This commentary is by Erica Da Costa, a resident of Plainfield.
The idea of housing strictly as a commodity has had a very good run, but the evidence strongly suggests it doesn’t work anymore. According to WCAX, $45 million a year is currently being spent to shelter Vermonters in hotels. Just before the pandemic, the price was $6.9 million per annum.
And for many of these households, there is no off-ramp. How many apartments in towns, cities and villages could have been built with these funds? A back-of-the-envelope calculation would suggest it would be hundreds, annually.
We need social housing (formerly called public housing). Whether this task is dispersed among land trusts (a wonderful model), public housing authorities and/or another public entity, we must have public housing or we will continue throwing tens of millions of dollars per month at motels to house people at a cost that could have permanently housed a quarter of those staying in the motels.
It’s not a complete solution — as no one approach is — but it could significantly lessen the crisis.
The state has taken steps toward a partial solution to the housing crisis with a program called the Vermont Housing Improvement Program, which will pay up to $30,000 for landlords or potential landlords to rehab units that are empty and in disrepair — a good program that will, however, probably only replace the number of units we are rapidly losing every day to landlords deciding to take advantage of the hot housing market, sell their property, and evict everyone in the process.
The state and municipalities have also started reconsidering poor land-use regulations that, carefully revised, will go a long way toward incentivizing private development.
But the need for social housing will persist — a practical, cost-effective and humane option for those who will continue to be excluded from the private market for many years to come. (Credit score alone regularly keeps people out of housing, even if their income is sufficient.)
Is the provision of housing a role for the state? A reasonable question 30 years ago. Currently the state IS providing housing — in the form of motels. So the question has already been answered by overwhelming necessity. But what do we do next? If the response is simply to evict the majority from the motels in a year, we will all be face-to-face, for the first time, with the true scale of our homelessness crisis. And that realization will compel action even from the most reluctant.
As it stands now, what we are achieving — as I heard an attorney say recently — is at most a roof over people’s heads for a few months or a few weeks. “I guess it’s the most we can hope for anymore,” she said.
In the 1940s and ’50s, there was a phenomenon in cities called “rent parties” where, if a neighbor/friend couldn’t manage rent that month, they might throw a rent party and all the friends and neighbors would attend to chip in a few dollars. Setting aside the lack of housing stock available to live in in the first place, the rent party model — where friends and neighbors relied on each other — is unthinkable now due to affordability and increasing social isolation we see around us.
These challenges are made insurmountable when added to depressed wages, health care costs, lack of a functioning, inspected car, access to job training and so on.
Let’s adapt to the reality on the ground. Let’s build social housing and do so along public transit routes, preserving our landscape, saving large amounts of money, and helping dislocated people stabilize — the absolute prerequisite to gaining a sense of self-determination and connection.
