Well, there's a reason for that. Gentrification is making it very difficult for regular people to live here. Obviously that is far from the only factor but when a bunch of people with money show up at the same time it's almost impossible to find housing, people are going to be pissed. That's not a surprise to me. The gentrification is certainly contributing to homelessness, particularly family homelessness, because families typically have access to vouchers and can find housing if it's available. There are other huge problems like Act 250 and NIMBYism but covid era gentrification has hurt Vermont's ability to house its most vulnerable.

And the weird part of this is advocates have a perverse incentive to go along and paint it as a local problem rather than a national problem. They will minimize the people coming from out of state, even going so far as to say that people who are homeless in Burlington are from Burlington as opposed to Rutland, for example. Obviously the reason is the pushback against helping outsiders, so it's portrayed as a local issue when it really isn't.

It seems that people are shocked that we are ranked so high and want to minimize it.

Very telling about VT that most of the comments in here are about how the count isn't accurate and VT's problem isn't really this big. No comments about how we got here or how we get out. VT in a nutshell. Let the down voting commence.

A lot of the cash was through the Emergency Rental Assistance Program. It had to go to landlords, it was a condition of the funding.

Someone at HUD made that decision, not at the state level.

I'm not defending the count, sorry that was unclear. Not all of what you say is true but my point is not to defend the count, my point is to counter the denial in this thread that the problem isn't real.

The point in time count is always done in January. It's a federal requirement. Why they picked January is unclear.

We need affordable housing, certainly, but for people with literally zero income not much will ever be affordable.

Unsheltered people are counted in January, campsites are visited.

This is not a statistical error. The Point in Time count runs every January, and if you look at the other states that ranked high in homelessness, it tracks. This is real.

California is the only blue state that is warm year round. That makes sense. What happened here?

And if you grew up here, work here and can't afford to buy? The problem with "can't afford to live here so leave" is very soon VT won't have any service industry workers. People will be cutting their own hair, fixing their own plumbing, etc.

I didn't get the impression this was a groomed ski trail.

Posts like these make me really glad I don't ski.

Entitled people... Walk outside?

Is Quimby open again?

Exactly

Heard a few of these last night.

Super cool. I wish our mountains were that big!

Can it be done remotely for $100k a year? Are you open to hiring and training retirees? No? Best of luck!

The issue the advocate was talking about was how ending homelessness in vermont is daunting. It's much tougher to end homelessness in NH, NY and MA as well. He has a point. My understanding is a lot of the homeless in california are from red states. Many places criminalize homelessness like towns in florida are doing. So when a state offers any sort of benefits or is warm or is warm and offers benefits like california they are flooded with homeless people. More than they can reasonably be expected to deal with. It does seem that vermont is experiencing that to some degree and it does make ultimately finding housing for all of these people much more difficult.

How is it that I've been smoking untested weed since 1995 w/ no physical health issues @ all? We are over regulating this to a cartoonish level. Dispensaries look like their products are way more dangerous than what gun stores and liquor stores are selling and that is fucking silly.

It's the legislature. I remember an article in the digger where an Addison county rep didn't want more housing. She said she didn't want to go to bed in VT and wake up in New Jersey. Guess where she's from.

It is definitely true that we are housing people from NY, MA, and NH because it's easy to get a room here. It was in testimony in the legislature recently from one of the Rutland homeless advocates.

There's no way I've ever heard of to prevent that from going to the work from home crowd.

Exactly. And expecting the cranks in Montpelier to understand that, let alone fix it, is crazy, in my opinion.