 Good afternoon everyone and we know that some folks are watching from home and we respect your need to stay inside today and we know very well just how cold it is out right now. That's why we're here. We want to welcome all of the speakers that are coming and all of you that came out today and we want to open with Morgan Brown who's been incredibly supportive and helpful to us and a poem that he wrote that he brought to our attention recently, that he brought to our attention recently and then a moment of silence for those we lose to homelessness each year but also especially to those who are here that we could protect, that the governor has the option to protect. Just speak nice and loud. My name is Morgan Brown. I'm a Peer resident. I've lived unhoused, also known as homeless since I was 17, fleeing severe domestic abuse. I then moved unhoused off and on for quite a bit of my adult life. The last go around was 12 years until I got housed 12 years ago. This poem was inspired by the night I spent here with those who had been holding vigil for two and a half weeks. It was the fifth night of the vigil. In lieu of flowers, remember and care for the living. For those living unhoused, abandoned to the streets, left to live in the woods, underneath bridges, sleeping dumpsters and the like, it is far too late to think of, remember fondly, send flowers or otherwise honor and memorialize them after they have languished and died from lying in the west frozen alone and forgotten due to deliberate indifference as well as from a lack of sufficient caring and empathy by their fellow human beings. Thank you. I invite us all to join in a moment of silence for all of those who are currently unhoused and all of those who we have lost to homelessness. Good afternoon. I am the Reverend Joan Javier Duvall. I serve as minister of the Unitarian Church of Montpelier and this is the Reverend Beth Ann Mayer. We are both members of Vermont Interface Action. VIA is a faith-based grassroots coalition of more than 70 congregations and faith communities across the state that works for social and racial justice for all Vermonters. In our organizing and our advocacy, we seek to create solutions to systemic issues that prevent the most vulnerable among us from enjoying the quality of life that God intends for us all and that we all deserve. Across our diverse faith traditions, we affirm the dignity of every person. We assert that shelter is an essential human need. We believe that if we are to honor the dignity of human life, then housing must be available for all. Over the past 20 months, we have shown that as a state, we are more than capable of housing those who do not currently have the resources to house themselves. We thank Governor Scott for extending the federally funded motel program until the end of the year for those who were allowed to remain. But we also acknowledge that to put people on the street as winter approaches is immoral. Vermont Interface Action joins in calling on Governor Scott to extend and fully reinstate the motel program until we are able to transition Vermonters to safe, long-term housing. And this should include those who currently are housed in motels, as well as the several hundred people who were already forced to exit, and all who may become homeless in the days and the weeks to come. So we've known for over 20 years in Vermont that we have not kept up with our need for housing. That is why we are in this crisis. We've known this, we own this crisis, and we need to address it. We feel that it is inhumane and immoral to leave people sleeping outside as the cold weather approaches, and in fact is already here, as people know who have been sleeping out. In the Barry Maupur area, we know that we have 50 to 60 people sleeping out. At the church that I serve, just down the street here, Christ Episcopal Church, we will be housing 10 people overnight from the cold. But that is not going to come close to the need. So we call on the governor to give us some leadership to provide a plan that will provide safe and humane shelter for all people until the housing is built, and to build enough housing for everybody. Thank you. I have here a statement from Speaker Jill Kruinsky and Senate Pro Tem Becca Ballant. One of the greatest success stories from Vermont's early response to the COVID-19 pandemic was providing shelter and support to unhoused Vermonters, and those facing housing insecurity as a result of the pandemic. It was a true monumental effort. We were successful because of collaboration between the state, community organizations, and hotel and motel owners. While we hoped that that would be much different place than we are today, we know what works to protect each other, and we must again lean on proven strategies. We're glad that the administration is open to working to address our current housing crisis, and we agree that the administration and legislature both have important roles to play in finding short, medium, and long-term solutions to address homelessness in our state. In the near term, we must continue to fund the hotel-motel program, whether through our GA funding model or a new solution. The funding must extend beyond December 31, the coldest time of the year, to provide relief to Vermonters concerned that they will be without a roof over their heads at the start of the new year. We also believe that those that were previously in the program need to once again be supported and connect with healthy and safe housing. In the long term, while great progress has been made in finding