PUTNEY — People experiencing homelessness live in a range of conditions.
Some live in motels, like the more than 93 Brattleboro households participating in the state's General Assistance Emergency Housing Program. Others, largely uncounted, live in tents in the woods, in friends' barns and sheds, in cars, garages, and campers - all situations that do not meet all the human needs for comfort and security.
In Putney, approximately 40 people live outside and in campers, according to Fire Chief Tom Goddard, who keeps this count through his "well-person" checks.
"There's been a fairly decent increase in homelessness in Putney since the end of the pandemic," said Goddard. "We're starting to see camper trailers popping up everywhere. Sometimes that's the only option these folks have for any type of actual shelter."
Some residents of this town of 2,600 are "couch and floor surfing" until they can find housing, reported Laura Chapman, operations manager at the Putney Foodshelf and co-chair of the Windham Regional Hunger Council.
"I know of Putney people who are no longer in Putney because they lost their housing here for a variety of reasons and were unable to find housing to stay," she said. "This includes families with children."
Most residents aren't aware of the homelessness issue in town.
"You don't see these people because people who live in their cars are not typically on Main Street," said Josh Laughlin, former Selectboard chair.
"I think that we have done a horrendous job of being a community that welcomes people whatever their situation," he said. "And of being a community that works to improve the situation, as opposed to trying to exclude them from what we consider to be our utopia," Laughlin added.
In separate interviews with The Commons, Goddard, Laughlin, and Chapman recently offered their thoughts on homelessness and poverty in Putney.
Collectively, they have over 40 years of public service and experience with the issues of poverty, homelessness, and affordable housing.
Speaking with compassion, frustration, and sometimes anger, they talked about the stigma associated with homelessness, the struggles unsheltered people face, and the conflicts around siting affordable housing in town.
A changed perspective
Goddard, who has served in the Putney Fire Department for 23 years, has made a concerted effort to make contact with every unsheltered person in Putney.
"Up until about 2017, I never really paid that much attention, and then we started to realize that we had a fairly decent homeless population in town," he said. "So we started to reach out to folks, to make sure they understood that if they see us, or our vehicles, or law enforcement, don't panic."
That's when it hit him "that what I'm doing is OK," Goddard continued.
"I didn't set out to really do anything other than identify where these people were," he said. "So if there was an issue, we would at least have some sort of an idea of where we were going, what we were getting into. And it just kind of morphed into more than that."
During this summer's heavy rains, Goddard and his team contacted people who were living close to streams and the river to alert them to the potential for flooding.
"I learned very quickly that these folks just need to understand that somebody actually cares about them," Goddard said. "They need to understand that if they need anything, they know who to go to and they know that everything is kept confidential."
Goddard said this work changed his perspective.
Addressing the view held by many people that homeless people should just get a job, he said, "I understand that thought, especially when there are plenty of jobs out there."
But Goddard said he soon realized that "when you start to actually listen and understand what people are going through and what they've gone through, they couldn't hold down a job if they wanted."
Citing a prevalence of physical and mental health issues, like anxiety and depression, that make it difficult (for many unsheltered people) to interact with "total strangers," he continued, "I'm sure that they just can't deal with it. So they're not just going to be getting a job. It's not quite that clear-cut and simple."
"These people need compassion," Goddard said. "They need help. We need to understand that they're human beings. They're not animals."
"I still have some pretty strong opinions," he said. "But I'm very quick to turn that back around and say, 'OK, wait a minute. Put yourself in their shoes.'"
Homelessness is a housing problem
Not everyone experiencing homelessness is mentally ill. However, experts agree that mental health issues are a predictor of homelessness, and homelessness exacerbates and increases the risk of mental illness.
The metaphor of musical chairs is often used to illustrate how so many people experience both mental illness and homelessness.
A shortage of housing creates stiff competition, and many people with mental illness, substance-use disorder, or low incomes lack the capacity to navigate the system to access that housing. Just like the slowest runner in the game of musical chairs, those left standing are disabled by individual vulnerabilities and remain unhoused.
In their book Homelessness Is a Housing Problem, researchers Gregg Colburn and Clayton Page Aldern find that high rents and low availability of rental housing account for the most variation in rates of homelessness nationwide ["We need more housing that's more affordable for people who need it," News, Aug. 2]. Places with lower rental vacancy rates and higher rents have higher-per-capita rates of homelessness.
Statewide, Vermont consistently has among the lowest housing vacancy rates in the country: a 3.5% rental vacancy rate and a 0.7% owner vacancy rate in 2022. And Vermont is the fourth least-affordable state for renters, according to a 2022 analysis by the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
The state ranks second in the nation for the highest per-capita rate of homelessness, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's 2022 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report to Congress. For every 10,000 Vermonters, 43 are unhoused - a 50.5% increase from 2020.
Toxic messages breed 'us against them'
"One of the things that we fight consistently in this town is the stigma of homelessness," said Laughlin. "It's an us-against-them kind of toxic message," he said, referring to how social media and news organizations have cultivated this message. "If we can't move past it, it's going to take us down."
Laughlin served on the Selectboard from 2006 to 2023. "This is the stuff that we talked about again and again at the Selectboard level," he said. "It's just so frustrating that the stories that are cultivated are often the ones that people who don't know better are willing to listen to."
He said he gained much of his perspective on homelessness and poverty in Putney while he served on the fire department and with Rescue Inc. during the 1990s.
"You go to people's homes, you see how they're living, and you realize how tenuous it is," he said.
