Vermont residents say their famously beautiful, green state is increasingly plagued by homelessness, crime, drug addiction and other social problems in its larger towns and cities.
The boroughs of Burlington and Brattleboro, among others, were too dangerous to walk at night after reports of passersby being attacked by thugs, locals told DailyMail.com.
Some blame the crisis on costly social programs in a Democratic-leaning state that has Bernie Sanders as a senator and gave President Joe Biden a landslide 36-point victory in 2020.
“People don’t feel safe going into town anymore,” small business owner and Republican candidate Mark Coester told DailyMail.com.
‘They can walk down the street and visibly see people with needles in their arms. Our towns and cities are suffering, and now the sense of hopelessness is only getting worse.”
Sleazy homeless camps like this one are increasingly common in and around Vermont’s larger towns and cities.
It’s a dramatic turnaround for the idyllic Green Mountain State, due in part to rising real estate prices during the pandemic.
Vermont’s problems are visible in Burlington, its largest city, with a population of about 44,000, including about 350 people living without homes on the streets or camping on the idyllic Lake Champlain waterfront.
Many of them congregate at night on Church Street, the beloved red-brick home of boutiques and eateries, ravaged by drugs like fentanyl and xylazine, also known as “tranq,” scaring off locals.
Residents recently told Fox News that the area becomes “really dangerous” at night.
An elderly woman noted that locals do not set foot in the area after dark because “people get beaten up at night.”
Since late August, Burlington police have been warning residents of the need to be on their guard, following a series of attacks by “large groups of suspects and perpetrators,” including young people.
In one incident, a victim was hospitalized after being attacked, knocked to the ground and kicked by a group in the street.
In another case, a New York youth was shot in the torso and seriously injured at a waterfront skate park.
Meanwhile, downtown store owners are complaining about a spike in shoplifting.
The CVS on Church Street recorded as many as 20 thefts every day in August.
Cafe workers complain that even their tip jars have been swiped by thieves.
Mark Bouchett, the owner of Homeport, a downtown gift and home goods store, said he recently hired security because his annual losses from shoplifters reached $75,000, in a interview with YouTuber Peter Santenello.
Bouchett said thieves have become bolder and more violent in recent years, stealing with a sense of impunity.
He called for more support from local police so that there could be “meaningful consequences for misconduct” in an increasingly lawless city.
Locals are expressing concern about the growing number of homeless people in Vermont, but are also concerned that crime and drug abuse are getting worse.
An apparently homeless man sleeps on a bench in downtown Burlington, Vermont’s largest city.
Burlington officials say they are working with the local community and government to help the homeless by making public housing, mental health services, shelters and drug treatment centers more available.
But locals say they want security and more police on the streets arresting offenders.
The city is working to hire more police and return money to the police after budget cuts. Nearly a third of the city’s troops were lost to exhaustion.
Vermont’s social problems are not limited to Burlington. Homeless camps have also become a common sight in places including Brattleboro and the capital Montpelier.
The national number of homeless people reached a record 3,458 homeless people this year.
That’s 163 more than the 3,295 recorded in 2023, and a staggering threefold increase over the state’s pre-Covid figures.
They include 107 veterans, 737 children, 855 people with mental illness, 309 people fleeing domestic or sexual violence, and 568 people with long-term disabilities, researchers found in January.
The homelessness epidemic has been exacerbated by the end of Vermont’s pandemic-era voucher program in July, which had covered the cost of motel rooms for the homeless.
In Montpelier and Barre alone, about 100 to 140 families are expected to leave their motels this fall.
Vermont social worker and TikToker Chibi Chanwick warned that those affected would soon face snow and freezing temperatures in Vermont’s harsh winters.
“I fully expect that there will be a lot of older dead people, underage dead people, people with disabilities who are dead because they’re outside, and that’s not good.” she said.
Rapidly rising real estate costs in Vermont have also forced families to downsize or even lose their homes and apartments.
Two security guards walk the Church Street Marketplace in Burlington, which has increased security amid fears of drug activity, gun violence and shoplifting.
Burlington opened a homeless shelter community last year, but more people than ever are sleeping on the streets.
Prices soared during the pandemic, as Americans left big cities behind in favor of small towns and leafy rural areas, including in Vermont.
The state has a rental vacancy rate of just 3 percent. Between 2025 and 2029, 24,000 to 36,000 housing units must be created to meet demand, according to the latest Vermont Housing Needs Assessment.
More than 90 Vermont lawmakers signed a letter this month asking Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican, to declare the rising homelessness rate a state emergency and expedite funding for temporary shelters.
“We are well past the point where our local communities can sustain the costs, both human and financial, of addressing this over the next few months,” they wrote, warning of the colder winter months ahead.
The myriad problems represent a dramatic turnaround in the fortunes of Vermont, which is known as the Green Mountain State and has a reputation for healthy outdoors and strong social services.
John Klar, a farmer and former tax lawyer in the small town of Barton, blamed the crises on “expensive and inefficient progressive policies that unfairly burden working-class Vermonters.”
“This has been exacerbated by sanctuary city laws, police and drug interdiction reductions, lax criminal justice enforcement and skyrocketing property values during the pandemic,” Klar told DailyMail.com.
He added, “Native and young Vermonters are fleeing the state in droves.”