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"Affordable housing out of reach for some county residents" Addison Independent, Nov. 22, 2007

"Homeless in Vermont" VPR Series and Stories, July 7, 2007

"Homelessness not just an urban problem" Associated Press/boston.com, Dec. 23, 2006

"Homelessness knows no holiday in county"Addison Independent, Dec. 18, 2006

"Local homelessness a suprise to college students" Addison Independent, Oct. 23, 2006

Affordable housing out of reach for some county residents

By Megan James, Addison Independent - November 22, 2007

ADDISON COUNTY — Deep in the New Haven woods, the whirly-gig wheels on Dave Winborn’s ambulance-shaped lawn ornament spin around in the wind. This is how visitors know they’ve taken the right path to his tent, Winborn said, and how he knows he’s home.

Winborn doesn’t consider himself homeless, and he doesn’t consider himself poor. He has a job, a truck and his beautiful tent, complete with a woodstove and writing desk, which he has inhabited since this summer when he pitched it on a friend’s land.

The 55-year-old is an EMT on three different area rescue squads: he has volunteered with the Bristol squad for more than 25 years, with New Haven First Response for about 15 years and five months ago he started a paid position with Valley Rescue Squad in Hancock.

Next spring Winborn will earn his associate’s degree in human services from the Community College of Vermont.

“If I don’t blow it,” he said with a smile. “It’ll be the first time in my life I’ve ever worn a cap and gown. I never finished high school. I went right from public school to the streets.”

But, even though he is a contributing member of society with a paying job, Winborn is one of many people in Addison County who cannot find an affordable apartment.

This month the United Way of Addison County released the results of its 2007 Community Needs Assessment, in which about 750 area residents responded to a survey asking them to identify the most pressing needs they face today. Affordable housing ranked among the top four problems, along with financial stability, health and transportation.

According to Elizabeth Ready, executive director of the John Graham Emergency Shelter in Vergennes, the rising cost of rent and the widening gap between the rich and poor have made it increasingly more difficult to secure an apartment in this area.

“Many of us, myself included, our lives weren’t really that much different from theirs when we were young and struggling,” Ready said. “The difference between struggling and being homeless is really in some of the economic factors that we’re seeing now.”

According to a study released by the University of New Hampshire in September, Vermont saw one of the highest jumps in income disparity in the United States in recent years, second only to Connecticut. Ross Gittell, the professor responsible for the study, attributed this to a simultaneous loss of manufacturing jobs and an influx of wealthy transplants from New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut.

For a person like Winborn, who has struggled to make ends meet all his life, this means trouble. The rising cost of living is edging him out of affordable housing.

His dilemma is all too typical. With Valley Rescue, Winborn takes home just under $350 a week, that’s about $1,400 a month. Apartments are available in Addison County for less than that; the average one-bedroom he’s seen is $800, he said. But take into account the expenses he would have to establish an apartment — security deposit, first and last month’s rent, utilities, furniture, cooking utensils and fuel — and Winborn estimates moving in could cost him upwards of $3,000.

“All things considered, I prefer my tent,” he said.

TRANSPORTATION HURDLE

Winborn is not alone in his inability to find affordable housing. Crystal Kendall and Jack Walters have been bouncing around with family and friends for the last four years or so. Originally from the Winooski area, they came to the John Graham Emergency Shelter in October, about a month after Kendall gave birth to the couple’s daughter, Haley.

State regulations kept them from staying longer than a week with their friends, who receive Section 8 housing assistance, and the Burlington homeless shelter, run by the Committee on Temporary Shelter, was full.

Renting an apartment is just too expensive, the young couple said. In the Burlington area, the most affordable rent they could find for a two-bedroom apartment was $1,000 a month.

Kendall, a 26-year-old new mother, doesn’t have a job, and Walters, 22, has been looking for work, a difficult process when you don’t have a place to go home to every night, he said.

Walters isn’t being picky. “I’m willing to learn anything,” he said, but most of the jobs available are in the Middlebury or Bristol areas and he doesn’t have a car. This means planning around a sometimes-sporadic Addison County Transit Resources bus schedule.

