Proposed Address, Statehouse Vigil for the Homeless, 2020, Draft 3.2

To the assembled, thank you for standing with the community of those we call homeless. Especially, I want to thank those of you here who are without permanent, stable housing, for coming today. You made a special effort to get here. This vigil is for you, our friends, our families, and our neighbors. 
We are here today to think about, feel about, and remember, the Vermonters who in their daily lives have to ask “How will I stay safe?”
“Where will I sleep tonight?” 
“How will I keep my possessions safe?” 
“How will I eat today?”,
“Can I get my children to school?” 
“Where can I park my car so it won’t get towed away?”,
“How can I get my car out of impoundment?”.

Homelessness is a condition of desperation. People who pay into the engine of profit – those who rent and those who pay mortgages – are given permission to claim a space as their own. 
People who can't work and can't pay, 
people who refuse to work two jobs just to give all their money to a landlord or a bank, 
people who can't manage their lives,  wracked by trauma,
or living in the misery of mental illness, 
people who are broken and have no resources, 
people driven  from their homes by domestic violence,
can't get that permission. 
So they sleep in places that aren't their own. They sleep in public, in a car where they worry about being rousted from the depths of sleep, 
They sleep on a sidewalk,  where someone who is cruel can kick them or worse, 
where someone also desperate can steal their few possessions, 
where someone too privileged to see themselves in that huddle of blankets might complain to the police, 
They sleep in a dumpster that is warm, yet deadly, 
They sleep scrambling from couch to floor from friend to friend. 
The question "Where can I sleep, that is safe?” hangs like a cloud over the entire day, because there is no place to rest, that is their own.

But how is this worse than being evicted, with no place to move to?
How is this worse than having a job you can’t get to because the car is broken down?
How is this worse than going without insulin because it’s too expensive?
How is this worse than losing a spouse, getting sick, being foreclosed, and finding no help to stay in your home?
How is this worse than enduring the blows of a violent partner, because that place is the one place you know to stay warm?
those without housing usually had housing, and those with housing are often in fear of losing their housing,  so where is the boundary between the housed and the unhoused?
Indeed, we see the unhoused and the housed on the street, as one, and call them all “homeless”,
But we don’t see the many who are sleeping in an unheated shed, 
in a wrecked camper, 
on the couch of a friend, 
in a tent in a hidden patch of woods;
we don’t see the many elders and working people who struggle to pay their rents, and face evictions, 
we don’t see those who work 100 hours a week and spend all of their money on a motel room,  
We don't see the that person who could work and wants to, but cannot for lack of an ID,
we don’t see those who live in a cold damp moldy basement, 
we don’t see those who pay their rents to a landlord who won’t repair the leak in the roof, 
remove the moldy sheetrock, 
abate the lead paint, 
repair the plumbing, 
or respect privacy. 
we do not see the young mother or father trying to care for their children and struggling to keep them while the department of children and families wonders whether they can.
We don’t see the 31% of single mothers living in poverty. 
We don’t see the families and retired desperate for fuel to heat their homes. 
When we see the homeless on the street, we see only a few of the one half percent of Vermonters who are unhoused, out of more than 10% of Vermonters who earn less than $15,000 per year,
we see only a few of those whose lives are tossed about on the stormy seas of bad luck,
poor education,
poor health,
poor choices,
unhealthy families or families who abandoned them,
whose lives took that bad turn and landed them on the street.

We hope that getting the unhoused housed is sufficient to correct their deficits.
But it is not, because the help is often not quite enough,
Because you don’t qualify for help
Because your id was stolen, you can’t take the job you were offered,
Because you can’t afford child care,
Because the owner of the apartment you rent won’t repair the plumbing or remove the moldy sheetrock, or fix the drafts in the door,
Because throughout your life you have tried to be self-sufficient, and yet you couldn’t earn enough to pay your bills, keep the electric turned on, keep the car in repair, repair your teeth, or stay safe.
Because the message you got was “You don’t matter”.
Poverty is structural, and homelessness is structural.

They are products of laws and policies that assume that every individual person has the health, the education, the serenity, and the opportunity, to sustain life and health and pursue ambitions,
They are products of custom that assumes we do not need community support to flourish.
They are products of culture that does not care about people without power or money.
Poverty and homelessness are forms of Economic Injustice.

Let us remember that communities create wealth, through investment in education, roads, health care, and the social fabric that supports meaningful human lives.
and that when a few get rich, they are harvesting the value created by communities, by the collective effort of many people.
and even as those communities grow poor, it is not the fault of those who live there, it is the fault of the law that does not capture that wealth for public goods.

Thus, It is the engine of profit that captures this wealth,
it is that levy on the meager earnings of the common waged worker, which is demanded by every for-profit landlord and bank,
it is our reliance on property and housing as a source of wealth,
that drives the cost of housing ever higher, ever more beyond the means of those who sell their labor,
and it is this engine of profit that must be turned toward the dignity, safety and development of the entire community, through selective taxation of the bads and spending on goods.
We cannot allow our private drive for wealth to oppose our shared well being, lives, and our communities.
We must strive to preserve and strengthen our democracy.

So let us change the rules of participation in our society,
Let us provide a living minimum wage. 
Let us provide universal, single payer health care, 
Let us require parental leave rights,
Let us provide affordable quality childcare. 
let us give the youth who loses her mother to jail a second chance to arrive to adulthood with safety and dignity,
Let us license landlords and make their right to operate conditional upon their properties passing health and safety inspections, and let us fund those inspections.
Let us tax high-end mortgages and rents, to pay for the infrastructure to build affordable housing and rentals. 
Let us make foreclosure painful for the banks, 
Let us create enough housing to make it a buyer’s market.
Let us pass a homeless bill of rights, 
Let us put a cap on impoundment fees,
Let us fund free public transit for those eligible for SNAP,
Let us provide DMV identification to anyone who can’t afford the fees.
Let us create enough shelter so no one ever needs to fall asleep in a doorway!
Let us provide enough shelter so that no one fleeing domestic violence is forced onto the street.
Let us recognize a right to a safe place to park, 
to pitch a tent,
or to throw down a blanket,
let us install sleeping pods
in every town in Vermont!
Let housing NOT be a commodity, from which to extract profits and to increase private wealth, 
Let housing exist to house people and build communities. 
let housing be a social utility, socially regulated, a source of personal security and stability, elemental to community and meaningful lives.
Let us reduce the cost of housing by reducing our dependence on property as a source of wealth
Let us create a quality of life floor below which no one needs to go.
Let us build a strong safety net for all Vermonters, rich and poor alike,
so that being rich isn’t required for a safe and dignified life.
Let our public policy drive everyone toward the middle class,
Where everyone can have a meaningful life.
Let us build a just economy. For the sake of us all.