Town water. My parents have a well, and it has been a pain from day one. Their old well was fine, but the new one has issues with iron bacteria, and even with a chlorinator in place, there’s like a 50/50 chance when they come home from a trip that the bacteria will have made it’s way into the pipes. The amount of time that my parents have had to flush out their whole system is bonkers. Lesson learned: I’m not buying a house that doesn’t have town water

Give 211 a call if you have a chance. They can be really helpful and get you directed towards the right resources - maybe even for things beyond food if you have other needs at the moment.

You are wrong. Pretty much no one who is homeless is getting housed the very same day right now. Period. Don’t believe me? See yesterday’s availability per Economic Services: https://outside.vermont.gov/dept/DCF/Shared%20Documents/ESD/EA/Housing.pdf

I’ll take your word for it. I just can’t personally speak to more than a year because that’s about how long I’ve been in this field.

Completely disagree with you. There are limits to who can enter the emergency housing program and you can’t simply walk into the state and get housed the next day. If there even is an appeal to the emergent housing program for homeless individuals in other states, the reality hits the second they arrive here and realize they can’t get housed.

~ someone who works with the homeless population

Agree with you. I work with homeless populations and can tell you that this data absolutely tracks with my lived experience. And for all the people saying the HUD count is inaccurate (which it is), that likely points to the real homeless population being even larger than the count suggests it is - NOT smaller. This is a major problem that folks need to wake up to. Everyone working in my field has been living in a state of crisis for the last year + and I’m glad to see VT Digger acknowledging the problem as it really is.