Dear Editor,
I didn’t mean to become a landlord. My husband and I simply had extra rooms in our old farmhouse. As we began spending part of the year away, and with Vermont in the midst of a housing crisis, we chose to rent those rooms to four individuals.
We charge an affordable rate, cover utilities and try to work with tenants who cannot afford a security deposit up front. Most cannot. It is a vulnerable position for us.
When someone can’t pay on time — or at all — or breaks house rules, we bear real financial risk. Landlords, especially small in-home ones like us, need workable systems when tenants are unable to pay. Taking in tenants also meant pushing past a certain social stigma. For all we were taught in kindergarten about sharing, we seem to forget those lessons as adults. More than once, people who care about me have discouraged this choice.
At the same time, living alongside my tenants has exposed me to vulnerabilities far greater than my own. I’ve come to see myself, whether I like it or not, as a kind of weathervane for broader social conditions. One tenant survives on less than $1,000 a month. Another lost visitation with their child due to health challenges and housing instability. A third person recently attempted suicide in their room. Two tenants had their food assistance cut last year, even though their income did not change.
These are not isolated stories. In my own home, I see the consequences of these gaps every day.
Rehabilitation facilities lack available beds. Drug recovery programs remain limited and difficult to access, even as the opioid crisis has worsened over the past decade. The hotel program for unhoused Vermonters is insufficient and often administered in ways that fall short of basic standards of dignity. Our property tax structure makes it increasingly difficult for people to remain in their homes, while our health care system continues to shrink, especially for those who need it most.
And yet, this is still our home, and our costs are rising. After two months of nonpayment from one tenant last year, I began the eviction process. It was convoluted and slow, involving a maze of paperwork, court delays and unavailable lawyers, many of whom told me they were already overloaded with eviction cases.
Over time, I found myself unexpectedly relieved by those delays. The process can place landlords in a position that feels deeply at odds with basic human dignity — pursuing the removal of a mentally ill, soon-to-be-unhoused person.
H.772, which has passed the House and is now before the Senate Judiciary Committee, would make evictions easier. Vermont Legal Aid has warned that, “as written, this bill guts tenants’ procedural due process rights in a variety of ways.”
This is not the time to weaken tenant protections.
Before considering changes that would accelerate evictions, Vermont must address the deeper failures in our social safety net, health care and recovery systems. Evictions already cost landlords time and money. But in the current environment, making them easier risks serious human consequences, including greater housing instability for already vulnerable people.
Vermont now faces a clear choice about the kind of future it is building. We are not addressing the root causes — poverty, hunger, chronic pain, addiction, mental illness, disability and housing instability — and how deeply they intersect.
It requires courageous leadership at the Statehouse. We need the political will to build systems that uphold human dignity — not just in principle, but in practice.
Jax Brown
Plainfield, Vt.