The real difficulty when it comes to getting a roof over your head, Kendall said, is in your credit record.

“It’s all about the credit these days,” she said. “If you don’t have good credit, you don’t get an apartment.”

According to John Graham shelter manager Diana Rule, this is true even when it comes to subsidized housing.

“A lot of the people here don’t qualify for low-income housing in the area because of a bad landlord reference, bad credit reference,” she said. “So (even with) an apartment that would be totally affordable, where they would be paying $300 a month, they’re shut out of that market. The very people that the subsidized housing is made for a lot of times can’t get into it.”

And a credit report can look bad for all sorts of reasons, Rule stressed. It may not be that the person stiffed the landlord, but that they didn’t make their cell phone payment.

“We’ve got to find a way for people to get a second chance,” she said.

Adam, a 35-year-old deaf artist now living in Middlebury, found his second chance through a number of local agencies: the Vergennes shelter, Addison County Community Action Group (ACCAG) and the Vermont Center for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (VCDHH). But it took him seven months and unflinching determination to land permanent housing.

Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, Adam, who asked that his last name not be used, had been living in Colchester and working at a Starbucks in Burlington. The coffee shop would not give him a full-time schedule, and his real passion, his freelance illustrating, kept him busy but didn’t bring in enough money to support him. He lost his apartment last winter when he could no longer make rent.

Two weeks later he was fired from his job. After a few months crashing with friends, he got a room at the shelter.

The shelter was his saving grace, Adam said. But he had to keep focused on finding an apartment and getting his life back together. He called his mission to move on from the shelter his escape from Alcatraz.

“I schemed every night,” he said. “Made a checklist in my head. Step-by-step. How am I going to pull this off?”

Working with ACCAG, Adam moved into permanent housing this spring. He also secured a part-time job through the VCDHH, serving as a job coach for another hearing-impaired person. He devotes the rest of his time to his drawing.

STILL LOOKING

Meanwhile, Kendall, Walters and their daughter, the young family at the Vergennes shelter now, have made slow but steady progress in the last couple weeks. Kendall has been working with ACCAG to secure an apartment in Bristol. The place costs $750 a month, utilities included, and with a voucher from the state housing authority, she and Walters would pay nothing until they can secure an income.

“We want our own place to be able to set up (Haley’s) room,” Kendall said. “We’re confined to one room here. Sometimes it’s noisy. Haley will fall asleep and then it’ll wake her up.”

Kendall put in an application to rush the voucher early this month, but the Section 8 housing list has been backed up, meaning her voucher is at least a month off.

“I’ll still get the voucher within a couple months, but we kind of want a place before Christmas,” she said. “I’ve got enough people rooting for me right now. It’s going to all come to an end, I can feel it.”

As for Winborn out in the New Haven woods, he feels he’s already made it. Living in a tent suits him just fine. He ordered the thing six years ago in the hopes of living just like this.

“I like it here,” he said. “It’s home.”

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"Homeless in Vermont"

Neal Charnoff, Vermont Public Radio - July 2, 2007

VPR's Neal Charnoff interviews John Graham Shelter Director Elizabeth Ready and others in this hour-long story on homelessness in Vermont.

From the VPR website: Homelessness is a persistent problem in Vermont, and it’s on the rise among families with children. Our program looks at the changing face of homelessness, and the growing number of families and working poor who are in need of shelter. We also visit with homeless war veterans, talk with shelter providers, and hear about the effort to address this troubling issue.

Click here for the transcript of the show.

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Homelessness not just an urban problem

By David Gram, Associated Press Writer - December 23, 2006

VERGENNES, Vt. --After a hard day splitting wood or loading hay for delivery to horse farms, Paul Aube would like to head home. But he doesn't have one.

Instead, the 48-year-old laborer gets a ride from the Ferrisburgh farm where he works to neighboring Vergennes, where they drop him off at the John W. Graham Shelter to spend another night in the men's bunk room.

Aube, whose education ended in 10th grade, makes $50 a day for his farm labor -- not enough to afford an apartment.

In the summer, he stays in a beat-up old camper-trailer on the farm. It doesn't have a heater. Aube says he's saving up for one. But in each of the last three Novembers, "when it gets really cold" he has given up the trailer for the homeless shelter.

