Brenda Siegel won’t take the win. 

“Taking the win” is an old political saying that refers to advocates for a cause who go from losing badly to winning a compromise from the political establishment. That compromise is never perfect. It is never everything. But it is something. In these rare cases, the prevailing logic is to smile and take the win. 

That exact situation happened this week in the Vermont General Assembly. And the advocate in question, Brenda Siegel, was positioned to take her deserved credit. Not so fast. 

“I won’t take a win for political gain when I know there are 900 people on the street right now,’’ says Siegel. “If I took the win it would be about me and it’s not about me.”

The issue? Homelessness. Throughout Vermont, there are some 3,000 people living in sub-standard motels under a federal government-funded COVID program. Those 3,000 people are, well, people, with children, many dealing with mental challenges, addictions, disease, and trauma stemming from abuse to living on the street.

But Siegel wants us to look more closely than that. Some have oxygen tanks that need electricity to run. Some need to refrigerate their medication. Others need to charge a phone so they can function in a world where that device is an essential utility. Try signing up for food assistance, unemployment insurance, or a summer camp without a phone or a computer. This program, and the hotels they provide, aren’t much, but they do give residents these essential amenities. Not to mention a roof over their head. 

Vermont’s seriously popular governor Phil Scott and its Democratically run legislature decided this year to end this program. It was too expensive, they said, the federal funds had run out. It was time for these people to find other forms of housing.

That’s where Brenda Siegel came in. She is a classic advocate: part agitator, part lobbyist, part policy wonk, part inside negotiator, and part PR person. Smart, quick-witted, fast-moving, and very, very impatient with a political process and news media that doesn’t seem to care about these inconvenient people. 

Brenda has been working on homelessness and the drug overdose crisis in Vermont for several years. When she started there was no one advocating for these people. While there are state agencies, non-profit housing organizations, affordable housing lobbyists, and service providers who run shelters, no one was going through the motels to create an inventory of the residents’ needs. No one was educating the media and the politicians. And no one was banging on the door and saying, “This is not good enough.’’

Siegel found herself managing this crisis across the state because she knows more about it than anyone, including the state agencies charged with dealing with it. She went into the motels and met the people. She took their stories public. She has become a kind of shadow government, doing the government’s job because the political constraints make it too hard for administrators to function. She is doing the really hard work - the data collection, and the management of people’s personal crises. And back in 2021, when the governor and the legislature decided to end the program, she refused to accept defeat. 

In response to the proposed cancelation, Siegel and her friend Josh Lisenby protested by sleeping on the Statehouse steps in Montpelier. They vowed not to leave until the program was reinstated. They didn’t move for over a month in October and November, not exactly warm in Vermont. The governor extended the program.

But Siegel didn’t take the win. She emerged from her victory determined to get this right. To take on poverty in a way that the political system refused to do. 

She ran for governor and won the Democratic nomination. She had little money and no help from a Vermont Democratic party that knew she would lose to the ever-popular Phil Scott. No shame there. Far more skilled politicians than Siegel had lost similar races. 

But somewhere along the way, she found her voice as an advocate. Somewhere in the public conversation was a place for a no-compromise voice that would work with state officials to solve problems. Siegel walks a delicate line. She can’t be too critical of the political leaders who control the money and make the ultimate decisions about peoples’ fates but she must speak her mind and tell the truth, which makes those same leaders uncomfortable. 

A few months after the campaign, in 2022, she was back at it, telling lawmakers that it was immoral to end the motel housing program. 

“We are pushing these people off the cliff,’’ she said. 

Siegel has no patience with political justifications. It doesn’t matter which party gives them. To her, this is not an ideological issue. It’s a moral one.

So when the Vermont legislature hatched a deal this week to extend the motel program, a deal the governor supported, Siegel was quick with the reality check. The deal extended the program for those still living in motels, about 2,000 people. But it left almost 1,000 people already evicted from the motels with no protection and nowhere to go. 

“Instead of pushing 3,000 people off the cliff, we’re pushing them five at a time,’’ Siegel told a reporter. 

The floor speeches from legislators were predictable. Those who hatched the compromise called it far from perfect, but a start. The governor was said to have signed onto the compromise, saying his administration was already working on many of these issues. 

Siegel does have a pragmatic side. She will take the compromise. But she won’t call an end to her campaign for the people in the street.

“So many people will enter homelessness and we will still have children on the street,’’ she said. “We will still have people with disabilities and medical vulnerabilities on the street. We’re not really solving the problem.’’

To her, the deal was just another example of a system, led by people in positions of power, that blame the poor for their circumstances. In the end, most of us, especially political leaders with other priorities and burdens, are willing to tolerate homelessness or worse. 

“We think it is a moral failing,’’ Siegel said. “We think it is their fault. We have designed a system to keep people in poverty. We have to have someone to blame. Wealthy people designed the system so they can get tax breaks while making it very hard for people to get out of poverty.’’

Including her. Like other poverty fighters before her, Siegel does this work for nothing. She is paid no money, has no client, no benefactor. Her phone buzzes constantly from motel residents in crisis, reporters seeking comment, and the NY Times. The newspaper of record ran a story Wednesday. Siegel had alerted them to it. But she wasn’t mentioned. She got no credit. She soldiers on anyway. 

“We have to look at people in poverty as people who are discriminated against.” Siegel says, “Unless we accept that, we can’t move forward on poverty. If we don’t understand our own blind spots, we can’t change.’’

She will be back at it tomorrow, banging on the governor’s agencies to better identify the people who need medical care and other services, including more permanent shelter. 

For now, she has to go to the camps and hotels to explain the legislation so as many people can stay in the program as possible. 

It is the only thing she can do if she is to sleep at night. That is the job of the advocate who refuses to take the win.