permanent housing solutions for Vermonters, we know that there is more to do this legislative session and beyond to help move those served by the GA Motel Program into permanent supportive housing. Although these medium and long-term solutions are complicated and will require due diligence from all interested parties, we know what the right thing to do is in the short term. We know we can and must come together to meet this need because all Vermonters deserve to have a roof over their heads and peace of mind that they will not be left in the cold. I'd now like to introduce Senator Perchick. Thank you. I'm just here to say two things. First, I want to say a thank you to Brenda and Josh and others that they are sleeping out so that others may sleep in, and that includes us that have nice warm beds. Brenda and others are showing leadership by sleeping out here on this cold granite so that to raise awareness to this important issue and I appreciate that leadership and hope that she can quickly go back and that we can have the demands that we're asking for here today met. And two, just to add my voice as a representative of the 18 towns and two cities of Washington County that we need to not end the motel program in the middle of winter. I think everybody sees that as just a ridiculous proposition and that we fully fund the program going forward for all those that need a place to stay. And the important thing is that we have the money. We have enough federal ARPA and other covert relief funds to fully fund the program. And in my different roles with the state, we are having some difficult times finding other uses of this ARPA money because we're trying to use it for other things that aren't directly tied to covert relief and to helping the most vulnerable be safe and secure and safe from COVID and safe from living outside. Supporting the motel and hotel program is no-brainer for the COVID relief funds for ARPA funds. So we have the money. We just need the will to do it. So I'm here to support Brenda and support this cause and raise my voice that what needs to happen and it needs to happen today. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Ken Russell. I'm executive director of another way here in Montpelier and the chair of the Montpelier homelessness task force. From this podium, I can see the sites of several people who camp out, who've been rousted from their campsites in the middle of the night, who sleep on heating vents in the winter to stay warm, their sleeping bag gets wet, they catch a cold. There are people in the woods behind us who camp out, whose campsites get rousted, tents get slit, assaults happen on people. There's so much human tragedy in this population. Folks seem to treat them as an underclass, something they can forget about. These folks are real human beings with real lives and real stories. People like to demonize them and say, oh, you're there because of substance abuse or bad choices. And I tell you, that's not true. These are real human beings who have real stories, real whole stories. And we see them every day and I'm sick of giving out sleeping bags so people can sleep in the woods on a winter day. We have the resources, fund the motel programs. It's not perfect, but it's out of the wet elements, it's out of the weather. What are we as a society? We have a chance to define that. We have a chance to choose where we're going and thank you, Brenda. Thank you, Josh, for showing your leadership, as Andy said. This is a beautiful moment if we use it right. And yes, Governor, please do the right thing. You have the money. It's just political will and just do it. Thank you. My name is Jenna. I'm in 10th grade at Essex High School. Along with Addy, I represent 80 other youth who have signed a letter demanding that Governor Scott fully reinstate the GA Motel Program. I believe that nobody in the state of Vermont should be experiencing homelessness. While I have never experienced homelessness, I as a human would never want anyone to have to sleep outside. Why should the governor extend the GA Motel Program for the 700 executed in July? First of all, there's federal money that could fully reinstate the program at no cost to our state. Why would we choose to leave people sleeping on park benches while we have money available to prevent it? Second, motels across the state have both the capacity and willingness to continue. The state can no longer use the narrative that motels have no capacity because it is simply not true. Hundreds of rooms are available, 174 in motels already doing GA and 714 in those not yet contacted by the state. I do not want to grow up in a state where I know that people are sleeping outside, especially when there are more than ample resources to present, prevent it. I want to grow up in a state that is a model to the nation in how to address homelessness, keeping everyone housed in motels as a bridge to permanent housing. The governor is simply kicking the can down the road by not reinstating the GA Motel Program and the long term cost is high if we don't shelter everyone while the resources are here. I do not understand why the governor would choose to extend the program for some and not for others. It's inhumane. As a future voter of Vermont, I hope the governor makes the right choice and fully reinstate the GA Motel Program. Thank you. Addie Lensner, who is calling in from home. You're going to have to turn that all the way up on your phone too. Yeah, but you have to talk a little louder and you have to turn your volume up. Okay. We're going to