Op-Ed written by Simon Dennis of White River Junction, VT.

A version of this article was read to a Unitarian Universalist church in Woodstock, VT on October 22nd, 2023.

It's wonderful to be called back to speak with you again. Reflecting on my previous talks—ranging from philosophical musings on paradigm shift to personal confessions about my journey—I'm reminded of the privilege of sharing this space with you. When you offer me your ear, you offer me a voice. By affirming me as the agent or source of what I have to say, you affirm my personhood.

Along with the power to grant voice and personhood to one another, we also have the power to take these things away. I want to talk a bit about this latter potential which, through my work building emergency shelter for the unhoused, I have noticed is still very much alive and well both in the community and, if I am to be honest, in me as well.

Though I am proud to say that I have several sustained friendships with people who are currently unhoused, I should admit that I do maintain a subconscious line in the sand between myself and those experiencing homelessness. I have noticed that I still hold a fixed category of humans who don't have a home, to which I don't belong, and a category of humans who have a home, to which I do. I notice this line inside myself from my resistance when someone assumes that I, too, am unhoused. And I notice it in a flutter of mental dissonance when I hear stories of those who transition from housed to unhoused, as if a part of me is left wondering, how is this possible?

And, if I am honest, I may still harbor an unspoken belief that the unhoused may not suffer in the same way I do. It serves my interests to suspect that they are not as deserving as I am. I want to exclude them from my human family, and the only way to do this is to hold the view that they are somehow less human. And it could be anyone who disturbs my peaceful story about life: the incarcerated, the disabled, the addicted, the mentally ill, those to whom tragedy strikes, the poor.

I say that I draw this line in the sand, but perhaps it is more accurate to say this line is drawn in my heart. To maintain a line like this is an act of profound self-degradation. When I slice up the human family into pieces like this, I shrink my notion about who and what I am. Another word for putting people on the other side of an imaginary line like this is "othering," or in its more advanced stages, "dehumanization"—an act of profound spiritual consequence.

Tragically, this act also has political and legal consequences. Othering and dehumanization are essential aspects of any effort to garner public support for projects that harm human beings. The greater the harm, the greater the dehumanization needed for its justification.

For example, when I heard news outlets reporting the Israeli Defense Minister's statement about Hamas rebels: "We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly," I knew atrocities would follow. When societies commit genocide and other atrocities, they must have societal agreements about the inhuman nature of the victimized group. Dehumanization is a prerequisite for any attempt at human extermination; without it, such actions would be impossible to conceive.

Challenging the dehumanization campaign of the unhoused can be disruptive. I have noticed that some people feel threatened by my work over the past few years building shelters with and for the unhoused. Often people have tried to persuade me against the work by suggesting forcefully that those I helped were not deserving. And Hartford's push back against people trying to survive in tents, cars, and RVs, and against those trying to support them, has been fierce.

For example, the recent resistance to the Haven's proposed low-barrier shelter in Hartford came not from a fringe group but from pillars of the community, and the underlying logic of their message was simple: "We don't want these people in our community." Despite the fact that the unhoused are an extremely diverse group systematically created by, among other factors, a 5000-unit housing shortage in Windsor County¹, this message was openly implied during public forums by nearly everyone who opposed the plan. In the end, the proposal that would provide life-saving relief was defeated. The fact that the underlying logic of the opposition was never once brought into question, suggests that the current level of dehumanization of the unhoused in the Upper Valley has become quite extreme.

Is this level of dehumanization of the unhoused allowing something akin to an extermination? We don’t know for sure. We don't know because we can't bring ourselves to crunch the numbers. We don't know because we won’t calculate the case-fatality rate of being unsheltered. But one thing is certain: it was always high, and with the advent of fentanyl, it has become very high.

The people who have a better sense of it are the unsheltered themselves. They know because they painfully remember the members of their community who are lost every year. They know in their hearts how often the news comes.