"I'm a little down about it because I'm in a place like this where you can't really be by yourself," he said in an interview. But, "It's a roof over my head and it keeps me out of the cold."

Homelessness is not just an urban problem.

While more well-known in big cities, it reaches into America's small towns and rural areas, too. In Vermont, which marked homelessness awareness week with a series of events this week, about 4,000 people have been homeless at some point in the last year -- a quarter of them children.

With the cost of a two-bedroom apartment in Vermont affordable only to those making $32,000 a year or more, according to the National Low-Income Housing Coalition, $50-a-day workers like Aube are often forced to do without.

At the Graham Shelter, his predicament isn't unusual, according to director Elizabeth Ready.

Many of those staying at the 18-bed shelter are working -- at supermarkets, department stores, a soap factory -- and others are in transit, fleeing abusive spouses or suffering from mental health problems.

"The most heartbreaking for me are the people with mental health problems who come in for a few days and then go back out on the street," Ready said.

Jeffrey and Virginia, a couple staying at the shelter, fled a communal living situation in Burlington that had dissolved in drugs and violence. Both have struggled with alcohol addiction. Their last names are being withheld to protect their privacy.

Jeffrey, 50, was beat up after he tried to stop housemates from coming on to Virginia, 26. "It was really a yucky environment," Virginia said.

They fled south to Addison County, where Virginia grew up. She is now estranged from her family.

Weeping, she told about calling her family's home on Thanksgiving to see about having dinner with them and being rebuffed.

Jeffrey, a former construction worker who is a father of three, has been in and out of depression since shattering his heels in a 1996 scaffolding collapse.

The couple's future?

"I can't project. I have to stay in the here and now," Jeffrey said. Virginia said her dream was of "a cozy little apartment with big windows and a porch."

The shelter frequently catches people at the bottom of life, Ready said. It's goal is "to find the good in people," and get them to make something of it. And there are some success stories.

Another client, Krystie, came to Vermont "for personal reasons" involving a relationship; she ended up at the shelter when her dreams didn't work out. But after a few months in it last year, she found a Job Corps office in Middlebury. The U.S. Department of Labor program helps young people 16 through 24 with training and support as they begin their work lives.

Krystie, whose last name is being withheld to protect her privacy, is now working for Job Corps, helping other young people get their lives on track.

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Homelessness knows no holiday in county

By John Flowers, Addison Independent - December 18, 2006

ADDISON COUNTY — One by one, they trickled into Middlebury’s Triangle Park, a frigid no man’s land hemmed by a crawling din of downtown traffic on this cold December day.

Without fanfare, the 12 men and women exchanged greetings, lit candles, and spoke for a growing population that has been reticent to speak for itself — the homeless of Addison County.

“On one of the darkest days of the year, we are here to try to remind people that there are a lot of homeless people out there who have no roof over their heads and no food to eat,” said Martha Hill, a member of the John W. Graham Emergency Shelter board.

Several of those homeless people are currently being served at the Vergennes-based shelter, which can accommodate up to 18 individuals at one time.

The shelter has been at capacity more often than not during recent months.

“We are turning people away almost every single day,” said Elizabeth Ready, executive director of the shelter. “Almost all of the people currently living here have spent time sleeping outside.”

The statistics are indeed sobering.

Ready pointed to state figures showing more than 4,000 Vermonters have been homeless during the past three years — and more than 25 percent of that population have been children.

Vermont homeless shelters had to turn away 1,443 people last year because all beds were filled.

Many of the shelter’s clients hold jobs, but not ones that pay enough to cover the going market rents for local housing.

And thousands of Vermonters — nearly half of the almost 71,000 households who rent — can’t afford the rent for a modest two-bedroom apartment, which averages $797 per month across Vermont, according to a new report released last week by the National Low-Income Housing Coalition and the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition.

The report also found that the “housing wage” for Vermont — the hourly wage necessary to afford the rent on a two-bedroom apartment — has risen to $15.34 per hour, or $31,900 per year, which is more than twice the state’s minimum wage. This represents an increase in the housing wage of 33.4 percent since 2000, almost double the increase in the consumer price index for the same period. The report describes “affordable rents” as representing “the generally accepted standard of spending not more than 30 percent of income on housing costs.”

