Why does the U.S. — the richest country in the world — have the most poverty of any advanced democracy? Why are homeless encampments popping up from Seattle to Burlington?

The answer is that, knowingly or unknowingly, many of us benefit from keeping poor people poor.

That is the argument made by Matthew Desmond in his bestselling new book, “Poverty, by America.” Desmond won the Pulitzer Prize for his 2016 book, “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City," which was named by Book Riot as one of the 50 best nonfiction books of the last century. He is a professor of sociology at Princeton University, a recipient of a MacArthur “genius” fellowship, and was named by Politico in 2016 as one of “fifty people across the country who are most influencing the national political debate.”

He argues that regulations ranging from zoning to environmental laws are being used to block affordable housing, a key factor that is driving the homeless crisis. He says that this problem is often especially acute in communities known for their otherwise progressive politics. Low wages are kept low for the benefit of the more affluent.

“In most residential land in America, it's illegal to build anything except a single detached family home,” Desmond told The Vermont Conversation. “That little regulation buried inside of our zoning codes really means that the only place poor families can live are neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage, concentrated poverty, and that creates a level of disadvantage of a whole other order. I think that we need to think about our role and our complicity in maintaining those walls around our communities.”

Desmond intends his work to be “a call to action. It means that we need to get our tails down to that zoning board meeting on a Thursday night at eight o'clock and stand up and say, Look, I refuse to be a segregationist. I refuse to deny other kids opportunities my kids receive living here. Let's build [affordable housing].”

Matthew Desmond’s work is grounded in his own experience growing up in poverty. He started studying housing, poverty, and eviction in 2008, when he lived among poor tenants and their landlords in Milwaukee. He now directs the Eviction Lab at Princeton, and is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, where “Poverty, By America” was recently excerpted.

Desmond wants to inspire a new abolitionist movement. “Poverty abolitionists view poverty not as a minor social issue or an inevitability, but as an abomination,” he said. “It shares with other abolitionist movements -- the movement to abolish slavery [and] prisons, for example -- the recognition, the conviction, that if my gain comes at someone else's loss, that's corrupting in a way." 

"A poverty abolitionist divests from exploitation even if it benefits us. We try to shop and invest in solidarity with poor workers," he said. "We want a government that has a balanced and sensible welfare state, a government that does much more to fight poverty than to alleviate the tax burdens of the affluent. And we are for integrated communities and open, inclusive neighborhoods.”

Poverty abolitionism “is a political mission,” said Desmond, “but it's also a personal stance.”

Editor's Note: This Vermont Conversation with Ed Koren was recorded at his home in Brookfield in October 2022. Koren died on April 14, 2023 at the age of 87.

When the New Yorker published Ed Koren’s first cartoon 60 years ago, it marked the beginning of a relationship that has come to define both the magazine and the artist. Koren’s cartoons feature hairy, long-nosed characters that poke fun at issues from the serious to the mundane, ranging from rural life, to politics, consumerism, climate change, to encounters on the street — or in his case, on the dirt road where he lives in Brookfield, Vermont, his home since the 1970s with his wife, Curtis. He has been a volunteer firefighter in his community for over three decades.

Koren, 86, is one of America’s most celebrated and beloved cartoonists. He has contributed some 1,400 cartoons to the New Yorker over the past six decades. He was Vermont’s Cartoonist Laureate from 2014 to 2017, and his cartoons have also appeared everywhere from the New York Times to Vanity Fair to Sports Illustrated to numerous books. His latest collection of cartoons is Koren in the Wild.

Fellow New Yorker contributor Bill McKibben says of Koren, “Sometimes one thinks of the cartoonist as 'making fun.' But though Ed's drawings have long been the funniest thing in the New Yorker, it's because they're essentially kind, filled with the understanding that we're all trying hard. And that kindness, of course, is what makes him such a remarkable neighbor to all of us in Vermont.”

The Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction recently launched the Ed Koren Scholarship Fund to support “an emerging cartoonist who is also looking to enrich the cultural and civic life of Vermont.” Koren’s work is also featured in an exhibition about the climate crisis at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass., “Down to the Bone,” which includes his cartoons and the images of nature photographer Stephen Gorman.

Ed Koren continues to make people laugh even as he faces a serious predicament: He has incurable lung cancer, which he was diagnosed with in 2020. 

Koren, who I’ve known for many years, has long politely declined my interview requests, protesting that he didn’t think he was that interesting. I begged to differ, and finally, last week he agreed to talk. I found him in his studio at his home doing what he loves, drawing cartoons for the New Yorker.

