Vermont Foodbank Logo with Op-Ed underneath it.

The current unhousing crisis is the result of deliberate choices to change Vermont’s policy of providing safe, non-congregate housing to vulnerable people experiencing homelessness. These harmful policy choices can, and must, be reversed. Government can make policy choices that ensure everyone has housing and food. Taking away the fundamental human rights to shelter and food is immoral and is creating a state emergency that was completely preventable.

When people are unsheltered, they have no way to safely store food or cook for themselves, leaving food access severely limited. By unhousing people, the state is also creating a new hunger crisis and threatening people’s health and lives. Municipalities and service providers across the state are heroically scrambling, yet again, to meet these needs, but many of these entities were already stretched thin before this latest crisis.

We call upon Governor Scott to declare a state of emergency and immediately reinstate safe, accessible, non-congregate housing for all vulnerable people who have been evicted from hotel housing as a result of the changes made to the GA Emergency Housing Program in Act 113, consistent with the Provider Letter to Governor Scott that was released Sept. 25.

State government has stripped people of safe shelter and access to food, and must immediately reverse course and provide adequate resources to meet people’s essential needs. Governor Scott and all state agencies must:

  • Provide immediate state funding to Community Action Agencies and other community-based congregate and prepared meal programs so they can increase their production and distribution of prepared meals to unhoused and marginally housed people.
  • Provide immediate state funding through the Vermont Everyone Eats framework to willing restaurants in communities bearing the brunt of the current state government-created unhousing crisis, so they can serve as another source of prepared and ready-to-eat meals to keep everyone fed wherever they are.
  • Implement the state option for the SNAP Restaurant Meals Program in Vermont so it can be in place to support unhoused people and others in need of access to prepared meals through restaurants in future times of crisis, including the everyday crises that keep people from being able to access the food they need.
  • Provide immediate state funding to Vermont Foodbank to support food shelves and meal sites who are being asked to meet the surge in demand in their local communities.

As we have seen in recent years, the state can choose to meet the basic needs of all of us living in Vermont. The lack of action by the administration is a failure to care for our most vulnerable neighbors.

We urge Governor Scott to immediately address this crisis and ensure access to safe, stable shelter and dignified access to food.

Signed by executives Joshua Davis, Southeastern Vermont Community Alliance; Paul Dragon, Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity; Anore Horton, Hunger Free Vermont; Frank Knaack, Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont; Sue Minter, Capstone Community Action; Grace Oedel, Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont; and John Sayles, Vermont Foodbank.