This commentary is by Will Hunter of Weathersfield. He is a former state senator who represented Windsor County.
For almost five years, communities around Vermont and across this country have wasted hundreds of millions of dollars providing expensive, temporary, nomadic, inadequate and unsustainable housing for the homeless.
For most of this time, Gov. Phil Scott and many state departments and publicly funded agencies have been largely missing in action. There’s been quibbling over whether the motel program vouchers would be extended for a few weeks or months, but no one has implemented or even proposed a sustainable plan of action to abate the housing crisis that marches on as we approach the winter months. This week, advocates have urged emergency action to deal with dire situations that were completely predictable months ago when the law limiting motel stays was passed and signed into law.
Don’t just blame the legislature, which Gov. Scott is fond of doing. The part-time General Assembly relies on the administration and taxpayer funded agencies to propose programs to address this chronic and worsening human crisis.
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The leadership of Edgar May
Fifty years ago, Edgar May was elected to the Vermont House of Representatives from Springfield. He was only 45, but had already served in the U.S. Army during Korea; won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting; written a profound book about the welfare system; and been recruited by President Kennedy’s brother-in-law to help run the War on Poverty (where he assisted in establishing Head Start and VISTA). He had a can-do attitude, something Springfield needed as it began dealing with the death of the machine tool industry.
Edgar wanted to bring higher education to Springfield, and he did. He wanted a health center for the area, and one bearing his name opened before he died in 2012. He wanted his beautiful home at Muckross Park to be a public asset, and he left it to the state to become a state park.
In the House, and then in the Senate, Edgar learned all he could about difficult problems and proceeded fearlessly to find effective solutions. Chairing the Senate Appropriations Committee, he knew more about where public money was going than almost anyone. Having been an investigative journalist and a bureaucrat, Edgar cut through the fog that department heads and lobbyists tried to use to obfuscate and shift the blame to the other guy.
I was lucky to see Edgar May in action, serving with him in the House and Senate for 10 years. If Edgar were in the Senate today, I have no doubt that the Vermont motel program would not have been the expensive disaster that it has been. Edgar would not have stood idly by as millions of dollars went into inadequate housing, with next to nothing in social services. He would not have let a penny of government money go to private motels without negotiating prices, and he would have been asking from day one what was the plan would be once the flow of federal Covid money dried up.
He would never have tolerated the uncertainty that has been a hallmark of this program, as families with kids and people in wheelchairs, on oxygenweb and with serious physical and mental problems were jerked around like yo-yo’s with no understanding of what would be happening to them in a few days or weeks — and to find out, forced to wait on hold for an hour or more to talk to the Economic “Services” Division.
Edgar would have been furious to see that at the end of the multimillion dollar boondoggle the vulnerable people would be handed tents (if they were lucky) with no guidance even as to where they could legally pitch them to shelter themselves and their children from the elements.
Leadership with long-term solutions is needed
It’s too late to undo the mistakes of the last few years, but there’s a need right now for state government to work with local and regional leaders to figure out how to help as the homeless are being turned out to the streets.
In Edgar’s hometown, a community I know well, I have a couple of immediate suggestions that would honor Edgar’s memory in keeping with the values he demonstrated in a lifetime of service. The state should immediately open up an area at Muckross Park for camping, using bathrooms in the existing buildings or bringing in chemical toilets if that’s not possible. The Edgar May Health and Recreation Center should allow the unhoused people to use its beautiful facilities to exercise, swim and shower. Edgar, as the Center notes on its website, wanted to create a space that welcomed everyone: a facility that would be “a place where people will be on the inside looking out — not on the outside looking in.”
Solutions built on suggestions like mine for Springfield should be replicated statewide, repurposing or modifying existing infrastructure and resources in a way that results in addressing a most basic and urgent human need.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Will Hunter: Wanted — leadership and redirection of millions for the homeless.