bring it closer, y'all. Okay. Go ahead, Addie. What the petition will do before they do it or what will happen if the stock market or if your person will be there tomorrow, next week or next year. But one thing we should be able to count on is our community. It's our neighbors. It's our town. Our local farms. Our local stores. The nurses and doctors. It's the people that each play their little part in keeping us fed and healthy and safe and come in when we're too tired or can't do everything. Right now, only some of us can count on community. Some of us are excluded because they don't fit our ideals, our norms, our pictures in our head. This is not our fault. For years, we have been subtly manipulated into excluding, into othering, and finally dehumanizing because that's what serves the power's best. What we are taught, we are taught that people are homeless because they're flawed or can't hold a job or are sick in the head. But the truth about homelessness is that people are homeless because some people would rather have a second home than provide a first home for someone. Because we don't think renters belong in our neighborhoods because we're selling our homes to the highest bidder rather than the highest need. Our country is built on personal responsibility and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. But no one working at a minimum wage job with no benefits is ever going to have that opportunity. There's no responsibility when you're just fighting to survive. Personal responsibility is seeing past the divisiveness of politics and media and advertising to see past the wanting of things and focus on people, experiences, and see no human is worth less than another. And the homelessness are a community, and we need to take care of them. We need to extend the GA Motel program to anyone who is homeless, anyone who is unsafe in their home, or anyone who is being evicted, no matter the reasons. Good afternoon everyone, thank you for joining us today. I never thought I'd be speaking in front of a crowd. I was always the quiet person in the room, the snuck away when too many people started showing up. I avoided people even before I became homeless. I've been asked what changed, what made me do this. The answer is short. Someone needed to say something, someone needed to do something. I realize all I can do is tell you what it's like to experience homelessness, to shed some light on what it is that we face every day. What it feels like, what I think the problem, and how I think the problem can be addressed. I hold no power, no position to be able to actually do anything, but what I've learned is that we all can. We all do have that power. We are the people that hold these systems up and let them continue. We can change that. We can make it better for so many people, and it seems so easy and thoughtless to me. How and why we got here is another question I hear. People do not cause their own homelessness. That is another way that we attack those in poverty who need support. Those with nothing. It is another way that we take away their power, my power, your power. Study the how people ended up here by asking them what the system failed in. What did they need that they did not get? Learn from and don't make those same mistakes again. The system is made by people. I want us to finally start fixing it. It was in the GA Motel program. I was in the GA Motel program and I was exited. I had a qualifying condition, but like most folks, I couldn't get that documentation. I needed it quickly enough. This morning in my meeting with the commissioner, I told him that I could now reapply, but I'm in a shelter and I can't. That doesn't take away the stress that it caused, the dehumanizing experience of being exited. And since we've been out here, we have tried to help people qualify to get in the program. It is near impossible. The means are there for us to open up the program to all, to bring down the wall to being safely housed, safe from COVID, safe from hypothermia, safe from all the paperwork getting soaking wet, safe from harshness of the world when you have no home to go to. It doesn't make sense to me that we're not opening this program up. It makes a clear statement about how this administration, this governor, feels about me. He has the tools and he doesn't care. I'm going to be honest, that hurts. This is 100% federally reimbursement with the only measure being homelessness. The money is there for the spending, the space is there and the people want this to happen. We all want this to happen. It makes good sense any way you look at it, financially, ecologically, and from a human rights standpoint. Maddie and Brenda and I have shown there's no good reason to not do this. We have shown that there is capacity. We have shown that the motels want to continue. We have shown that it meets the guidelines for federal reimbursement. It is a policy choice. Some are choosing cruelty over the smart thing and that is something that never sits right with me. I'm not a fan of long speeches and I want to hear from the other people we have gathered here and I am just the homeless guy that for some reason decided to put himself out there. I do promise you I haven't heard the last. You haven't heard the last from any of the three of us though and we are not leaving without knowing that our neighbors and community members are safe. As a tiny team, a single mom, a teenager and a homeless guy, we are able to easily uncover the misinformation coming from this administration. Now we are asking for you to use your