Op/Ed

Letter to the editor: Houseless, and their resources, deserve our support

In response to Holly Stark’s letter to the editor of Oct. 3, 2024:

Ms. Stark’s stated solutions to the presence of people with nowhere to go are not solutions at all. Some homeless people have simply lost a job, had an accident, or perhaps experienced a personal or natural disaster. Some, as she correctly notes, have mental health or addiction issues. To summarize her solution, she wants to criminalize homelessness, isolate street people out of town, end services, and make “our quaint little town” safe, hygienic, and aesthetic without taking any responsibility for those among us who have slammed into a ditch.

According to a recent study, most of Vermont’s unhoused people have Vermont roots, some of them going back generations. Only about 4% are not from Vermont. To be “productive” (her word) some need respectful, intelligent assistance. They might need services to leave addictive drugs and aggressive behaviors behind; to access mental health providers and doctors and dentists; and to find housing. Some simply need ways to look for a job, clean clothes to wear, and enough to eat until they do. The average homeless person is homeless for less than six months. Many of them are off the streets in less than a week. The chronically homeless are relatively rare, but they have become the public stereotype of a street person.

These are all real people with individual histories like those of us with homes. In other words, they are people, not “problems.” Ask yourself, how did they end up where they are? Could that happen to me? Ask what we can do as a responsible community to provide a safe place for everyone to grow. We all need to be safe, including the people in our community without homes. But inclusion rather than exclusion is what’s needed. And housing.

I think we can all agree that encampments are not a good way to house anyone, and winter is coming. Here’s a real problem: There is not enough housing or shelter space in Middlebury. Lots of people are trying to change that. Let’s support them!

“The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.”

— Gandhi

Rebecca Holmes

Salisbury

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