City leaders in Burlington, Vermont, have been debating the future of a volunteer program serving free meals to the unhoused.
“I’m homeless and this is one of the only areas we can actually get a free meal and not starve to death.”
On a warm June afternoon, Don was waiting at the Marketplace Garage for a meal provided by Food Not Cops, a volunteer program that brings daily healthy meals to the unhoused in Burlington.
In May business owners wrote to the Burlington City Council to express safety and sanitation concerns related to the program.
The city council subsequently passed a resolution mandating that the mayor’s office facilitate a move of the Food Not Cops program out of the city’s downtown Marketplace Garage. In July, with $10,000 in funding from the council, the program moved to City Hall Park.
Now, city leaders and community members are debating whether the move was even warranted.
Ward 2 resident Andre Clark experienced homelessness before founding Street Cats Burlington to help the unhoused in the city.
“I’m here to express my dismay with the statement that was made at a previous city council meeting and presented as data-driven evidence. The statement said that Food Not Cops leaving the parking garage caused an immediate 50-percent decrease in heroin use, crack usage, public urination and defecation as well as sexual solicitation,” Clark recounted. “There is no actual numerical data to back this statement. Whether it was the intention or not that statement demonizes Food Not Cops and the work of their many volunteers.”
Ward 3 resident Lee Morrigan requested the councilor retract the statement.
“This data sounded dubious to me so I filed public records requests to verify this claim,” Morrigan said. “The sheriff’s department confirmed through a records request that they do not track this data.”
During City Council Affairs reports, Ward 6 Democrat Becca Brown McKnight defended her previous comments.
“In my remarks at the last meeting I stated that since the group had left the garage crime had gone down. This information that I shared was based on a phone conversation that I had with one of the sheriffs that works there in the garage. The information he shared with me was qualitative in nature,” McKnight explained. “So I will in no way be issuing a retraction because everything I said is factually accurate as it was relayed to me.”
Her refusal to retract the statement led to pushback from other councilors.
Ward 1 Progressive Carter Neubieser directly quoted her comments from the council’s July 14th meeting.
"This is a quote, your own words, it’s not impeaching your character. ‘Data from the sheriff’s department shows that the very day the lunch program left the Marketplace Garage they saw at least a 50 percent decrease in things like open heroin use, open crack use, overdoses, public urination, defecation as well as sexual solicitations at the downtown parking garage the day that they left,” Neubeiser quoted. “That is putting forward a statistic claiming it is from...”
McKnight breaks in, “Point of order.”
“The sheriff’s department in Chittenden County,” continued Neubeiser.
“That is an incorrect characterization of my statement,” McKnight said.
Neubeiser continued:
“I am not trying to impugn anybody’s motives nor am I trying to raise this issue to win political points,” Neubeiser said. “That is a bold claim that has real impacts on hundreds of people volunteering their time to cook food and hand it out to people who are literally starving who don’t have access to food elsewhere.”
Ward 2 Progressive Gene Bergman said the claim regarding the impact of Food Not Cops is extremely troubling.
“The information is anecdotal at best but it was reported as demonstrably factual, and it is not. The implication that the feeding program will lead to even more problems in City Hall Park than we had before is not based on accurate and fair data,” Bergman said. “Unwarranted fears are stoked. It reinforces the false belief that downtown is unsafe to come to. Downtown is safe.”