voice to speak up. For my part, I'm going to ask you all to pull out your bones. You have a home, do the same. If you are at home, do the same. Please tweet Governor Scott that any extension of the GA Motel Program must include all that are on the street and maybe in the future. Go ahead. I will wait. If you are at home, do the same. Thank you all very much. If you are not tweeting already then you weren't listening. He needs you to tweet that any extension, to at Governor Scott, that any extension of the GA Motel Program must include people that are already on the streets and maybe in the future. Use the hashtag Housed802 and BT Polly. Thank you. I still don't see people with their phones so I'm not sure what's happening but if you have Twitter, we're going to need you to do that. Okay. Thank you, thank you. I'm here, I'm Brenda Siegel. I'm here today to say loud and clear that Governor Scott must house the houseless. To do anything else would be cruel. It is cruel. For the better part of three weeks I have been sleeping on the state house steps with my colleague and lived experience expert, Josh Lizenby. Why do I call him an expert? Because for six years he has had to spend six months of every year in between when shelters were open, living in a tent or on the street, sometimes in the winter. He has applied for housing and been denied for not having landlord references. He has struggled to keep up with case workers when his paperwork gets soaked in a storm or there is no power. When it is too cold to leave the makeshift camp that he has. It can be days before he has access to the world again in those times. He is one of the lucky ones though in that after he was exited from the GA Motel program with the financial bribe, yes the one that has happened to so many folks that gave up their shelter, he found a shelter to stay in until housing is available and accessible. Most of those who were exited did not have that luxury. They are on the street now. Most are on the street and in the woods, likely freezing and with no hope of finding housing in a housing market that does not exist. When they have a chance to hear the governor, what they hear is that the governor does not value their lives. Not enough to keep them safe this winter. Even when he is being handed the cash to do it. That is the message that Josh heard for years. It takes great courage when you experience, when your experience is the lived experience that you share. It takes great courage to share that story because over and over again you are told that your voice does not matter when you are experiencing it. But it does. You all heard it right. It absolutely does. We had an eventful day today after almost three weeks we were able to get a meeting with Commissioner Shawn Brown. The governor still has not agreed to meet with us. For those of you that don't know, he is the commissioner of DCF, who oversees economic services, who decides whether or not people are denied the service of housing. We had hoped that we would come back to you with some good news. But we have none to report. What we can say is that the pressure is working. They were trying to convince us that they're doing something good. They'd like us to leave the steps. Please keep up your calls every single day. It's critical for us making change. Even with the hundreds of millions of dollars that the state legislature has and will dedicate to housing, this will not keep people safe in the near term. That means that we have to use the tools available in the immediate future. We must reduce the gate to being safe this winter, followed by any state allocated funds. We can use that federal reimbursement first. I may have had empathy before, but I could not have understood how challenging this experience really is. And I want to be clear that we have people giving us food and bringing us extra warm blankets. On the third night our belongings got drenched in rain. We had support from people who came and took our belongings to the home and they got dried. People on the street that the governor exited slept or tried to in wet blankets and pillows, with no hope for dry clothes or surface that night. The next night the temperature dropped to 45 degrees. People brought us extra gear. People who were homeless, some of whom had no gear, were still soaking wet from the night before and slept drenched in 45 degree weather. Then the temperatures really began to drop first to 43 degrees. We slept in multiple dry sleeping bags and still were extremely cold. People that the governor exited to the street did not have the good fortune of that level of extra layers or being dry as it rained that night too. In our second week the beginning of the bitter cold of late fall and winter had begun to set in. We now have slept through many 30 degree nights and a few others in the upper 30s, which at this point honestly feels like good fortune when it happens. Josh's lived experience, having had to live outside through the winter has helped us to not get sick. However on several nights I had a hard time getting warm. With three sleeved warm sleeping bags and several hand warmers thrown in one that I had sift around me, I have eventually been able to stop shivering though I sometimes wake up shivering. There are folks on the street that never have that privilege and never have that gear. They're alone, without gear, without the right warm clothes and what you may not know is that once your gear is wet on the street there is often no way to dry it. That is why we see abandoned gear all over. That is