2022 Annual Meeting

Wednesday, September 21, 2022
Held Via Zoom

VCEH/VAHC Joint Meeting: 10:00am - Noon
VAHC Annual Meeting: 12:15pm-1:30pm

According to the recently released 2022 Out of Reach Report, in order to afford a modest, two-bedroom apartment at the Fair Market Rent in Vermont, renters need to earn $23.40 per hour, or $48,664 annually. The numbers make it clear that the report is aptly named. Housing that is truly affordable is out of reach. The recent State Auditor’s Report showed the hundreds of millions of dollars that have spent on resolving our homelessness crisis, while the numbers of families experiencing homelessness has increased.

It would seem that the former mentioned report helps inform the latter. We know that much has been done to exit families from homelessness into housing. However, the housing crisis continues to also exit families from housing into homelessness! 

If looking merely at numbers, solutions can certainly seem to be out of reach. Both VAHC Membership and Vermont Policymakers have expressed the need to look at the housing/homelessness challenges in our State in a more holistic way. We frequently say there is “no magic bullet” to solve this crisis, and the reason for that is because of the complexity of the problem. 

Despite the effectiveness of looking at numbers, and the importance of how numbers remove the anecdotal nature of our conversation about these realities, it is important we remember this isn’t a problem that can be defined – or solved- with numbers. It’s a lived reality of real people: real people who need help, real people who lack housing, real people who can’t afford the housing they have, and real people who fear that salvation from despair is indeed out of reach.

For all of these reasons, the theme of our 2022 Joint Meeting will be: Reaching Out: A Human Response to the Housing Crisis. We gather not simply as practitioners discussing best practices; we gather as passionate Vermonters who are reaching out to our neighbors across the State who need our help. We reaching out to the person without a home. We are reaching out to the Vermonter who lives in the fear that comes with housing insecurity.  

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Join us on Wednesday, September 21, 2022: let's reach out together.