In Addison County the report tells a similar story. It said the housing wage here is $14.37 per hour, or $29,880 per year, which would put the affordable fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment at $747 per month. There were 3,271 rental households in Addison County in 2000, about one-quarter of all households. The estimated 2005 mean wage of a renter locally was $10.56 per hour.

“It points to the structural nature of the problem we are seeing (at the shelter) — working families with children being priced out of the market,” Ready said. “We have people who are working full-time and trying to get permanent housing. It’s a big issue, and it’s not getting any smaller.”

The shelter will provide roughly 5,000 bed nights of food, shelter and support services for families and individuals this year on a budget of $125,000. Ready expects 15-20 client families to find permanent housing and 30-40 individuals to nail down jobs during their stays.

The shelter budget includes town meeting appropriations, donations and grants, along with $29,700 from the state’s Emergency Shelter Program.

“It’s really a shoestring budget,” Ready said, noting the spending plan is supposed to cover food, utilities, heat, salaries and other expenses.

MORE STATE FUNDING?

With the homeless population growing, Ready and other shelter advocates recently appealed to state lawmakers for some extra funding. They will get a chance to plead their case during the next legislative session, thanks to a bill being drafted by incoming Senate President Pro Tempore Peter Shumlin, D-Putney. Shumlin’s bill calls for a $500,000 boost in state funding for shelter services. The state’s Emergency Shelter Program is currently funded at $542,000. It has been bumped up slightly in recent years from $525,000, but the appropriation has remained virtually unchanged for more than a decade, according to Ready.

Shumlin hopes his bill will stir debate around funding for homeless shelters. The actual $500,000 appropriation request, he said, will need to be included in the budget by House and Senate Appropriation Committee members.

“Homeless shelters are robbing and begging to survive,” Shumlin said, “and they still can’t meet the demand.”

He noted that the Vermont State Hospital used to provide services for homeless people with mental health issues. Shumlin said that is no longer the case.

“Now they are being put out in the street, unless (the clients) have a criminal history,” Shumlin said.

Shelter officials hope legislators can find extra money for the homeless within what is shaping up to be a tight fiscal year 2008 budget. In the meantime, they will try to meet clients’ needs during in the cold months ahead.

“I think this will be a tough winter for people,” Ready said.

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Local homelessness a surprise to college students

By Megan James, Addison Independent - October 23, 2006

VERGENNES — When Elizabeth Ready, executive director of the John Graham Emergency Shelter in Vergennes, asked Middlebury College student Alex Hall what surprised him the most about homelessness in Vermont, he answered, “That there was any.”

Since last spring, Hall and about 20 Middlebury students, in groups of three or four at a time, have visited the Vergennes shelter once a week where they cook dinner and socialize. The residents, in turn, have begun to shatter the students’ stereotypes of homelessness.

“You think it only exists in urban areas. You think they’ve chosen not to work, that they’re lazy,” said student volunteer Andrew Haile. “But really they’re great people who’ve just had some bad breaks.”

Haile, who grew up in Hudson, Ohio, is partly responsible for the tremendous turnout of Middlebury volunteers. During a semester abroad in Paris last year, he was confronted daily, and for the first time, with people living on the streets. He and his friends found it difficult to walk by and ignore the homeless, he said, so they began talking to them, listening to their stories, taking them to McDonalds for a bite to eat.

Back in Middlebury, Haile, unable to shake the images of poverty he had seen in France, contacted the Committee on Temporary Shelter (COTS) in Burlington. He gathered a few friends from Middlebury College and made the trip up north each weekend to cook lunch at the family shelter. But the kitchen was already teeming with volunteers and director Sally Ballin knew of a place where their efforts and enthusiasm would be more appreciated — the John Graham Emergency Shelter in Vergennes.

Three women run the shelter — Ready, shelter manager Diana Rule and resident manager Sue Delorme — and in the 26 years it has been open to the public, few community volunteers have gotten involved. Affiliated with the United Way of Addison County and Addison County Community Action Group (ACCAG), the shelter has received generous financial support over the years, but listening ears and helping hands have been harder to come by.

