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Outrageous-Outside61 t1_j7206o6 wrote

Reply to comment by TheTowerBard in As homelessness crisis deepens, rural children pay the price by FearandLoathinginBTV

Also, I agree with the sentiment about helping people regardless of invisible lines, but in a small state with limited resources it sucks to see something implemented with good intentions to help a serious problem in our state, be taken advantage of and overrun by people coming in.

On a national level I agree, we need to help people 1000%

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[deleted] t1_j72umea wrote

I agree with your point. I also think the hotel/motel owners are taking far more advantage of this terrible situation than the homeless themselves... A lot of these owners are making HUGE profits from these voucher programs and they do not re-invest any of those profits back into their hotels/motels to improve the living conditions of their tenants. The owners have little to no oversight of their operations by the State, and the conditions in most of these motels are deplorable and unsafe. The towns are powerless to impose any penalties against these apparent slumlords and, so far, the State seems unwilling to provide the framework for any oversight or accountability... The volume of homeless wouldn't be as much of an issue if there was better implementation of the help we are trying to provide.

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Outrageous-Outside61 t1_j74vc9q wrote

Absolutely. Honestly I don’t blame anybody taking advantage of the program, I blame the program itself. As you said, there is very little oversight on this situation. The hotels are disgusting, there is no requirement that those enrolled in the voucher system is in any program to better themselves, it’s bad for our community, the homeless it’s attempting to help, and a pathetic waste of tax dollars

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headgasketidiot t1_j72o1j7 wrote

Do you have actual evidence to back this suspicion, or are you speculating?

Also, I get what you're saying, but if you're a homeless person, you go anywhere you can to get of the cold. That seems like a needlessly accusatory way to think about what literally anyone would and should do facing that situation.

edit: Upon further reflection, I actually don't get what you're saying. What does it even mean for someone without a home to not be a Vermonter? If a homeless person moves to Vermont, they're Vermonters now. That's how being American works; there's no immigration policy at state borders. It's not taking advantage of anything to move to another state where you might not die of exposure - it's literally each of our birthright as Americans to move freely between states.

So what would the census accomplish? How would you even do it? What does it mean for a person with no home to be an out of stater, when all their earthly belongings are here? Are you going to ask them for a bill to prove their residency in Vermont or something?

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Outrageous-Outside61 t1_j737dof wrote

Okay so in the last two years Vermont’s homeless population has exploded, making us the second highest per capita. Also in the past two years we’ve started giving vouchers out for free hotel rooms. Homeless people have moved into Vermont to take advantage of this at high amounts. I would like to see an actual report of how much this has happened. Is our growth in homeless people been solely or predominantly immigrants from other states?

I know of two hotels where the majority of the people there have moved to Vermont to take advantage of this program. I don’t have any evidence to say how much that reflects the rest of the state. I was saying it would be nice if we could get that information.

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headgasketidiot t1_j73qcvl wrote

If it is the case that people are moving here to use our hotel program, it would make me genuinely proud to be a Vermonter. Times are tough and I'd appreciate a lower tax bill, but I seriously can't think of anything I'm more happy to pay taxes for than housing people who need it, regardless of where they're from. I hope I don't ever personally need that help, but many (most?) people are just an accident or diagnosis away from homelessness.

Your other comments:

>I don’t agree with giving free hotel rooms on our dime to people who came here for that.

I do, and I urge you to reconsider. It's just the right thing to do. Is it fair to us? No. Do I care? Yes, but not enough to deny shelter to people as I type this from my wood stove while the temperature plummets to -20 outside.

Vermont currently pays about as much in all public assistance as it does for prisons. The homeless vouchers are an absolutely tiny part of our budget. Instead of cutting the budget by refusing housing to the desperate, let's look at the parts of our budget that keeps poor people in jail just because they can't afford bail and cut it there. This part of our budget is doing good things.

>And actually to get your license/residency in VT I think you do need a bill now for your proof of residency, but I could be wrong.

If you were to implement a residency requirement for these vouchers, you're going to end up refusing housing to the homeless from Vermont. It is a well documented problem that they lack the necessary paperwork to interact with government bureaucracy. Many of them don't have licenses or bills or other proof of residency because they do not have residences.

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Outrageous-Outside61 t1_j74rpzv wrote

Well I would say we fundamentally disagree on this. I do appreciate your sentiment and think your heart is in the right place. I would recommend volunteering and donating money to credible charities instead of pushing for our local taxes to support people moving in to the state for the soul purpose of the Covid housing vouchers.

State and Local taxes are for our communities. We have enough underfunded programs in the state to worry about before spending it on people who have never been a member of our communities. I’m not coming at this from some heartless aspect of it either, I’ve participated in many church fundraisers for community projects addressing these issues, I’m also a volunteer fire fighter and have been involved with setting up warming shelters. I’m just not okay with the idea of our state taxes going to fund programs that are incentivizing people to move in to take advantage of said programs.

Also, the reason why I said my comment on needing to show a bill to attain residency was in direct response to your comment “are you going to ask them to show a bill to prove their residency” honestly, i do not think these housing vouchers ever should have existed. There are much more effective ways to tackle homelessness than providing no strings attached hotel rooms. It’s not healthy for our communities, the homeless people receiving those vouchers, as well as our budget.

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headgasketidiot t1_j758nnh wrote

I fundamentally disagree with you that those people aren't part of our communities. They're living here. To actively reject them from our community for the sole purpose of denying them housing is cruel.

To put it another way, if those same people moved here and didn't need housing, we wouldn't be saying they're not members of our community. I don't want to be part of a state that specifically defines community to exclude people for their poverty. That's gross.

As for your suggestions to work with relevant organizations, that is what I do. I work mostly with human rights nonprofits. My experience there taught me that until we learn to organize our society around the things that actually matter -- camaraderie, friendship, mutual aid, etc -- this problem and those like it will always plague us. If we continue to organize ourselves around money and violence, like we do now, we'll always be able to think of the things that matter as being someone else's job, like a charity's (which everyone knows will never have the resources they need to really fix problems), therefore absolving us of guilt while we callously argue that some of the homeless who are in our community do not deserve shelter because they're not really members of our community.

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Outrageous-Outside61 t1_j75e8z5 wrote

Well let’s agree to disagree.

And idk, takes quite a few years for me to accept someone as part of the community regardless. Shit, I moved from Chelsea to Marshfield 2 years ago and I’m an outsider here, 30 minutes away from my home town 😂

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Outrageous-Outside61 t1_j73ccdk wrote

And furthermore, for how you do it, simply just ask when they moved to VT when they get their vouchers. Personally I think right from the beginning that we shouldn’t have done this program for anybody that wasn’t a current Vermont resident. We have enough issues in our state, that as much as I feel for anybody that’s homeless, I don’t agree with giving free hotel rooms on our dime to people who came here for that. I do think we need to help our existing homeless population, but there has to be a way to do that without incentivizing more homeless people relocating here.

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Outrageous-Outside61 t1_j73bpf9 wrote

And actually to get your license/residency in VT I think you do need a bill now for your proof of residency, but I could be wrong.

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