BRATTLEBORO — Area legislators and local social service agencies recently shared their concerns about what new political leadership in both Montpelier and Washington might mean for continued funding of anti-hunger and anti-poverty programs.
At the Nov. 17 meeting of the Hunger Council of the Windham Region at the Marlboro College Graduate Center, State Sen. Rebecca Balint, D-Windham, and state Reps. John Gannon, D-Wilmington; Emily Long, D-Newfane; Valerie Stuart, D-Brattleboro; and Molly Burke, P-Brattleboro talked about what can be done to keep the issue of poverty in front of Vermont Gov.-Elect Phil Scott and President-elect Donald Trump.
“We're facing real challenges regarding funding,” Burke said. “And we have a new governor who wants to cut spending. We need to have a united front on the issues, and the resources that are needed.”
“It's a different landscape that we're heading into,” Long said.
Growing need
In turn, the people that run the anti-hunger and anti-poverty programs in southeast Vermont made it clear to lawmakers that the need for these services keeps growing.
According to the most recent U.S. Census data, 13 percent of all Vermont households are defined as “food insecure,” defined as the lack of access to enough food to fully meet basic needs due to a lack of financial resources.
Kathy Squires of the Townshend Community Food Shelf said that, on average, they serve about 50 households a month, with need peaking during the summer.
In Bellows Falls, Lisa Pitcher of Our Place reported distributing 145,000 pounds of food so far this year. She said that the 2,300 pounds collected at the recent “Fill the BF Opera House” food drive lasted about six weeks.
In Brattleboro, the Groundworks Collaborative Food Shelf distributed 432,957 pounds of food, while the Putney Food Shelf distributed 57,000 pounds.
According to the most recent Basic Needs budget, prepared in 2014 by the Joint Fiscal Office of the Legislature, a family of two adults with two children would need both parents working and earning about $19 to $22 per hour each in a full-time job to afford food, housing, transportation, health care, and other necessities.
Simply not enough
The federal poverty guidelines set the poverty level for that four-member family at $23,850, or half of the Vermont Basic Needs Budget.
And, Pitcher said, it isn't a matter of people not knowing how to manage their money.
“Most people are smart and know how to stretch their resources, but many people simply don't have enough money,” she said.
While the focus is often on children, Fay Conte of Hunger Free Vermont said the age group that has seen the fastest rise in poverty in Windham County is the elderly.
Squires said there has been a significant increase in the elderly and disabled using the Townshend Food Shelf.
Stuart said that advocates “need to paint a compelling picture of how people get into poverty” to better make the case for preserving funding for anti-poverty programs in a way that the average person can understand.
Long agreed, saying that the Statehouse “can get flooded with lobbyists” during the peak of the session, so putting a face on the problem is important.
“The more that people are talking about an issue back home, the more we hear about it in the Legislature,” Balint said.
'The way we assist people is not working'
But Margaret Atkinson of the Windham Child Care Association asked a larger question of the lawmakers.
“What is it about our system that makes it so hard for people to advance?” she asked. “The way we assist people is fragmented and not working.”
And Pitcher said that hunger and food insecurity “is just downstream from affordable housing. People use [food shelves] because they're paying too much for housing.”
That's why, Long said, it's important for the Legislature to take the long-term view on the hunger issue “because all we are doing is crisis management.”
Faye Conte of Hunger Free Vermont said her group and the various Hunger Councils around the state will be introducing themselves to incoming members of the Scott administration, as well as new lawmakers, to get them up to speed on what the Hunger Councils do, who the members are, and to invite them to attend future meetings.
The state's 10 Hunger Councils, which cover every region of Vermont, are groups of local leaders committed to improving food security by educating communities about causes and effects of hunger and coming up with ways to improve access to nutritious food to reduce hunger.