why we see abandoned gear all over. Folks lose their tent and their sleeping bags in the first real rain or snow. It has rained the majority of the 18 nights and 19 days that we have been here. We can't stop thinking about those without gear. Support and privilege that we have had yet even with it we are taking a risk by being here. In no time at all it will be too cold to survive out here at least without long-term health issues. The age of death of a woman experiencing homelessness is 52.2 years and a man is 56.27 years. According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health most deaths occur when conditions create cold stress of multiple intensities. Folks experiencing homelessness are 13 times more likely to die of hypothermia than an average person in cold weather climates. Josh has been experiencing homelessness for six years. He is 46 years old in the governor's last press conference. He said that the GA Motel program is not what is good for this population. I'm wondering if the governor feels that Josh Lizenby deserves to die in 10 years or less for the crime of becoming homeless. Is that what is good for this population? Harsh, right? It's painful to hear, right? But it's the truth. And as most people know, even if the truth is hard to hear even if it causes me to cry and my voice to shake I will always say it. We have to stop the practice of looking away when things are hard to hear or hard to say. We must not look away any longer. The governor then went on to say that permanent housing is what is best but to the governor I say there is no permanent housing and people who freeze to death or develop serious health problems never get to see permanent housing that may or may not finally come in line in three to five years. The governor's plan does not even cover the 2000 plus needed homes for this population alone. Not to mention the extensive need for middle income and low income housing for those who are not yet unhoused. The governor used this moment to make a political plug to the legislature for money when he could have used it to keep his constituents safe. The legislature wants to see people housed. The legislature is not in session right now. The governor keeps touting that during the pandemic we were able to keep everyone safe from COVID and in stable and consistent housing. That is true. What is troubling is that we have the opportunity to do that now and he's choosing not to. He has the tools to keep people safe and is willing to let them die, get sick and suffer immensely. I have been criticized for saying that the governor is willing to let people die but what do you call it when you have the tools to do something different and you don't? What do you call it? Can he look in the eyes of folks who are at risk of freezing to death and still walk away? Because I cannot. So right now I'm going to ask you all to put the number 802-828-333 in your phones and call. You might not get through right away. You might have to leave a voicemail but call and tell the governor that any extension of the GA Motel program must include those that are on the street now and maybe in the future. Houselessness should be the only condition that our neighbors need to meet to be safe. Anything else is him advocating his duty. Anything else is inhumane. A single person freezing to death this year when we had the tools to prevent it is way too many. Together let us ensure that we are the Vermont we always say we are. The governor always says we are. To the governor I ask you to keep our community members safe and housed this winter. Until then you can find me on the steps of the State House. Good evening everybody. I want to thank you all so much for your work and your support today as we look to support extension and reinstating the general assistance emergency housing motel and hotel voucher program. But I do want to go a step further and take a moment to recognize that we know that there are so many Vermonters so many families in these shelters in these motels who also aren't happy where they are. Of course they're happier than they would be sleeping under a bridge or sleeping in a car. But they do want to find something more than shelter. They want to find somewhere that they can call home. In an ideal world I believe that programs like the Motel Voucher have potential to be a step towards finding home and a gateway to finding the support that somebody needs. And so many folks that are living in shelters right now have been putting in the work to find that home. That apartment or that new house that they can afford. But there isn't anything. There isn't anything to buy. And there isn't anything to rent. People have nowhere to go. Across the state there are over 2,000 households experiencing homelessness. And an estimated 300 have no shelter at all. In Bennington where I serve as a state representative we have over 100 households using the Motel Voucher program. Just in Bennington County over 130 adults and over 50 children are living in motels. Meanwhile our local homeless shelter has a total of 16 beds. I think we can all agree that now is not the time to turn somebody away who's looking for help. That is part of the reason that I co-signed a letter along with other Bennington County legislators to the Department of Children and Families. Asking for them to expand eligibility so that our emergency shelter program does not turn away those who are housed and who have been housed through the pandemic. Keep in mind that these legislators were Democrats, Republican and independent. If