“I'm an inhabitant of two worlds,” he tells me, sitting in a wheelchair in front of his drawing table in a room that overlooks a lush autumn forest. “My early work was based on the Upper West Side.” By contrast, “Vermont has always had its own milieu that I've drawn from, and I oftentimes mix and match.”

I ask him why he draws hairy creatures. “It makes it funnier. There's some cartoons that I've done that just aren't funny enough without hair. And I love hair. I love to draw hair. I can't suppress my hand. … The hand really is the key instrument here. It keeps working and keeps flying along.”

Koren’s advice to young people is to “find your own voice. It's what I tell young cartoonists. Don't accept situations where you have to work for so many decades of your life in something you really don't like. …Don't hesitate to change if it's not what you want.”

Koren has been a brilliant chronicler and satirist of the human condition. “I'm irrepressible when it comes to seeing other people's folly and missteps and kind of haplessness. So I just kept doing it because I love to do it," he said.

“I love my life. I love my work. I would hate to say goodbye to it.”

Author Tracy Kidder has been described as a “master of narrative nonfiction.” Kidder won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award for his 1981 book, “The Soul of a New Machine,” about the development of cutting edge computers. He is the author of more than a dozen books including the acclaimed 2003 New York Times bestseller, “Mountains Beyond Mountains,” about the late global health pioneer Dr. Paul Farmer, co-founder of Partners In Health. The book is often assigned as required reading in colleges.

The Washington Post says that Kidder writes about “the moral value of small victories in a world of big problems.”

Homelessness is the focus of Kidder’s latest bestselling book, “Rough Sleepers: Dr. Jim O’Connell’s Urgent Mission to Bring Healing to Homeless People.” Kidder spent five years following Dr. O’Connell as he worked the streets of Boston. Kidder was moved by the people he met who were experiencing homelessness in Boston and wanted to tell their stories. “If you get to know them, to really look at them — and a lot of people never do — you realize that they're every bit as human as you and I, and that old adage, There but for the grace of God go I.”

“The engine of every good story is human character,” said Kidder. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, Atlantic, and the New York Times but he insisted, “I'm a storyteller more than I am a journalist.”

“I stopped thinking of myself as a journalist around the time of the Iraq War. I didn't want to be associated,” he explained. “Because there were so many lies told and so much bad reporting… it starts to taint the term. And then you have Fox News. …It's a wonderful profession, journalism. I believe in it utterly. But I want to see it practiced better.”

Kidder says of his craft that “the techniques of storytelling don't belong exclusively to fiction.” Good writing should “be like a pane of glass. The writing itself should be interesting but it doesn't have to be flashy. I believe in immersion in the story that I've discovered.”

On April 3, social worker Leah Rosin-Pritchard was working at a Brattleboro shelter for people experiencing homelessness when she was killed, allegedly by a shelter resident.

The brutal murder of the 36-year old shelter coordinator shocked the state. It struck especially close to home for Rick DeAngelis, co-executive director of Good Samaritan Haven, which operates shelters and transitional housing in Barre and Montpelier. In February, DeAngelis’s son Gabe was stabbed multiple times while working at a Montpelier warming shelter. He is recovering from his wounds.

Vermont’s system of care for people who are unhoused or in need of mental health services is in a perilous state. This fragile system will be further strained as pandemic funding for emergency housing is about to end for about 3,000 people who are currently living in motels. Affordable housing is in critically short supply, psychiatric beds are scarce, an opioid crisis rages, and homelessness is rising. Vermont has the second-highest per-capita rate of homelessness in the country, behind only California, according to a recent government report. 

Rick DeAngelis began working with people who are experiencing homelessness in Boston in the 1980s. DeAngelis went on to work at the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board and was the first executive director of what is now Downstreet Housing and Community Development before becoming co-director of Good Samaritan Haven in 2020.

DeAngelis said “there is a perfect storm of factors that have come together over the last couple of years to create this crisis situation.”

Anne Sosin, interim director of the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition, insists that the shortage of affordable housing is the primary driver of homelessness. “The vast majority of people who are experiencing homelessness can be successfully housed.” She said that a strategy “that combines housing with a supportive service model [has] made really dramatic progress” in other cities.

DeAngelis, a lifelong advocate for people experiencing homelessness, said that despite the current challenges, “we have an opportunity in every moment, to try to rebuild, to heal, to start again.”

