Sleep-Out Helps Combat Homelessness in Vermont

On Saturday, Dec. 5 the John Graham Shelter in Vergennes hosted its second annual sleep-out at the foot of Otter Creek Falls near Marbleworks.

The fundraising event raised over $35,000, which surpassed last year’s total of $30,000. All of the money raised will go directly into helping homeless individuals find housing.

Last year, approximately 40 people participated in the event. This year, the number of participants was nearly 70.

Elizabeth Ready, Director of the John Graham Shelter articulated the importance of this event.
“The event is to bring awareness to the problem that so many of our neighbors have,” Ready began. “We are talking about families with children, we are talking about individuals, we are talking about people of all ages.”

Dan Adamek ’18, who works part time at the John Graham Shelter as a service coordinator and serves on the shelter’s board of directors, echoed Ready’s sentiments.

“I think that a lot of people are just unaware that there is a homelessness problem in Vermont,” Adamek said.

Adamek pointed out that living in a rural area is part of the reason such unawareness exists.
“I think to a lot of people, especially in rural areas, homelessness can be very invisible because it’s very easy to not see homelessness in places where people are so spread out.”

In addition to helping raise awareness, Ready emphasized how the event gives participants perspective.
“When you think that we’re only here for one night, whereas other people face uncertainty every night, it puts the situation in context,” Ready said.

Personally, Ready said the event helps her think twice about how she responds to those who call the shelter in need.

“Sometimes I thought ‘oh well, we’re full, let us take down your name and number,’ and now I feel like ‘oh, yeah we are full, but let’s see what we can do.’”

On how this event can help bring perspective to the College’s community specifically, Adamek said, “we live in such a privileged bubble on top of a hill, at an institution that has a lot of money concentrated in one place. But there are so many people around us who are working poor and working class people who are either homeless or on the brink of homelessness.”

Ready was quick to point out the gap between wages and housing costs as to why she believes Vermont has seen a spike in homelessness in the last five years,
“Bottom line,” Ready said, “most of the people at the shelter are working.” Guests come to the John Graham Shelter who work at grocery stores, nursing homes, farms, convenience stores, and other jobs because their wages are not keeping pace with the cost of housing.

Ready addressed how the John Graham Shelter has tried to deal with the growing demand for its services and the chronic problem that persists from the state having a high cost of living.

“What we try to do at the John Graham Shelter is we try to figure out some answer to the economic riddle by helping people get vouchers, helping people get benefits, helping people advance their income [and doing] whatever it takes,” Ready said.

The sleep out event began at 4 p.m. with a candlelight vigil on the green in town.

Diane Lanpher, Representative (D) of Vergennes, spoke about her experience doing the sleep-out last year and her role in the fight to end homelessness.

“It was a very cold night, but it was an eye-opening experience,” Lanpher said, recalling her sleep-out experience.

Specifically, Lanpher explains, “I had a lot of things that you don’t necessarily have. I didn’t fear for my safety that night. There were people around. We had access to a bathroom that most people wouldn’t.”

Lanpher recounts waking up at 4 o’clock and shivering in the bathroom because it was the only warm place she could find.

“I had to ask myself in the mirror,” Lanpher began, “would I be able to prepare to go to a job interview in two hours? Would I be prepared to go and find services that day? Thus, Lanpher stated, “people in that situation need our help, to give them the step up … we need to do the wrap around services, not just finding a place, but putting everything else that they need in place.”

Kesha Ram, Representative (D) of Chittenden, who is currently running for Lieutenant Governor, also spoke to those attending the vigil.

Put simply, Ram stated, “we have too many homeless Vermonters.”

To expose the severity of the situation, Ram stated, “right now we have people who sit in prison because they can’t get housing on the outside.”

Ram shared the first-hand experience she acquired while working as the legal director for Women Helping Battered Women before she entered municipal government.
“We watched so many families struggle to find access to housing, whether it was for one night or in the long term,” Ram said.

Ram also discussed the work she has done since joining the legislature and her work on the housing committee with Lanpher and others the last three years.
“A lot of our programs are not built well to support families and individuals as they transition,” Ram explained.

“We’ve sought to advance a lot of new and creative solutions in trying to create more access to supportive, service rich housing,” Ram continued.

As an example, Ram detailed how the committee has sought to allocate money spent on motels, which create an isolating housing experience, towards housing that is supported by housing trusts or into services from other organizations.

In her closing remarks, Ram spoke about the need to view homelessness as a human right.

“We have to turn the conversation around and remember that everyone deserves to have the dignity of being housed, of being supportive, or just having a warm place to stay,” Ram said.

Furthermore, Ram urged her audience to remember “anyone who is homeless is someone who has a family, had a family, deserves dignity, deserves somewhere warm to stay, deserves friendship and breaking the silence of the isolation of homelessness.”

Participants of the event expressed their passion and connection to the issue of homelessness.

For Fernanda Canales, principal of Salisbury Community Schools, and her husband, Chad Chamberlain, a teacher at Salisbury Community Schools, this was their first sleep out.

“I think we encounter families who are in this situation time and time again, and I just felt like I wanted to experience it,” Canales explained as to why they chose to participate.

Chamberlain agreed with his wife and also added that he felt that families in his community who were either homeless or struggling with homelessness neglected to reach out for support.

Canales agreed by saying: “A lot of times there is a stigma, they don’t want us to know that they are living under certain circumstances.”

Bringing awareness to the issue and approaching the situation with empathy, as the John Graham Shelter is committed to doing, will help Vermonters become more invested in the cause and learn how to deal with the issues more directly.