BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – Burlington’s King Street Center, an organization dedicated to keeping young people safe is spotlighting how efforts to address drug and crime in the city are falling on deaf ears when it comes to the welfare of children. In their fall newsletter, the center published the article “Redefining Harm Reduction: The Untold Story of Burlington’s Youth.” In it, they point to issues the city is facing and its impact on young people — problems that no one is listening to.
At 10 a.m. on Thursday morning, Burlington Police converged on King Street and arrested a woman for two alleged assaults.
Britany LaClair, a single mother who lives just down the street, watched the events unfold. “It can get really scary sometimes living on this street, specifically,” LaClair says crime and open drug use changed her perception of downtown safety for her and her kids. “Being so nervous all the time on this street, it is really scary sometimes. Really, you don’t have any idea what’s going to happen.”
To help ease her nerves, LaClair sends her kids to the King Street Center just next door. “It’s nice having the sense of community coming from them,” she said.
The center has been a staple in the Queen City for years, helping kids and their families. Many are low-income and are part of the immigrant or refugee communities in Burlington.
“In order for children to be supported, their families need to be supported,” said the center’s Shabnam Nolan. But she says concerns about safety are getting in the way of helping the more than 100 families and kids they support. “I think a lot of the discussion around what’s going on in Burlington has focused primarily on a couple of different populations, and really kids have been missing from the public narrative.”
Nolan says half of the teens who use the center don’t feel safe walking home, especially after dark. “Kids need to feel safe and be safe. It’s really critical to their development. And kids don’t feel safe right now,” she said.
They’ve tried to help at the center by doing daily sweeps to clean needles off the playground and investing $100,000 in other measures, including fencing and cameras.
Nolan hopes ongoing conversations about harm reduction include kids. “We have to have solutions that don’t just talk about reducing harm for any one population but reducing harm for all populations,” she said. “My fear is that kids are going to get wrapped up in something that’s going to cause them even more harm than that’s happening today.”
Nolan says the article in the newsletter is a call for action, not a cry for help. “My hope is by raising up this part of the population that’s being impacted, we can start to talk about solutions that include kids,” she said. “What we’re just trying to say is, kids matter and they need to be brought into the discussion.”
If they aren’t, local residents like Britany LaClair say the future of the Queen City is at stake. “I hope that they can grow up not like stressing the way that I stress and have the anxiety that I have of walking around Burlington,” she said.
Nolan says one way to help is by volunteering at the center, even one hour a week.
Burlington City Council President Ben Traverse, the Democrat who represents the Ward 5 neighborhood, calls the center a key resource. “The King Street Center is a vital community partner. When they are sounding the alarm about the safety and support for our youth, we need to hear it and take it seriously,” he said.