The Deeper Dig

Since last year, realtors have described unprecedented home-buying, driving up prices and competition. What’s less clear is how the pandemic has affected the state’s rental market. But one family’s story backs up the word on the street: People are scrambling for apartments that aren’t there.

Connecting Vermont’s most rural homes to high-speed internet has been a challenge for decades. Christine Hallquist, the incoming executive director of the state’s new community broadband board, hopes to finish the job within seven years.

A series of court rulings over the past year has chipped away at Vermont’s long-standing ban on sending public tuition dollars to religious schools. Now, the state has to resolve major questions about how to regulate private schools that get taxpayer money — with a new school year only two months away.

It’s still too soon to know what the long-term effects of Covid-related migration might be. But many families who found their way to Vermont last year say they’re not going anywhere.

The Covid-19 state of emergency gave the Scott administration the authority to maintain a vast social safety net during the pandemic. Landlords were barred from evicting renters, homeless Vermonters were housed free of charge in motels around the state, and a series of meal distribution programs ensured families access to food.

Now that the emergency declaration has ended, advocates are nervous that the boost in social services over the past 15 months will be coming to an end too.

Guests: Anore Horton (Hunger Free Vermont), Xander Landen (VTDigger)

In Vermont’s idyllic small towns, injustice can lurk below the surface.

At a live storytelling event last week, VTDigger’s Katie Jickling and Kevin O’Connor spoke about Vermonters whose experiences remained invisible to their communities for years at a time — and about the process of bringing those stories to light.

For Jickling, a Facebook message from a former schoolmate this January led to five months of conversations with Sam McPhetres and Rose Earl, two women who came forward to report abuse by former Randolph Union Middle/High School vice principal David Barnett. How did the close-knit school community overlook the abuse, she wondered?

O’Connor met the Providence family in 2009 for a story about the optimism of a multiracial family during the inauguration of President Barack Obama. Eleven years later, amid a national reckoning over racial injustice after the murder of George Floyd, they had a different conversation. Rohan, Aaron and Justin Providence detailed their treatment as young Black men at the hands of Brattleboro police, surprising even their mother with what they had silently endured.

Local Live(s) was produced by Back Pocket Media and sponsored by Vermont Glove.

Benjy Renton, who just completed his undergraduate studies, has spent a year and a half earning accolades for his work tracking the pandemic. “It’s been quite nuts,” he said.

It’s been one year since George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis, sparking rallies for racial justice across the country. In Vermont, these events were mostly led by young, Black organizers, who brought the movement to towns throughout the second whitest state in the country.

A year later, we asked some of these activists: What’s changed? And what hasn’t?

Guests: Noel Riby-Williams, Maroni Minter, David Phair

While the pandemic demanded the attention of the public last year, preliminary data shows that at least 157 Vermonters died in 2020 due to opioid-related overdoses — an average of about three people per week. That’s even more than the state lost to Covid.

Advocates say that number is alarming. They also point out that the crisis has been worsening for years.

Guests: Kyle Burditt (Turning Point Center of Rutland), Emma Cotton (VTDigger)

The front line for difficult conversations about vaccines is often the exam table at your local health clinic. We asked doctors around the state how they’re talking to patients about the Covid vaccine — and what lessons others can use when talking to the people in their lives.

Guests: Alison Landrey (Northern Counties Health Care), Heather Stein (Community Health Centers of Burlington), Jill Blumberg (White River Family Practice)