Montpelier Meetings Focusing On Homelessness Today (7/17/2024)

Updated (view Update: P.S. below):

Photo: Person living unhoused outdoors resting on a bench in Montpelier, the capital city of Vermont (photo shared with the direct consent of the person pictured; image credit: Morgan W. Brown).

This evening (July 17, 2024), the Montpelier City Council will be taking up three different -- yet somewhat related -- items concerning homelessness and related matters (view meeting agenda, here).

The first item, which is within the consent agenda, concerns the Good Samaritan winter overflow shelter lease request for use of the former Country Club building as had been done last season.

The second and third items (number 6 and 7), regard the growing rates of people living unhoused within Montpelier in general and how best to address these and related matters (read related memo, here) as well as downtown business owners raising concerns about it [as well as their economic financial struggles related to other matters] (read related memo, here).

In addition, the Montpelier Homelessness Task Force will also be meeting from 11:30 AM to 1:00 PM today as well (view meeting agenda, here).

Although, as usual, I can only speak for myself and none other, my two cents on these and related matters is as follows (below essay drawn from commentary of mine published by vtdigger (circa: August 6, 2013), here:

After twelve (12) rather lengthy as well as grueling years of living without permanent housing, the middle of next month -- August 15th -- will mark fifteen (15) years of when I was able to move into a safe, decent and affordable efficiency apartment and have been able to remain housed since.

Along with certain concerned family members and others involved, someone I had come to know over the years played a huge role in helping to bring about an end to my prolonged experience of living unhoused (aka living homeless).

What also helped in my case was having an individualized contingency plan of mine established several years prior for if and when housing might be on the horizon (read: doable).

If it were not for the various aid provided on certain occasions when it was needed most dire, during those years, I could have easily either ended up at the former Vermont State Hospital (VSH) or have succumbed to worsening circumstances and intolerable conditions, neither being desirable outcomes.

For my part, I have been extremely supportive of “housing first” models and most especially Pathways Vermont, which serves this small rural state well. The fact is, it works.

This is because, when done correctly, besides providing what it takes to help a person get into housing and remain housed afterward, the supportive services provided by staff (some of whom are also peers) include building meaningful relationships. Peers are persons who have lived experience of having traveled in the same type of shoes.

If access to permanent housing opportunities can happen for me, one way or another, it can also be brought about for most anyone else living in such circumstances

While it is true there are no easy, simple or quick — nor one size fits all — solutions to ending homelessness, there are practical, proven, workable ones.

More often than not, when there are others involved to help make something happen and, most importantly, working with the person in need on their terms (within reason), it often does. Doing otherwise is prone to failure.

Employing enormous amounts of flexibility and also carefully crafted individualized planning and individualized approaches are paramount.

This, however, takes the fostering as well as continuation of meaningful, healthy, quality and consistent relationships in order to help bring these efforts about and have them work in a successful fashion over both the short and long term.

In addition, I am also very highly supportive of the housing voucher program being provided by the state of Vermont through the Department of Mental Health (DMH), typically with the provision of supportive services of one sort or another.

Without these permanent housing opportunities, those currently being served through the Vermont DMH voucher program would otherwise be inappropriately, as well as needlessly, living out on the street, camped in the woods, residing under bridges or stuck in homeless shelters, jail, prison or state hospital type of institutional settings and the like, or possibly ending up dead.

These type of much more humane approaches and programs are certainly well worth funding and, indeed, each and every person or family who is in need is definitely worth the time and the effort needed to be undertaken.

Based on years of observation, I have come to the conclusion that the only lost causes are the ones given up on.

Update: P.S.:

In my opinion, among the questions that one needs to be seriously asking themselves as well as others, particularly those who are in positions of power (read: policy makers and the like), is if either one or one's loved one were living unhoused with nowhere else to go (but the outdoors), what would they want for themselves or their loved ones?

Congregate shelters or a home-like setting, even better, a home of one's own in a supportive community of their own choosing?

That stated, I also find myself somewhat mixed about all this, because it would seem to be better for someone to have someplace to be inside, including during the daytime, not merely at night.

Being outside with nowhere to go, can be very difficult to say the least, I know from my own experience.

However, after having stayed at congregate shelters in the past, because those experiences were not good for me, I never returned and ended up being on the street, oftentimes wandering the streets at night or sitting in a little bus stop shelter to rest or camping in the woods.

What made a difference was finally being housed in an apartment of my own. 

Read a somewhat related blog post of mine, here.