2020 is finally coming to an end. We are tired, and many of us have faced significant losses this year. But throughout this past year, communities across our state and country have demonstrated amazing acts of resiliency, building their own resources and support networks in their time of need. We at the Fair Housing Project want to take some time to reflect on the inspiring lessons we can glean from the grassroots, community-centered solutions which have grown throughout 2020, and will continue to be essential cornerstones of thriving communities for years to come.
Vermont has been a national model for handling the pandemic, controlling case spread and preventing unnecessary death more than almost any state in the nation. Every year housing advocates grapple with the numbers of folks without housing and set the seemingly unreachable goal of ending homelessness in Vermont, but this past May almost all of the homeless community was given shelter for the first time. While across the country the homeless communities have been devastated by the impacts of COVID, Vermont continues to manage to see no Covid-related deaths of individuals without housing . Researchers studying Covid-19 policy say Vermont’s successes are inextricably linked to its approach to helping at-risk groups avoid the virus.
Housing advocates have no misconceptions that the much-needed expansion of the emergency housing program is no more than a band aid solution. Housing leaders did not waste time in allocating federal funds to create more transitional housing options, often using creative, cross-organizational partnerships to meet critical housing needs. These new shelters and transitional housing solutions include:
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- In Brattleboro, Groundworks Collaborative and Windham & Windsor Housing Trust partnered together to provide 27 new units of permanent supportive housing at the former Dalem’s Chalet in West Brattleboro.
- In Burlington, A New Place, with support from Vermont Housing & Conservation Board, Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition and Cathedral Square, expanded into the former Champlain Inn.
- This past October, Champlain Housing Trust and Steps to End Domestic Violence announced a new shelter to serve people fleeing from abusive relationships.
- Rutland Housing Authority ‘s and Rutland Regional Medical Center ‘s ambitious Housing for Health campaign exceeded fundraising goals on an ambitious timeline to fund the Rutland Area Bridge housing project on Woodstock Avenue.
The Family Room VT , which for more than 30 years has provided such services as parenting classes and family support, shifted their services this past summer to making home deliveries. This change of programming was made possible in part with a grant from the Vermont Foodbank
One of the most moving events we attended this year was the Vermont Human Rights Commission’s Civil Rights Conference. Listen here for Human Rights Commission Executive Director, Bor Yang’s, powerful closing remarks to the conference. The Human Right Commissions call-to-action, issued in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, continues to move us still.
“…Today we heard the story of our country, the story of how our government strategically segregated our nation… while its a tragic story, its a story that is still unfinished.. let us remember the stories we hear this week.. and be moved to do the hard work ahead.”
-Bor Yang, VT HRC Executive Director,
closing remarks during the Civil Rights Conference
Perhaps the most encouraging moments of resilience we have witnessed, however, have come from everyday people who saw a need in their community and dedicated their time and care to meet it.
In this recent 7 Days article, cartoonist Glynnis Fawkes Comix illustrates how Bree Drapa, a librarian at the Westford Public Library, responded to her community’s need for the public library to be more than a just hub for books. This uplifting and beautifully illustrated story is just what we needed this holiday season to inspire individual acts of heroism.
- Many of the most impactful actions to come from this moment have been youth led, such as this inspiring group of students from St. Johnsbury Academy, who call themselves NEK Girls for Equality, and organized a Black Lives Matter protest and vigil in Lyndonville. Equality!
- A new tenants union has emerged in Brattleboro during this pandemic. Brattleboro Tenants Union is already having an impact on tenant’s rights in their community, having joined Burlington in passing local ordinances to cap rental move-in costs. Meanwhile, Burlington Tenant’s Union continue to work with Rights and Democracy, as well as other housing advocates, to try to pass Just Cause Eviction.
- So many mutual aid groups rose to counter the challenges of the pandemic, including many powerful new initiatives. These include Burlington’s One Good Deed Fund, Food Not Bombs, The Black Perspective, just to name just a few. Many mutual aid initiatives remained nameless, excel files share between emails and on listserves for people to share what help they could offer, or for people to express a need, such as these.
All across the country, housing advocates have made major strides in housing policy.
- The Fair Housing Project, like many housing advocates across the nation, was devastated when Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing was repealed this past fall. Policy makers in Boston pushed back by becoming the first major city in the nation to include Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing requirements in its zoning code.
- Across the Connecticut river, when not even a 21% pay raise over two years was enough for employees at two NH assisted living facilities to afford to live near work, the owners decided to build a clustered community of 44 cottages to rent out to their workers.
- Cincinnati created a bold new program, dubbed “Renter’s Choice,” which requires landlords to accept alternatives to a security deposit, an especially powerful tool for folks using Section 8 to help with rent (which doesn’t cover security deposits), and for residents moving out of homelessness (which disproportionately affects the city’s Black community, comprising of 62% of the homeless population).
- The Oakland group Moms 4 Housing, –a group of homeless mothers and their children who occupied a long-vacant home from November of 2019 to January of this year, started a trend. Following their lead, a group calling themselves Reclaim SF entered an unoccupied house in the Castro neighborhood of San Francisco with plans to use it to house two homeless San Franciscans. And in late March of this year, Occupy PHA activists led the home takeovers of the hundreds of vacant units owned by the Philadelphia Housing Authority, which had a wait list of 40,000 people and hadn’t accepted new applications in 7 years.