Legislative leaders and Gov. Phil Scott generally agree on a housing-first approach to the state’s housing crisis and are likely to sign off on spending packages this session that pour close to $200 million in federal cash — if not more — into various building initiatives.
But some housing advocates say that is not nearly enough and are calling on the state’s leaders to overhaul how anti-poverty programs are delivered, provide expansive new protections to renters and move away from congregate shelters for emergency housing.
“We are asking the state as a whole to never accept the experience of homelessness as inevitable for some but rather see and address the systemic failures that led to this huge challenge,” anti-poverty activist Brenda Siegel said during a virtual press conference Thursday.
The speaking event featured a handful of advocates and service providers. Siegel also was joined by several state lawmakers — including Senate President Pro Tempore Becca Balint, D-Windham, and Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale, D-Chittenden, two high-profile candidates vying for Vermont Democratic U.S. Rep. Peter Welch’s soon-to-be-vacated congressional seat.
Alongside Josh Lisenby, a Vermonter experiencing homelessness, Siegel slept 27 days on the Statehouse steps and successfully pressured the Scott administration to keep a federally funded program in place through the winter to house people experiencing homelessness. Since then, Siegel and Lisenby have maintained an informal hotline helping Vermonters navigate the state’s Byzantine system for administering benefit programs.
Many of the demands made by End Homelessness Vermont — a group led by Siegel, Lisenby and southern Vermont high school student Addie Lentzner — centered around making benefits easier to access and navigate. The state should create and staff a housing ombudsman’s office, she said, and create a centralized application for all benefit programs — like the Common Application for colleges. A simple handbook should be put together, so people might more easily understand their rights, she said.
Siegel also called for a move away from congregate shelters, arguing emergency housing should more often offer vulnerable Vermonters the privacy or their own room. Emergency housing also should allow people to stay the entire day, she said, instead of just for the night.
Some of the group’s demands overlap with efforts already underway in the Legislature. The Senate, for example, is at work on S.210, a bill that would create a rental registry and statewide complaint-driven system to conduct inspections of rental housing. Balint and Ram Hinsdale are sponsors.
A similar measure was vetoed last year by the governor.
But Siegel also called for much more aggressive rental protections — including a just cause standard for evictions across the state and rent control measures to keep landlords from increasing rents too quickly.
And while many of the politicians who attended Thursday’s event lauded Siegel’s efforts and promised bold action, they also stopped just short of saying they were ready to endorse all of her demands.
Balint thanked Siegel and Lisenby for organizing the event and laying out a “bold vision” for housing in Vermont, saying “we need more policy that’s informed by people with lived experience.”
“We have to give all Vermonters access to safe, affordable housing, and I believe that accessible housing for everyone is possible,” Balint said, adding later that the Legislature was preparing to commit hundreds of millions to solving the problem.
But she left for a meeting before the press could ask questions. When asked through a spokesperson if she stood by Siegel’s asks — including for rent price controls — she would only say that she saw “many points of agreement, many of which we can make progress on this session.”
Ram Hinsdale said she was particularly interested in “looking at evictions across the board right now in the state and whether we can stop those and continue to keep that moratorium on evictions in place.” But on rent control, she said she was not so sure.
“I do think that one tends to have unintended consequences,” Ram Hinsdale said. “When people say they’re seeing huge jumps in rent, it wouldn’t solve that problem.”
Clarification: An earlier version of this story omitted the organization on whose behalf Brenda Siegel was speaking. It was End Homelessness Vermont, a group led by her, Josh Lisenby and Addie Lentzner.