you ask me this is not about party politics. This is about public health. However I believe that even if tomorrow the state were to swing the door wide open for our available hotel rooms it would not be enough for the long term. What we are seeing today is the result of systemic failure and it will take all of our dedication and commitment to set our housing and services sector on the right track. The legislature knows that our state needs affordable housing and as a result we have invested over $100 million in housing projects which we already predict will bring online over a thousand units in the next two years including over 500 specifically designated for Vermonters experiencing homelessness. But that is not enough. We can do more and we will need all of us working together if we are going to succeed in housing the homeless. You see as a legislator I can vote in favor of funding a program or a project but last time I checked legislators are not property developers. The only way I can build a house is by picking up a hammer. Our work ahead will require the collaboration of all of us our towns and cities our neighborhoods and our workforce. Now I'd just like to highlight two issues I think to address this work systemically going forward. In first is to recognize that for decades we have discouraged folks from taking careers in what we call blue collar jobs. One of the reasons that we are stuck with our housing shortage is that we have two fuel-skilled carpenters plumbers electricians and construction workers which now we know can really be good paying jobs as well. So I would ask just as we celebrate that our nurses and our doctors have been saving lives throughout the pandemic we recognize the value of folks building our homes and working to provide that necessary shelter to a vermonter in need. And secondly I'd like to recognize that within our communities and neighborhoods there may be a resistance to affordable housing developments and that is why we need all of us to voice our support to work with our towns and our neighborhoods to ensure that we make the most of this historic time where unprecedented resources are available to bring housing to vermonters that are sorely in need. If we are truly committed to housing Vermont's most vulnerable I would ask all of us that when projects to support equitable housing are proposed in one of our neighborhoods we will think twice before saying not in my backyard and consider saying welcome home. Thank you all. I really want to deeply thank Brenda, Josh and those who have been the issue of the unhoused in this. I know they want my thanks I think they'd be the first to reject that gratitude but because every time the sun dips below the clouds every time there's a windy rainy day in the last three weeks I have thought how are Brenda and Josh how are the folks on the state house steps and so many more Vermonters have been able to say I know someone who's sleeping outside tonight and I'm thinking of them and that's causing me to think about all of the hundreds of other people who are sleeping outside and how they're doing on a rainy cold night as our nights get cold or precariously housed who are struggling with that and to Vermonters who have not been as conscious before about the situation their neighbors their fellow Vermonters find themselves in. I cannot say that I'm someone who has been unhoused I am someone who grew up with a mother raising three kids who would pay for rent, pay for the utilities and scrape her dollars together and ask around to make sure that we could eat at the end of the month. I have a sister who would probably now attribute her mental health diagnosis with feeling unloved and unsupported at home and living on the streets being homeless for six months or more where we grew up and I remember what it was like to think I wonder where she is I wonder how she's doing I wonder if she's okay, if she's safe if she had something to eat today and that is the experience of so many Vermonters and Vermont families I think we often might wonder it would be privileged to wonder who are these folks who are out on the streets sleeping in the woods sleeping under a bridge that's nobody I know but there are hundreds more thousands of Vermonters who know that for whatever reason they can't give what a loved one needs to feel supported they can't be that safe home for someone they are trying their best but everyone who's sleeping on the street or in a motel has many people who love them who can't reach them and who slept a little better knowing that they had access to a motel where there were services and supports available to them where social service workers were coming in and out checking on them and trying to develop a plan for them and I would call it nothing short of an abuse of power to dangle that over people in winter as the pandemic continues to rage on as we look back at October as the third deadliest month in this pandemic to say to people I think we're going to continue this I'm not sure if you're eligible call around that's asking people who have cold fingers who are wet who are struggling with other issues emotional and otherwise to pick themselves up and to make a phone call stay on a phone call for an hour to get on the internet you know that's not going to work for most people this is an emergency and when we have emergencies in our lives in our families and in our states we say get people what they need and figure the rest out later yeah I've talked to housing advocates around the state who are afraid to say anything afraid