Russell Bradbury-Carlin has served as executive director of Interaction: Youth Services and Restorative Justice (formerly Youth Services) for 10 years. This commentary comes to us via VTDigger.org.
BRATTLEBORO-Brattleboro has been going through many of the same problems that other communities in the state and the country are experiencing: a significant increase in homelessness, addiction, and crime.
And, while many of us in the human service community have seen these issues increase for a number of years, the pandemic and the fallout from the disruption to our society it caused accelerated these problems. It brought them to the forefront of our community's awareness, especially to those who had not been aware of the longer trajectory.
Recently, our community has had an understandable response to these issues: We've increased the level of police involvement.
In Brattleboro, our police department has created a new addition to its force: the Brattleboro Resource Assistance Team, or BRAT. These unarmed officers will be more present in the community and seek to direct people who are disturbing the community in some form or manner to get assistance. And the town of Brattleboro recently approved $700,000 to open a police station outpost at the bottom of the parking garage downtown.
These are reasonable responses to the issues facing the town. But they are obviously not the solutions to homelessness and other social issues (which are often not in and of themselves illegal) and, one could argue, not the ultimate solutions to crime.
I fear, though, that they are predicated on a very concerning assumption. I have heard this assumption referred to, if not directly said. This assumption goes along the lines of: Brattleboro is filled with nonprofit human services organizations. And they have tried, but failed, to deal with these issues.
Let me contradict that assumption.
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First, after working in human services my entire working life, I believe there are some structural and broad latent beliefs about our work that are misguided. We are treated, at times, by an old model of "charities" - not that different from a group of volunteers working out of church basements.
That could not be further from the truth with the many organizations that work with the homeless and people suffering with addiction.
Many of our federal and state partners are contracting with us to do professional work - work that, if nonprofits didn't take on, the state would have to. It makes sense. Our organizations are more embedded in our communities, and it is much cheaper for taxpayers to have these nonprofits perform these services than to have state workers do them.
Unfortunately, we are asked to do (and most often do) professional-level work, but with contract structures that see us as scrappy volunteers (forcing us to actually have to be unnecessarily scrappy).
Our contracts do not come with cost-of-living increases, for instance. We often get the same amount year after year while our expenses increase. And when increases do come, they sometimes come with an expected increase in workload - not really covering actual costs.
A well-run nonprofit operates with 25 to 30% administrative cost. This covers salaries for the executive director, financial staff, human resources, and other administrative staff, plus, often, the cost of rent, electricity, heat, phones, internet, etc. Federal and state contracts have recently started to cover 15% of that cost, up from 10%. Unfortunately, this did not include an increase of 5% in contracts, but only the permission to cover administrative costs with existing funds. That still leaves a significant gap.
So, to bring this around, nonprofit human service agencies have been operating for decades on vapor and pennies. In the meantime, homelessness, addiction, and mental health struggles have skyrocketed along with the cost of living, while we essentially make do and scrape along with the amounts that we are given.
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It seems, though, that when a "crisis" arises, funds can be found.
Recently, I learned that when the state of Vermont opened two (much-needed) family shelters for the winter, they signed a contract with a for-profit, out-of-state firm to open and operate them.
To run similar services, human-service nonprofits often pay staff an hourly rate of somewhere in the lower- to mid-$20s. We often struggle to hire staff.
Yet this for-profit is paying its frontline workers $107.50 per hour! Its executives will be paid $330 per hour!
Why is it that state governments can suddenly find funding to respond to these emergencies but have not broadly and significantly responded to the slow grinding down of local, nonprofit, human services?
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I believe that almost any local human service nonprofit could run the most successful homeless shelter at half the cost of that for-profit organization.
Yes, there is a crisis with these issues. But I'd like to think we can walk and chew gum at the same time. If we are increasing police forces and hiring for-profit firms to do human services, let's pay nonprofits for what they are being asked to do. Let's adequately fund human service nonprofits.
No, wait - I take that back. Let's fund them more than "adequately." Let's fund them like the professionals that they are.
Let our local human service nonprofits and our communities thrive.
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