In last spring’s flooding,
and then again during Tropical Storm Irene, mobile homeowners were hit particularly
hard. Irene destroyed more than 100 mobile homes, and damaged hundreds; and many of those families are
still in limbo, having lost everything. One of the big issues getting more
attention in the months since, is how hard it is for people to
get affordable loans for mobile homes. There are now efforts underway to come
up with a better financing model for mobile home owners. Additionally, groups
are looking at ways to create more cooperatively-owned mobile home parks in the
state, and there is movement toward designing and building a mobile or modular
home that is energy-efficient and still affordable.
We talk to Shaun
Gilpin, program director of the Mobile Home Project at the Champlain Valley Office
of Economic Opportunity, JoEllen Calderara, who’s on the board of the Long Term
Disaster Recovery Group, Matt Lutz, an assistant professor of architecture at
Norwich University, and Emily Higgins, director of home ownership at the
Champlain Housing Trust, about finding ways to make mobile homes more resilient, and
give their owners more options and control over their living situations.
Also on the program, the U.S.
Supreme Court recently decided that law enforcement officials can strip search
individuals who have been arrested and booked in jail, even for minor offenses.
We talk with Vermont Department of Corrections Commissioner Andy Pallito about
the current policy in Vermont, and how this ruling might affect it.
And music contributor Matt
Bushlow introduces us to the music of Nick Zammuto. For nearly ten years,
Zammuto, of Readsboro, was one half of The Books, a musical duo that used
obscure spoken-word samples, acoustic guitar, and cello to create their own unclassifiable
genre of music. The Books released four critically acclaimed albums before
parting ways in 2010. This month, Zammuto released his first solo album,
self-titled Zammuto.