Vermont journalist Sue Halpern reports on national issues for the New Yorker magazine, where she is a staff writer. Her recent reporting has included stories about the 40-year effort to ban abortion pills, the promise and peril of artificial intelligence, and threats to democracy. One topic that she has covered in depth is the effort to subvert elections. She has written about candidates for secretary of state who deny that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, attempts by election deniers to access electronic voting systems and the Republican war on voting. 

Halpern was recently shocked to discover that Vermont is currently considering allowing internet voting, which experts have described as “a security nightmare.” The provision, which is supported by the Office of the Vermont Secretary of State, is tucked into legislation, H.429, that was approved last month by the Vermont House and is now being considered in the Senate. Among those arguing against Vermont’s internet voting provision are the watchdog groups Common Cause, Public Citizen, Free Speech for the People and the Brennan Center for Justice.

Halpern is the author of seven books, including the best-selling “A Dog Walks into a Nursing Home” and “Four Wings and a Prayer,” which was made into an Emmy-nominated film. She was a columnist for Mother Jones, Ms. Magazine and Smithsonian Magazine, and has written on science, technology and politics for the New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, The New Republic and The New York Review of Books. She is a scholar-in-residence at Middlebury College, where she directs the program in narrative journalism. Halpern is also a board member of the Vermont Journalism Trust, the parent organization of VTDigger.

Based on her reporting on internet voting, Halpern insisted that “every computer science expert who has looked into internet voting is against it because it is insecure.”

Halpern has recently reported on artificial intelligence engines such as ChatGPT. “My biggest concern is that it's going to be used for disinformation and misinformation as we go forward in our very fractured political life,” she said.

Halpern’s reporting shines a light on the fragile state of democracy in the U.S.

“We have people who are trying to undermine the two parts of our public life that are central to the preservation of democracy, and those are public schools and public libraries,” she said. “I'm deeply worried that the people who are trying to maintain this democracy are kind of working on the case a little bit too late, and they're not quite as wily as the people who are trying to undermine it.”

It’s a tough time for books. A wave of book bannings is occurring throughout numerous states. Last school year, more than 2,500 books were banned, according to PEN America. The vast majority of the targeted books feature LGBTQ+ themes or characters of color. Meanwhile in Vermont, the state colleges announced in February a plan to close their libraries and sell off their books.

Against this backdrop, Duncan McDougall has quietly crusaded to expand literacy and give away books to underserved children and communities throughout Vermont and New Hampshire. Twenty five years ago, McDougall, a former management consultant and wilderness guide, founded the Children’s Literacy Foundation, or CLiF, and ran it out of his home in Waterbury Center. To date, CLiF has donated $10 million worth of books to more than 350,000 children in 85% of the towns in Vermont and New Hampshire. CLiF now runs more than 1,000 programs per year in schools, rural libraries, prisons, and other locations where children and parents are at risk of low literacy.

The literacy gap is wide. Nationally and in Vermont, more than two-thirds of fourth graders read below grade level, according to the Literacy Network.

For children with low literacy, “the probability of them getting through high school is much lower, the probability of them going beyond high school is lower,” McDougall said. “It's a vicious cycle. So what we do at the Children's Literacy foundation is we try to inspire those kids and give them experiences and resources that can help them change that cycle. … For a child who's never had that opportunity to choose a book that's really on a topic that they love, it’s life changing.”

This week marks a milestone in New England's literacy efforts. After a quarter century at its helm, McDougall is stepping down as executive director of CLiF and handing the reigns of the organization to Laura Rice, a nonprofit leader and former CLiF board member. And the organization is moving from McDougall’s garage to a 3,000 square foot new headquarters on Route 100 in Waterbury Center.

“Books can be mirrors and windows,” McDougall said. “What we want to do is for those kids who don't see anyone like them in their world to see a book that reflects characters just like them. For people who have never had a chance to leave their town, or go more than three or four towns away, to see the tremendous variety and magical diversity of this world.” 

“Literacy is really a social justice issue,” he added. “We are opening books, opening minds, opening doors, and there are just a lot of folks who have doors closed to them. Helping young kids develop a love for reading and writing can open so many doors for them and for their kids and grandkids too.”

VTDigger is re-releasing some of our favorite interviews of the past decade to mark the 10th anniversary of The Vermont Conversation.

This Vermont Conversation with Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) was originally published in May 2022.

Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin was expecting trouble after the November 2020 presidential election. Raskin and his Democratic colleagues in Congress anticipated that former President Donald Trump would try to subvert the results and try to derail Congress’s normally pro-forma certification of President Joe Biden’s election. 

But Raskin was blindsided. On December 31, 2020, Raskin’s only son, Tommy, a promising young student at Harvard Law School, took his own life after a long struggle with depression. 

