During my short time working at the Middlebury Office of the Vermont Department of Health, much of my exposure to homelessness has focused on what is most visible — what I see downtown, what I hear of disruptions, what urgent issues are discussed at meetings.
Houseless or unhoused gives no respect for the experience or depth of pain of someone who lacks a stable, safe place to live. Homelessness was painful.
In my decades of work with disadvantaged Vermonters, I have seen assistance programs come and go, and funding commitments rise and fall, dependent on the economy, political administrations, and government priorities.
While there’s apt to be more than one right answer, I was taught that a crisis, fundamentally, is a critical situation in which the demands exceed the resources available to meet them. A crisis often feels like “we can’t get there from here.”
In the spirit of the Living Together series, we cannot live together unless there are homes for people to live in.
Twenty years ago — March 26, 2004 — members of the Congregational Church of Middlebury cooked and served the first Friday Night Community Supper.
Each day in the news, tales of woe involving people who are unhoused can be found. The message is loud. Disguised in intellectual words and politically correct terms; people living in the unhoused category hear only one thing, “You are not wanted here!”
It’s a common misconception that unhoused people are not working. The truth is quite the opposite; 85% of the families served by John Graham Housing and Services have one or more working parents.
There is a burgeoning housing crisis in Vermont, as evidenced in our state’s shockingly high rate of unhoused, and even more shocking increase in that rate — an estimated 218% between 2007 and 2023 according to HUD. The causes are complex, with contributi … (read more)
My story is not unique, and the isolation and hopeless feelings of active addiction are not unique. Finding a place to belong was an essential first step in my journey to recovery.
While the comfortably housed segment of our communities might consider homelessness to be a blight on society, to the unhoused and housing insecure members of our community, homelessness is a devastating reality.
