Earlier in the month, Vermont Tenant’s Karin Ames and the Fair Housing Project’s Corrine Yonce met with Winooski Mutual Aid organizers over Zoom on a Sunday evening to lead a Tenants Rights training and discussion. Winooski Mutual Aid is a grassroots, volunteer community group whose mission is to to bridge the gaps that established systems have left, and to make sure everyone in Winooski has the access to the resources they need.
The training included the basics of tenant rights and responsibilities, leases, security deposits, repairs, health code violations, terminations, evictions, fair housing and disability law – very similar to the regular Tenant Skills class Vermont Tenants offers (for free) each week online. But the focus from the mutual aid group was to get specific resources shared directly to the community, addressing a accessibility gap of important housing education for some of Winooski’s most vulnerable renters.
Not only is lack of language access a barrier for the renter community, often the social service workers serving the community also lack the training and resources to know how to respond to certain livability issues .
Nine organizers attended the evening workshop, which was held during their typical biweekly meeting time – a time of week when organizers and the community they work with find themselves most regularly off work, away from children, or otherwise free from the busy life obligations that so many of us intimately know. The workshop was modified to give extra time for specific questions, which the organizers had many.
The organizers- who volunteer their time for this work but many of whom intimately know the ins and outs of social services from professional and/or personal experiences- emphasized the need for language access. Many of the community members served by the mutual aid group, they shared, either do not speak English or lack fluency in the language to understand the nuances of tenants’ and Fair Housing rights in English.
Not only is lack of language access a huge barrier for the Winooski renter community to understand and advocate for their rights, often the social service workers serving the community also lack the training and resources to know how to respond to certain livability issues.
Most recently, the Chittenden County region saw this gap in real time when Vermont Public Radio and Seven Days did a housing investigation which revealed – among many concerning housing gaps – a case where a social worker advised a tenant to carry the burden of exterminating an infestation in their rental unit. Not only does Landlord Tenant Law require that licensed technicians address major code violations (such as infestations). The infestation was later revealed to be a recurring problem in the building and in more than one unit (as is often – but not always- the case with infestations). Under Vermont law, landlords are financially responsible for extermination of infestations (including roaches, mice, squirrels, etc.) when it is a pre-existing condition, when it is in more than one unit, or if it is in common spaces. To be clear, this particular example is not meant to call out the caseworkers who shared misinformation, but highlights a larger gap in housing education for the people who need it most.
If only the organizers’ questions continued to have such clear answers.
The conversation quickly shifted to more challenging conflicts. One organizer shared that a family she is working with is in the process of being evicted, but due to the lack of availability of units that fit their needs – apartments spacious enough for the whole family, within budget, and in the current school district – the family has been advised to stay in place, even while risking an eviction record. Not only is being in conflict with your landlord uncomfortable, but an eviction record will pose even greater barriers to housing access for this family moving forward. The organizer added that the apartment has no working water, but the family is too afraid to advocate for their rights to water access for fear of retaliation.
Another organizer shared that a client recently housed by a refugee resettlement agency was provided a home that is not accessible to the tenants’ mobility needs – with no opportunity to make modifications to the unit for accessibility. National Fair Housing Law protects the right for folks who fall into the disability protected class to make requests for reasonable modifications (a physical change) to their units. But that right alone does not ensure all people with specific mobility challenges have housing choice or access to housing that meets their needs. To that point, this recent VTDigger commentary by Deborah Lisi-Baker, a Waterbury resident and member of the Vermont Coalition for Disability Rights, illustrates the pervasive need for more accessible housing in Vermont. Beyond the inconvenience of not being able to leave and enter their home unassisted, their life would be at risk in an emergency, such as a fire.
In response to some of the resources Karin and Corrine shared, the organizers said “we’ve already worked with that organization, but then they sent us to another,” multiple times, describing an all-to-familiar pattern where individuals and families are referred to resource after resource without having their housing problems solved. The labor of navigating housing assistance is compounded by the administration requirements for the other subsidies critical to their daily lives – food access, education, transportation. Though there are some social support systems that work, and some people are connected to case workers at social service agencies who can help them navigate the process, the case workers are often overloaded allowing for some people to fall through the cracks. It should go without saying – these stories are only from the few people the organizers are able to connect with. Certainly there are many who tire out from the process of being sent from nonprofit to nonprofit, and simply learn to live without.
“Who will hold these cases?” asks one organizer. “Who will make sure these families are seen through to the end?” The organizers describe fatigue from the families they work with, often losing the energy and time to pursue such complicated problems, and even the clarity where to go and what to do.
We don’t have the answers. “Call us,” we say, “we will try to help,” but we know even our professional roles have limitations. It seems that in Winooski, the Winooski Mutual Aid organizers are the ones in relationship with families who are in crisis, and end up trying to piece together complicated housing situations which multiple organizations are separately working on. The siloed work and lack of interorganizational communication often leaves people confused and feeling unsupported. Organizers acknowledge that even when local groups and providers have done what they can to support housing needs of families, the harsh reality of housing remains, and explaining this truth is important. Some WMA organizers described being in the position of piecing together and “holding these cases” with the families, which begs the question – who holds these cases everywhere else?