"You get a streak of bad luck, which puts you in a pretty bad place pretty quickly," Laughlin continued. "And once you hit that bad luck, the recovery is really, really challenging. Because as soon as that stigma is attached to you, once you're the person that's been seen living on the street in Putney, you're going to have a heck of a hard time finding a way out."
Laughlin points out that "any one of us could be in that realm relatively easily," he said. "You know, those people are us."
Not quite utopia
Addressing the image of Putney as a well-to-do, close-knit town, Laughlin said, "It's lovely to think that Putney is a progressive place where we support our residents, but look at the volume the Putney Foodshelf does."
According to Chapman, the number of shoppers accessing the Putney Foodshelf has doubled since July, "far surpassing anything we saw during the height of the pandemic." Between July 2022 and June 2023, the food shelf received 2,176 shoppers, a threefold increase since 2019.
Chapman said that the need is increasing due, in part, to changing requirements to receive the federally funded 3SquaresVt, the pressures of housing expenses, and inflation outpacing income. These same factors are driving the increasing need at food shelves throughout the region and the state, she said.
Historically, Putney has had a high number of schoolchildren who qualified for free and reduced-price school lunch, an indicator of poverty. Last year, 61% of Putney Central School students qualified for the program, according to the Vermont Agency of Education.
"That means that 61% of the families who have kids at Putney Central, for all practical purposes, are probably a payment or two away from losing their housing," said Laughlin.
"I deeply love our community and feel that the way we work together often does lend itself to a sense of utopia," said Chapman. "But I also have lived and bear witness to the other side. There is a huge class divide and many people are struggling in this community."
"I am not sure that I would refer to their current circumstances as a utopia," Champman added.
Affordable housing
With two town committees focused on creating more housing, and a mixed-income housing project slated for construction this spring, Putney has put a spotlight on the housing issue.
The town's affordable housing advisory committee was established by the Selectboard in 2008 to promote and support affordable housing in town. Then, in 2023, the Putney Housing Solutions task force was established in response to a community-wide project convened by the Vermont Council on Rural Development to identify top priorities for the town's focus. More affordable, safe, and quality housing for seniors and people of all ages and income levels was one of three priorities identified for more work.
Putney has three affordable housing developments managed by Windham & Windsor Housing Trust (WWHT): Putney Landing, on Neumann Lane; the Laura Plantz house, on Old Depot Road; and the Noyes House on Kimball Hill.
Next spring, WWHT will begin construction of 25 moderate-income apartments in two buildings on a vacant lot across from the Putney Co-op. Several of the apartments will be set aside for households exiting homelessness.
The project has been plagued by opposition since its inception. In July, after a year-and-a-half appeals process, the Vermont Supreme Court affirmed that the project's permit was in good standing, rejecting a local resident's request for a five-judge panel re-review of the three-judge panel's decision.
However, opposition to the project continues.
A third appeal to the proposed housing project, filed on Oct. 31 in Vermont Superior Court, challenges the former court's opinions that the lots in question are contiguous and therefore the project does not satisfy the definition of affordable housing.
There's no perfect model
Laughlin is frustrated with the opposition to new, mixed-income housing in town. "If we were truly the progressive town that we think we are, we would be welcoming people who needed homes," he said.
Laughlin served for five years on the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, which has been working since 1988 to fund affordable housing and conservation projects in the state.
Stating that "there's no perfect model" for building and managing affordable housing, Laughlin praised the nonprofit for its work. "We are really lucky to have Windham & Windsor Housing Trust in our neck of the woods," he said. "They're really good at what they do."
Goddard also expressed admiration for WWHT. "I've worked with representatives from Windham & Windsor Housing Trust ever since they've been in town. I've never known them to not address issues when they come up. They address them in a pretty timely fashion."
Fighting the stigma
One aspect of the stigma associated with subsidized housing is that people living there are dependent on drugs.
"One of the reasons that it's so visible is because of the concentration of population," Laughlin said. "But if you were to take 17 homes along road X in Putney, depending on the neighborhood, you would find people either have tenuous housing situations or have abusive relationships or drug-related issues. The populations aren't all that different.
"Fortunately, for some of us, we live in areas where that's less likely to be true," he said. "But that wouldn't remove the reality that those people are here in Putney and could benefit more from help than from being beaten down by the local population."
"The way we talk about creating more housing, especially affordable housing, and the people who do or will live in it matters," said Chapman. "There is not enough [housing] available, and that is not due to any fault or worthiness of those that need to be housed," she added.
"The same with poverty," Chapman continued. "In a capitalistic society, it is often insinuated that poverty is preventable by, or somehow the fault of, the individual without examining the larger picture. The larger reality is that our culture of individualism and consumerism creates these issues and they will only continue to grow until we respond to them on a cultural level."
"It is important to remember that Putney is not an island," Chapman said. "We are a part of a larger ecosystem. If we try to build a bubble over Putney and not work to harmonize within that larger ecosystem of supporting housing and basic needs for the communities that hold our hospitals, schools, and other services, we will not only fail them, but we will fail ourselves and our neighbors who so desperately need us to be a part of the solution, not a make-believe utopia."
"We can talk in numbers, but at the end of the day, even one [unhoused person] is too many," she said. "Too many of our neighbors are living without heat, electricity, and running water because of our cultural values."
"That is our cross to bear as Putney, as Vermont, and as the United States. We must do better," Chapman said
This News item by Ellen Pratt was written for The Commons.