The women manage a household of about 17 people from all over Vermont, each of whom are guaranteed a bed and food for up to three weeks, before they have to apply for extensions. Some have lost their jobs, some are recovering from substance addiction or struggling with mental illness and some simply have bad credit or trouble with a landlord.

“We want to provide a safe and supportive environment where people can rebuild their lives,” Ready said. That might mean getting medication or starting counseling as well as finding a job and a place to live.

This is no easy task, according to Ready. It takes a well-established system of respect, and plenty of rules. Everyone has to be in by 10 p.m., keep their rooms tidy and shower at least every other day. No alcohol, drugs, weapons or violence of any kind are allowed. If a resident steals or uses too much foul language, the directors will ask them to leave.

The tension between residents, especially without the fresh perspective of outsiders from the community, is enough to exhaust everyone there. “Imagine a household of people all at the most vulnerable part of their lives,” Ready said. “It can be very difficult.”

But the students bring something invaluable to John Graham residents and directors: open minds, fresh faces and spaghetti and meatballs.

At dinner Wednesday night, student volunteer Meg McFadden enlisted the help of the shelter’s children to spread garlic butter on baguettes. “It’s so easy to move from dorm room to dining hall and never be confronted with these problems,” she said.

Like most of the volunteers, McFadden came to the shelter with preconceptions about homeless people, and was surprised to find when they all came together to cook dinner there was little that differentiated resident from student. She was on equal footing with the children when they played make-believe games and “Duck-Duck-Goose,” and their parents trusted her enough to share their stories.

“The students are really fun,” a resident named Richard said. He has been living at the shelter since the middle of August, after losing his job as a cleaning supervisor at Killington Resort due to wrist and hand injuries. He wore out his welcome at camping sites in the Rutland area, and tried to live in the woods at Moosalamoo campground but was kicked out after he overstayed the two-week limit. He enjoyed the solitude of the forest, he said, but his arms kept cramping up, keeping him from being able to cook and perform other camping tasks.

Pam Howard, a resident at the John Graham Shelter for the past 38 days, said she loved the students’ visits. “It’s nice to come back at night and not have to wonder what you’re going to make for dinner,” she said.

A victim of domestic violence, Howard left her house because it wasn’t safe anymore. She had been working at the front desk of a hotel, and had slept at the hotel before learning about the Vergennes shelter through ACCAG, where she volunteered three days a week. She was initially hesitant to move into the shelter because she was uneasy about living in close quarters with strangers, but it quickly became a home, she said, and the other residents and student volunteers became a family.

According to Ready, 30 John Graham families found permanent housing and 15 people were employed in new jobs so far this year. “It’s not forever that they need a second chance,” Ready said. “They just need a leg up.”

Howard just signed a lease on an apartment in Middlebury. With a grant from the United Way Homeless Prevention Fund, she will be able to pay her first month’s rent while getting back on her feet and into a new job. But on Howard’s first night living alone, her friends at the shelter welcomed her back for one last dinner with the students. “It’s going to be hard to be by myself after living with 15 other people here,” she said. “But I’m ready to be on my own.”

McFadden and Haile, along with other Middlebury students, have organized a college symposium inspired by their time at the shelter, and in conjunction with their religious beliefs, titled “Challenging Complacency: Do Christians Care About Social Justice?” Scheduled for Nov. 9 to Nov. 17, speakers will include Shane Claiborne, a founding partner of The Simple Way, a radical faith community that lives among and serves the homeless in Kensington, North Philadelphia. Guitarist Lamont Hiebert, who helped launch an organization called Justice for Children International that works to prevent the sexual exploitation of children, will perform, and McFadden and Haile will encourage the college community to volunteer at places like the John Graham and Burlington shelters.

“Every one has their own idea about what it means to be homeless,” McFadden said, who came to John Graham last spring with lots of ideas, including the vague one that she wanted to help people. But it isn’t the ideas that keep her coming back, she insisted, it’s the dinner conversation and playing “Duck-Duck-Goose.”

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