive to churn.

I’d love to see studies showing it isn’t true - if you have links I’m happy to be wrong. My anecdotal lived experience from rent controlled markets was that units rarely hit the market, and instead were often traded secretly so landlords wouldn’t know there was a new tenant. When they did hit the market they were priced outrageously because the owners were losing money on existing tenants and trying to make it up on newcomers. But again, that’s anecdote not data. I welcome new information that would improve my understanding.

> Ban it outright? That might come back to bite you.

How? It’s not like hotels and motels didn’t exist pre-Airbnb. And it’s not like word-of-mouth, unregulated, and often illegal short-term-rentals didn’t happen either. Airbnb just makes it exceptionally easy to be an unaccountable absentee landlord.

Rent control is bad for young people because it creates a huge incentive for older renters to hang onto an apartment as long as possible. Unless we are also going to build a huge amount of new rental units rent control is only going to exacerbate the tight rental market problem.

I’m on a DRB and it’s infuriating how easy it (usually) is for us to approve people with 50+ acres subdividing into 3 ~15 acre parcels when it’s almost impossible to permit someone’s desperately-needed 8-unit rehab / conversion project.

We don’t need 2 new vacation homes. We need 400 units of mid-tier housing.

Or Canada