EMERGENCY SHELTER STATUS 03/13,2026

SHAM TRIALS IN NICE VERMONT TOWN – $10,000 Parking Ticket, $4,000,000 for litter. We started a decentralized Emergency Homeless Shelter in three RVs on private land

We asked in advance for help with permits, because the regulations were unclear, but the selectboard said there was no homeless problem. One official told us to go ahead without a permit because of the housing emergency. Another said he found feces in our trash and we were violating human rights. Then the town began suing to evict us for violating zoning and rental safety laws. The zoning charge was for parking the RVs on our own land, and the safety charge was mostly for litter. In April, 2023, Superior Court said the shelter was safe, but the Town continued to prosecute us for the “decentralized” camping shelter after giving us a permit for “dispersed” camping, that they started in June 2023. The Town was confused about its own rules, and we had no attorney to represent us. At our first trial the town “health commissioners” didn’t even have rules.

The trials have relied on rumor and technicalities and excluded much of our evidence.

Later the Town dropped the safety charge. We thought there was a plea-bargain, and we removed the RVs, that we needed for evidence . Then they said they were ” not willing to release any enforcement”. We stopped defending against the parking charges in the Supreme Court because we couldn’t do the technical briefs and were exhausted. On July 11 the Supreme Court decided the safety charge against us, citing bad formatting of our briefs (true).
The Town is not letting us off the hook for the $4M, but they haven’t filed any enforcement action either. We think their next action would go to Superior Court, because this court made two decisions that were fair to us. It did not block our evidence. They have hearings in person, and don’t require technical briefs that favor experienced attorneys .

BCS is decimated by the lawsuits, since we had time for little else for two years, and have lost money and workers, who were frightened by the Town’s threats to investigate them. We closed the shelter in our headquarters and put the house up for sale in late 2025. We continue to advocate the EHRV model of emergency shelter, since it is the only shelter model that is affordable and decentralized (not downtown).
BCS is innocent. The trials prove nothing except that you need a lawyer. When you see the Town clarifying the laws for the shelter downtown, you can believe the laws were unclear for the shelter in RVs.

Download Absurdities legal summary EHRV

STATUS  202305010

We are low on funds and time.  We have at least three “trials” pending, and we may prevail, but for us amateurs the legal work is scary and exhausting.  We have (since before this case) been seeking legal counsel pro bono and by the hour, contacting maybe a hundred attorneys, and they are all booked up or unsuited.  Some even say they admire BCS’ work but won’t represent us against government.

SUMMARY / REPORT 20230508

We have started a policy model to address the housing shortage for emergency shelter in RVs at our corporate HQ on privately owned land  in Brattleboro Vermont.  Currently four people live in the RVs. Town authorities are prosecuting us for technical violations of zoning regulations and housing codes, threatening to exact huge fines, and take RVs and home.   We believe the prosecution is fraudulent,  malicious, and prejudicial.

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OFFICER PREPARES FALSE EVIDENCE  (link to video below)  The officer did not “falsify” evidence.  That would imply that he altered evidence already on record.  What he did was claim evidence without basis in fact.

On February 7 Brattleboro officials came to inspect three “RVs” that are being used as emergency homeless shelters at BCS headquarters. Taking their leave, the health inspector said that homeless people would be safer sleeping in the snow, and the zoning administrator threatened to fine us $600 per day and confiscate the RVs and demanded we remove them to comply with town ordinances. We said we would not comply, and that the inspector’s judgement of safety was absurd.   The temperatures had recently been 17 degrees below zero.

The only trouble is what’s stirred up by town officials.  The people here are safe and clean. The health officer fabricated evidence in his inspection report and implied that we violate the law by allowing human waste in trash. (BTW, It’s not illegal.) See the video. He finds some unidentified object in a plastic bag in the trash, doesn’t look closely or sniff it (it’s frozen anyway).  He takes no photograph or sample for testing, says that he is not an expert (“scientician”), but he will call it human waste. In his inspection report he says there is human waste throughout the yard and through the property and even exterior to the property, as if it’s overflowing, and that this means the whole shelter is unsanitary and dangerous.  The Health Order of March 8 says we’ve violated human rights – it doesn’t accuse us, it lists this as a FACT, like the project is a Nazi death camp or something.  The officer also considered the RVs dangerous because our electrician – a master electrician with thirty years experience – was not licensed in Vermont.  The resulting prosecution is  false, inflammatory and prejudicial, claiming on the false evidence  that the vehicles are a public hazard.   Town is forcing us to perform illegal evictions of our homeless people. and is threatening to confiscate the vehicles and land and asking questions about the private lives of people who live here and people who help us.   We told town officials about the RVs four times since last June, even asking formally for a discussion on their agenda, and they said nothing.  Now this matter that was beneath their attention a year ago is  suddenly a health emergency.

( feces video link: — https://brattleborocommonsense.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Keir-feces-inspection-no-text-EHRV-0207.mp4 )

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