Last summer, I visited some friends in a tent the day after an overdose had happened. Knowing that their grief needed recognition, I went down to the river behind the state office buildings to the home of Leslie and Hogan. After a heartfelt conversation about what had happened—the loss, the pain, the sadness—Leslie surprised us with a quip: "Don't worry, next week, it will be someone else." Though her attitude was different, her assumption that she would lose her friends was akin to those fighting on the front lines. It occurs to me that I also harbor the fear that Leslie and Hogan, too, will be gone before I see them next.

And though I have lately been out of the loop, I recently ran into Leonard. When I asked him who he was in touch with from the old gang, he told me glibly, "Everyone's dead." We took a moment to list off all the folks who have died in the past couple of years: Oak Nelson, a composer who used to sell beats to hip-hop artists; Trinity Pierce, a tough girl with a ready retort to any situation whom people flocked to; Jason Moot, who spoke about inventions he could make out of a broken generator; Todd, a Gulf War vet who loved his dog; Jessica Morehouse, the beautiful one whose body was found in a dumpster.

What did they die of? Diabetes, cancer, violence, overdose? What difference does it make? It boils down to the same thing: the stress of living outside, the stress of exclusion from the human family.

Tiffany once told me the same thing in the same words: "Everyone's dead." To put a finer point on it, she showed me a photograph from a 2001 Valley News article about a White River Junction homeless encampment down by the river. In the picture, there she was, sitting in chairs outside the encampment along with five others. Other than herself, only two remain. Of the six unhoused people in the photograph, 50% had died in the past two decades. This is hardly an exception. To my memory, of the 122 vouchered residents in Hartford in 2020, eleven perished in one year—a nearly 9% fatality rate.

Whatever the actual rate, it is certainly high enough to suggest the question: Could we be engaged in a process of othering unto death—dehumanization as a prelude to extermination? Could this be happening, not in the annals of history, not in a far-off land, but right here in small-town Vermont and New Hampshire?

But why ask the question? Is there something we, on the other side of this deadly divide, might do with the news "Everyone's dead," sent to us from beyond by Tiffany and Leonard? What can we, who have already divided up our human family into so many categories of us and them, do with this information? Is there some action that we, who already reside in but a fraction of our hearts, should be expected to take?

We might have so much to lose, so much to lose and so much to gain.

Thank you.

—

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1

As of July 1, 2023, Windsor County, Vermont was estimated to have 34,974 housing units, a figure often used as a proxy for the number of households. According to data cited, 18% of all households spend between 30% and 49% of their income on housing costs, while an additional 12% spend 50% or more. In total, approximately 30% of households exceed the 30%-of-income threshold commonly considered an indicator of housing cost burden. Applying these percentages to the total housing units suggests that around 10,500 households (0.30 × 34,974 ≈ 10,492) are currently cost-burdened. Although this calculation is necessarily approximate—given that the number of households is not always perfectly equal to the number of housing units and that income distributions and household needs vary—it provides a baseline estimate.

To translate this burden into a rough measure of how many additional housing units might be required to restore affordability, a highly simplified method would be to assume that each cost-burdened household would need a new unit priced at a level that would bring its total housing cost to 30% of income or below. This assumption yields a figure of approximately 10,500 additional units. However, this one-to-one approach likely overstates the need. In practice, increasing the housing supply can exert downward pressure on prices through market dynamics—often referred to as “filtering”—so that not every cost-burdened household would require a newly constructed unit. Some households might find more affordable options as existing units become less expensive or as currently overcrowded or overpriced units change hands.

With these considerations in mind, a plausible range might be from about half this estimate (approximately 5,000 new units) if the supply response and price adjustments are robust, up to the full 10,000+ units if those adjustments are minimal. Thus, a rough, illustrative range of 5,000 to 10,000 new housing units may serve as a starting point for policy discussions, recognizing that more detailed analyses—taking into account specific income distributions, current vacancy rates, unit type needs, and local regulatory conditions—would be required for a more precise determination.