As my wife and I hiked in the Trescott Lands in Hanover recently, our path took us past a historical marker describing the town-operated poor farm that existed on that site for several decades in the 1800s. After reading the information on the plaque and doing some further internet research on poor farms, I have an uneasy feeling that those politicians who find welfare programs an abomination might be drawn to the idea of resurrecting the poor farms.
The plaque on the Trescott Lands indicated that poor farms were designed “to solve the problems of caring for “widows, orphans, the mentally ill, and families that had fallen on hard times.” The residents on Hanover’s poor farm lived there for free and received sufficient food. In return, they worked to raise and sell produce with the proviso that any surplus revenues earned from their harvest be returned to the town. It sounded as if in Hanover the poor farm was a humane solution that addressed an array of complicated problems. It was a helping hand for the needy.
Writing in Vermont Digger in 2020, Mark Bushnell offered a more sober assessment of poor farms, describing them as having two kinds of residents: transient and permanent. The transients consisted largely of able-bodied people who were in a temporary financial crisis, while the permanent residents included those who were old or infirm or had physical disabilities or mental illness. The residents of these locally funded institutions, often referred to by the townsfolk as “inmates,” were required to work to support the poor farm, a reflection of the belief when the farms were instituted that most poor people deserved their condition. And because the poor farms were locally funded and operated, the treatment inmates received varied depending on “the character of the overseer.”
The actions and thinking of the current administration in Washington lead me to think we are on the path to reinstituting poor farms. In July, President Trump issued an executive order titled “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets.” The order opens with the statement that “Endemic vagrancy, disorderly behavior, sudden confrontations, and violent attacks have made our cities unsafe,” and asserts that “shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment will restore public order.”
Various elements of the homeless population, or “vagrants” as the order calls them, include the mentally unstable, registered sex offenders, drug addicts and those engaged in “urban camping and loitering” and “urban squatting.” Trump’s order permits and encourages state and local governments to involuntarily commit these “vagrants” to “appropriate facilities for appropriate periods of time,” and promises grants to governments that commit to “ending crime and disorder,” offering technical assistance to help them do so. Within the order is a legal framework for the reinstitution of something like poor farms.
The One Big Beautiful Budget (OBBB) adopted by Congress in July, which increases work requirements linked to SNAP benefits for the homeless, veterans and young people aging out of foster care, will make something like poor farms especially attractive. Instead of hiring federal bureaucrats to make sure that SNAP recipients are earning their keep, they could delegate that responsibility to state and local governments who could involuntarily commit them to the poor farms until they are earning enough to no longer qualify for the program.
In theory, poor farms could address a host of problems. They might serve as therapeutic “healing farms” for recovering drug addicts, an idea the current HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. proposed during his presidential campaign and be the “long-term institutional setting for humane treatment” of the mentally ill President Trump referenced in his executive order. And poor farms could serve as the site for the construction of the “appropriate facilities” Trump’s order calls for to house those who currently dwell in urban campsites or illegally in vacant properties.
Reopening poor farms would also justify the elimination of a wide array of federal government welfare programs managed by so-called “deep state” bureaucrats, the safety net programs that some believe are rife with waste, fraud and abuse. The poor farms were phased out after the 1930s when federal programs like Social Security took hold. It stands to reason that the reinstitution of poor farms might make it possible to eliminate a host of welfare programs.
There are two major problems with this idea, however.
First, the term “poor farm” will not fly in 2025. Even politicians who want to cut welfare would blanch at the term, and calling the residents of these institutions “inmates” makes it appear that they have limited freedom. A re-brand is needed. They need to have words like “Estate” or “Manor” in their name: something like “Ascutney Estate” or “Ascutney Manor” sounds better than the Windsor County Poor Farm. And the term “inmate” needs to be replaced with something like “botany associate.”
Second, having these institutions operated by the government at any level would be a step in the wrong direction. The pro-business politicians see no problem privatizing schools, the post office, military logistics and prisons. Why not have these institutions operated by private contractors who would set reasonable hours, wages and working conditions for the tenants who worked there. I’m sure there is a venture capitalist who would be willing to develop a chain of these for-profit enterprises.
The path to the poor farm is cleared and unless there is a change of heart in Washington and in many of the Statehouses in our country, there will be no problem finding “inmates” to work on the 2025 version of poor farms that spring up. We all need to find a way to offer a helping hand to those who need us.
Wayne Gersen is a retired public school administrator. He lives in Etna.