to lose any money for their programs but they want people to hear that this kind of uncertainty is toxic for the people they're working with toxic it's killing them even if they have access to housing to know that it could get taken away at any minute that is nothing short of an abuse of power and I just want to add to what representative Whitman has said many of us are working on housing ideas ways to bring more housing online you have the sad reality of a lot of housing folks saying we're really excited about plastic you know shelters that can be built for overnight they have a heater in them they're good for negative 20 they have a cot in them that's what people are getting excited about right now that is a crisis we have a crisis on our hands and when I think about the changes we have to make they are so much more systemic they build on what representative Whitman said I don't want to detract in any way from the urgent need for housing and when I think of working in a domestic violence shelter myself in Vermont for many years I don't want to say we have a victim of domestic violence in a wheelchair she can't sign the form and bring it in can we fax it to you it's a rainy day and they say I might get in trouble for letting you do that but sure go ahead what kind of system do we have where people have to have less than $25 in their pocket in order to get housing or you have a mom I'll get housing but if I have my child with me I'll look like a terrible mother and get my child taken away so we have a very broken system that goes well beyond bringing units of housing online to treating people with humanity and dignity and making sure our social service programs are built on lifting people up and not tearing them down in order to give them that most basic thing we all need to survive which is shelter so thank you all for being here thank you Brenda and Josh and everyone who's coming to see you on the steps who's delivering meals it is simply drawing attention to something that so many Vermonters are facing who don't have to and it is an abuse of power when we have the money available to us to give people certainty and give people a shred of dignity and wrap services and support around them long enough to figure out a new path forward for them and we take that away what does that say about us as a state thank you for what you're doing and we're here to fight with you until we have certainty and support and love for people in a pandemic hi everyone so my name is Kaia Morris I am the movement politics director for rights and democracy I'm someone who's been working in the social services area working on social justice issues working on equality issues for the entirety of my life I know what it's like to sleep on the streets I've had many friends that have been homeless families that have struggled to find places to raise their head at night I know many and have experienced the challenges of being worried about whether or not you'll get evicted or you'll have a quality place to live and the dignity that everyone deserves what I can tell you is so sad in this moment is that as a state, as the pandemic raged through our little green mountain state we came together in ways unseen before to try to help each other out at the very heart of it was the work of mutual aid organizations some of which most of the public had never even known existed people had been going out into the woods to find those who were houseless to be able to make sure that they had food and the equipment that they needed and from that spirit of collective liberation and of making sure that no one will fall behind these types of efforts grew in their number and you know why? because that's the social contract that we have with each other that is the social contract that we are under to be able to experience the life like this for us to stand out here in the cold and to know, you know, there's a building down there that might let me go use the restroom to be able to say I can warm up my hands on a cup of coffee today to feel a little bit of feeling in my fingers the privileges that we have in one of the wealthiest countries in the entire globe and our state is not cash poor and our hearts are completely big so right now being told that people are going to have to be on the streets because of a malfeasance, a misuse of funds that were intended to save lives is not an acceptable form or an acceptable means of us fulfilling that contract of that very contract it is it is terrifying to know as I'm talking to folks and they're thinking about the stress of it's about time for my husband to get laid off because they're a seasonal worker so now money's going to get tight and having them stress about what the future will hold and I know we've been praising up the folks who've been here on the steps I'm so proud and honored to be a friend of Brenda's she was willing to do this and even though people mocked and questioned whether or not it was going to have meaning it does because as we sit here bundled up trying to find comfort she leaned into discomfort to understand and empathize with the experience of so many others whose faces and stories you will never ever know but that does not mean that we have to give up this fight so as an organization we have members and leader leaders have been involved and have been there supporting out at Sears Lane where folks who are again just trying to have a moment in Burlington where they could be safe where they had community and where they could take what little bits of dignity that we're affording