The 2024 Vermont Statewide Legal Needs Assessment paints a dire picture: evictions are skyrocketing, legal assistance requests are at an all-time high, and Vermont faces a worsening housing crisis. But housing is just one piece of the puzzle. The report also covers family law, healthcare access, debt collection, and consumer protection issues, all areas where Vermont residents struggle to navigate the legal system.
Yet despite its broad scope, the report fails to ask the most important question: how many people are in legal trouble due to bad luck, and how many due to bad decisions? Instead, it falls back on a predictable narrative: greedy landlords, ruthless creditors, and a legal system rigged against “the little guy.” But the real story is far more complicated—and far more revealing.
Every five years, Legal Services Vermont conducts a legal needs assessment as required by the Legal Services Corporation (LSC), a federally funded entity. While not a state mandate, Vermont policymakers rely heavily on the report’s findings to justify tenant protections and other legal policies—despite its failure to distinguish between bad luck and bad decisions. If this report were truly about understanding the legal landscape, it would differentiate between those who genuinely need help and those who repeatedly make bad choices. But it doesn’t. Instead, it lumps all cases together, ensuring the narrative remains one-sided.
What the Report Gets Wrong (or Ignores Entirely)
➡️ Not All Evictions Are Unfair—Some Are Inevitable
The report treats all evicted tenants as victims, without differentiating between those who lost their homes due to circumstances beyond their control (job loss, medical emergencies) versus those who chronically fail to pay rent, damage property, or engage in illegal activity.
- How many evictions were due to tenants simply refusing to prioritize rent?
- How many trashed properties, caused disturbances, or violated leases repeatedly?
- How many were evicted before, moved into another unit, and did the same thing again?
The report doesn’t ask these questions—because the answers would challenge its premise. If it turned out that a significant percentage of evictions were justified, the entire activist-driven push for more tenant protections would crumble.
➡️ The Media’s Selective Storytelling: Where Are the Drunks and Junkies?
Watch any news segment about evictions, and you’ll notice a pattern: they always show the struggling single mother, the elderly couple, or the family with children. You’ll never see a headline about:
- The heroin addict who hasn’t paid rent in six months.
- The guy who wrecked an apartment and skipped town.
- The tenant who receives rental assistance but spends their paycheck on luxuries instead of rent.
These people exist—and they make up a significant percentage of evictions—but the media refuses to show them. Why? Because it doesn’t fit the narrative. If the public saw the real faces behind many evictions, there would be a lot less sympathy for blanket tenant protections and a lot more understanding of why landlords are sick of being scapegoats.
➡️ Landlords Are the Ones Who Actually Take the Loss
The state, activists, and media love to frame evictions as a failure of landlords to show “compassion”—but who actually takes the financial hit when tenants don’t pay?
- The tenant? No. Vermont has rental assistance programs, legal protections, and lengthy eviction processes that allow them to stay for months without paying.
- The state? The towns? The banks? Nope. They still collect their taxes, fees, and mortgage payments—no matter what.
- The landlord? Absolutely.
If a tenant stops paying, the landlord still owes property taxes, mortgage payments, insurance, and maintenance costs. If they can’t afford to cover those losses, the town takes the property for unpaid taxes, or the bank forecloses—all while still expecting landlords to “do the right thing.”
➡️ Tenant Protections Already Exist—And Landlords Pay for Them
Despite Vermont’s extensive rental assistance programs, eviction protections, and legal aid services, the housing crisis keeps getting worse. These policies haven’t solved the problem—they’ve only made landlords less willing to rent and housing more expensive for everyone.
- Rental assistance programs help cover rent for struggling tenants.
- Eviction moratoriums have kept tenants in place, often at the landlord’s expense.
- Legal aid organizations provide free representation to tenants, but landlords have to hire their own attorneys.
Ironically, who funds these programs? Landlords themselves—through their tax dollars. A Vermont landlord’s own taxes help fund a system designed to make their job harder, delay evictions, and force them to eat financial losses.
The Bigger Problem: Bad Decisions Aren’t Just a Housing Issue
The same lack of bad luck vs. bad decisions data extends beyond housing. The report also covers:
- Debt collection cases, without asking how many people spent beyond their means rather than facing unavoidable financial hardship.
- Family law disputes, without asking how many are the result of poor life choices versus genuine legal injustices.
- Public benefits issues, without distinguishing between those who struggle due to unforeseen circumstances versus those who game the system.
By lumping all cases together, the report erases personal responsibility from the conversation. It assumes that every legal problem is caused by an unfair system—not by bad decisions, reckless spending, or avoidable mistakes.
A Report That Protects the Narrative, Not the Truth
If Vermont’s policymakers actually wanted to fix the legal system, they would:
✅ Differentiate between bad luck and bad decisions in all legal areas, not just housing.
✅ Track data on why tenants are being evicted—so help goes to those who need it, not chronic non-payers.
✅ Stop shifting all financial risk onto landlords while guaranteeing the state and banks always get paid.
✅ Acknowledge that some tenants, debtors, and litigants are in legal trouble because of their own choices—not because the system is rigged against them.
Instead, the 2024 Vermont Statewide Legal Needs Assessment ignores these realities, pushing the same tired narrative while failing to ask the hard questions.
If Vermont wants to solve these issues, it needs to start with honesty. That means admitting that not every eviction is unfair, not every tenant is a victim, not every debtor is an innocent target, and not every landlord, lender, or business owner is a villain. Until that happens, expect more housing shortages, rising debt, overloaded courts, and a system that benefits only the state, the banks, and big developers—while small landlords and working-class Vermonters get squeezed even harder.
Or just wait until BlackRock takes over.
Dave Soulia | FYIVT
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