Op Ed "Do You Think We Want To Live Like This?"
Published in the Addison Independent, April 10th 2025
Editor’s note: This is the first in the Freedom & Unity series that’s part of the Independent’s mission of informing, connecting and strengthening our community here in Addison County. We will publish perspectives that we hope will encourage more awareness, connection and conversation about how values like justice, equity and interdependence show up and are challenged in our community of communities.
His wife scurried to collect their things as her half-asleep, disheveled partner hollered at the authorities who had come to “move them along” from their encampment under a bridge. The nights prior, the couple had been sleeping in their car. But when it broke down, the unhoused couple had no choice but to sleep outside while their vehicle was in a mechanic’s garage waiting to be repaired.
As the police watched, the past-middle-aged husband and wife walked away. Awkwardly carrying their tent, sleeping bags, and trash bags containing their medicines, some groceries and clothing. Not sure where they’d be allowed, they walked past the parking lot where they had been sleeping in their car and disappeared into the adjacent woods.
This man and his wife were Addison County people. As they grew up in this valley, they would not have imagined the turns their lives would take. They met in high school, fell in love, married and had good jobs and beautiful children. As the years rolled along, they experienced a series of health crises and suffered the associated financial devastation when basic human needs collide with our broken healthcare system. Impoverishment and strained familial relationships followed. And then there they were, homeless in Vermont.
Our Green Mountain home is experiencing increasing disparities and inequities between “the haves” and “the have-nots.” The rich are getting richer, and the poor are falling off a cliff. The status quo may be working well for the enfranchised. But it is not working for the disenfranchised. Homelessness has increased by over 300% in Vermont in the past five years. More neighbors are experiencing hunger and food insecurity than ever before. Thankfully, opioid deaths seem to be down, but alcohol use is up. And to be clear, the majority of folks facing increasing marginalization in Vermont are from Vermont.
The virus of political polarization is also spreading in Vermont, which has always prided itself as a home for those who value individual freedoms, but not at the expense of the unifying interest in our common well-being and justice for all. That unity is being strained by peddlers of division. Politicians who promote fraudulent narratives of scarcity, blaming others for their grievances, and rallying their tribes with the validation of like-mindedness. As these tribes retreat further apart, deeper into their respective echo chambers of like-mindedness, the disenfranchised and oppressed remain. Always paying the highest price for political divisiveness.
Last week, Vermont started “exiting” hundreds of unhoused neighbors from its motel/hotel emergency housing program. Over 235 folks were thrown out on April 1. Victims fleeing domestic abuse, veterans suffering traumatic brain injuries, and pregnant women in their first or second trimester. Young people with complex untreated mental needs and older people with dementia. The motel shelter program is expensive, and it is not the effective, long-term solution Vermont needs to end chronic homelessness. But instead of sitting down and figuring out a better strategy, our increasingly politically divided elites have given us this scenario. Throwing Vermonters out into an overburdened network of already-full shelters and human services facing growing federal cuts. On the horizon are waves of impoverished Vermonters struggling to keep their lights on and their kids fed.
Among the Vermonters being exited from motel shelter last week was the couple from under the bridge. Still in love and doing their best to remain sane. Trying to survive the dehumanizing effects of marginalization together.
Our little state is facing some big problems. Justice reminds us that we are all created equal and worthy of dignified, interdependent lives. Will we surrender to division and the temptation to subordinate the needs of the marginalized to those of the privileged?
When we see the increasing number of unhoused, unsheltered people in our communities, will we cynically judge and question their decisions? Will we entrench in our ideologies where the voices tell us, “They are not like us.” Or will we step out of our comfort zones to more deeply and generously connect and care for each other in our community of communities? How shall we live in this special place of “freedom & unity?”
—————
Tom Morgan is the founder of Green Mountain Justice (greenmountainjustice.org) and a member of the Champlain Valley Unitarian Universalist Society (cvuus.org), part of the Vermont Interfaith Action (viavt.org) network.