to them in their performance of poverty and seeing it literally demolished in front of their faces this is not the Vermont that we need and this is not the Vermont that will make it through this crisis we must do more we must demand more and I encourage you all to not only call the governor but to make sure that you're reaching out locally to figure out how can I help connect up with your mutual aid organizations your food not bombs we're always taking food always looking for people to help serve always looking for people to deliver what they can so they can provide the dignity but I've had the privilege of being able to see when somebody comes by and says can I eat this absolutely it's for you take as much as you need because that's as simple as it needs to be no questions asked no performance required you are a person you are here and we're gonna honor your humanity so thank you so much for raising this up thank you everybody for coming through and lending your voices thank each of you for staying with us and those who are tuning in this fight is far from over do not let this moment pass without taking action thank you all thank you all so much we are gonna have a joint press conference about the overall state issue at 10 am so folks can attend we do them right here in our living room so so but also right now folks want to ask questions any one of these folks are willing to answer and that is press but also others okay so currently the adverse weather policy is what it was last we checked was 20 degrees with a 15 degree wind chill so that's what you needed to be able to go inside and I have to tell you this morning I woke up shivering in 40 degree weather with 3 sleeping bags on struggling and now they're telling us we heard from Commissioner Brown today that they're re-looking at it and he thought I would like it a little bit more but I told him that unless we actually keep people inside for the whole winter I will not like it very much more at all so oh right and then there's also shelters and warming shelters are never a solution because it still means during the day when we're all walking from our car to a store being like the wind discerning our face these people still have to sit outside and then also congregate shelters cause COVID and COVID is running rampant through homeless communities right now I'm hearing from multiple service workers that that's what's happening and so during the pandemic we really need to be separating people into single-ramp occupancies as well does anybody else have an answer to that do you want to? okay alright anybody else have questions or any more okay I'm not a nice person since it's half thousand zero overnight I mean I've had youth advocates ask us that before and I'm not a fan of people feeling intimidated so personally that's not for me because I just what I really think is that what we're trying to do is raise awareness and what we do to raise awareness is going to be different for everybody but what we could do is make sure that we're highlighting what's happening at Sears Lane what happened in Hartford with the encampment being taken down and what's happening here on the state house steps and both asking the governor to do more and asking the press to pay a little more attention to homelessness across the state and that's not necessarily to the folks who are here right now but there are those who are not so although they know that I know I'm not shy about saying what needs to be done more in the press either any other questions out there I think that one point Josh had talked a little bit about veterans you know being experiencing being unhoused and those were just the stats that I knew from I'd seen from the state so I'd assume and those stats are like half wrong so I'd assume it's probably twice as many as the 71 that are reported those stats come from like they just kind of pick a day in the middle of winter to count everyone and so they're very inaccurate and we've seen that with COVID when everybody got into the hotel program we realized it was really twice as many as that so I have no idea what that number could be but it's reported as being like 71 veterans in Vermont and what's the problem with homelessness that we can't keep track of everybody right? that's why the numbers are so strange is because anyone given night there's 15 to 30 people in a shelter I do want to we got a lot of gratitude too I want to just shout out Carly who's kneeling right now and holding up she doesn't want to be shouted out but we're going to anyways she stayed with us for two weeks of this of this as well and that's it I know you don't want to but you must deserve you deserve praise also so I want to just thank you for that and also all oh and James who's been staying with us for quite some time as well and who wanted to be part of the press conference but is here and would also like to be treated as a human and thank you to all of these folks here who came out and spoke today knowing that most of our audience would be online and to support and highlight these issues and most of these folks all these folks have not only supported us in this way but have in other ways whether it's checking and bringing us food saying hello it means a lot to us when legislators are in the building and come out and say hello and it is notable when they don't so it really matters and I think that I really want to thank you all for coming today and thank you all for coming today and please don't stop here please keep fighting because this is not the answer we need you in the fight