Seven days later — and just a day after burying his son — Raskin returned to Congress to cast his vote to certify Biden’s election. That’s when Trump supporters mounted a violent insurrection in the U.S. Capitol, egged on by the defeated president. Speaker Nancy Pelosi then tapped the grieving Raskin to be lead manager in Trump’s second impeachment trial. Since the summer, Raskin has been a member of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the Capitol. 

Raskin tells his intensely personal and political story in his new book, “Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy.” 

If there is a conspiracy theory or far right group, Jeff Sharlet has probably hung out with its followers. Sharlet is an investigative journalist and correspondent for Vanity Fair. He is one of the country’s leading experts on religion, fundamentalism and American politics. He is the winner of the National Magazine Award for Reporting, and numerous other awards.

In 2019, Netflix released "The Family," a five-part series based on Sharlet’s reporting about the secretive fundamentalist group that includes among its members a number of the country’s leading politicians. He has attended countless Trump rallies around the country, chronicled people preparing for armed insurrection, and attended gatherings of QAnon followers.

Sharlet is a professor of English and director of creative writing at Dartmouth College. He has a new book out this week, “The Undertow: Scenes From A Slow Civil War.” 

Sharlet believes that averting civil war will take concerted and sustained action. "We don't think of democracy as something we have, but as something we do. You get up and you do it every day," he said.

"We haven't achieved democracy once yet. But we're going to try again tomorrow."

Are ski bums an endangered species?

The iconic “ski bum” is a romantic character who has forsaken ambition and material comfort for something purer: high mountains, big adventure and the pursuit of the perfect ski run. Vermont is filled with ski bums past and present who live for powder days. 

Ski bums have had a tough go lately. Climate change and economic hardship have taken a toll. New England just endured the warmest January in history. Powder days are fewer and farther between. Airbnb and Covid-19 have dealt a blow to many of the affordable crash pads and couches that ski bums once surfed.

Then there is the matter of white privilege. 

“There is only one subset of the population who can safely, comfortably, and consistently pull off this lifestyle: white, cis-gendered skiers, usually middle class or wealthier, usually men,” wrote racial equity advocate Mardi Fuller in an essay for SKI Magazine entitled, “Let’s Stop Celebrating the White Male Ski Bum.”

Journalist Heather Hansman explores the modern reality of ski bumming in her book, “Powder Days: Ski Bums, Ski Towns, and the Future of Chasing Snow.” She journeys from Vermont to Colorado and back to tell the stories of people who have built their lives around snowy mountains. Hansman is the environmental columnist for Outside Online and has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic and other publications. She is also the author of “Downriver: Into the Future of Water in the West.”

Hansman writes that ski bums are “part of an ecosystem of skiing which encompasses everyone from celebrity vacationers to the undocumented lifties.” A decade after her own ski bum journeys, she hits the road again, this time with existential questions.

“In the face of climate change, economic upheaval, and so much more, I’m trying to figure out if skiing as we know it will survive,” she said.

Ryan DeLena was a “problem child.”

He had frequent emotional outbursts, and his parents’ efforts to control him proved futile. Mental health professionals and teachers said Ryan should be removed from the public schools in suburban Boston where he lived and placed into therapeutic schools. While there, he was subjected to physical restraints and heavy medication.

Nothing helped. At age 9, he landed in a psychiatric hospital. His problems only got worse.

In a desperate attempt to connect with his troubled son, Ryan’s father Rob took his son skiing at a small Massachusetts ski area. That was the beginning of a transformation for young Ryan. He channeled his energies into skiing and climbing, and now nurtures a dream to become a professional ski mountaineer. 

Ryan and Rob DeLena have continued to ski together around the world, including in Antarctica. Ryan finished high school and enrolled at Northern Vermont University, where he is a junior studying outdoor education.

Ryan and Robert DeLena co-wrote a new memoir, “Without Restraint: How Skiing Saved My Son’s Life.” It is a harrowing and heartwarming story told by father and son about a misunderstood and troubled boy, and the bond the two forged as they found Ryan’s path.

“Through skiing and the adventures we experienced together, I learned everyone was wrong about Ryan, especially me,” wrote Rob, an attorney who runs a legal staffing agency in Boston.

Ryan, now 21, concluded with an improbable sentiment. “If I was offered the chance to have my childhood over again, growing up like a normal kid, I’d say no thanks,” he wrote. 

“Despite all the pain and hardship, I now appreciate that I’m strong enough to handle anything,” he said.