The Vermont Statutes Online

Title 3 : Executive

Chapter 059 : Community Services Agencies

• § 3902. Office of Economic Opportunity

  (a) The Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity is hereby authorized to allocate available financial assistance for community services agencies and programs in accordance with State and federal law and regulation.

  (b) The Director may provide financial assistance to community services agencies for the planning, conduct, administration and evaluation of community service programs to provide a range of services and activities having a measurable and potentially major impact on causes of poverty in the community or in areas of the community where poverty is a particularly acute problem. Components of those services and activities may involve, without limitation of other activities and supporting facilities designed to assist low income participants:

  (1) to secure and retain meaningful employment;

  (2) to obtain adequate education;

  (3) to make better use of available income;

  (4) to provide and maintain adequate housing and a suitable living environment;

  (5) to obtain services for the prevention of narcotics addiction, alcoholism, and for the rehabilitation of narcotic addicts and alcoholics;

  (6) to obtain emergency assistance through loans and grants to meet immediate and urgent individual and family needs, including the need for health services, nutritious food, housing, and unemployment-related assistance;

  (7) to remove obstacles and solve personal and family problems which block achievement of self-sufficiency;

  (8) to achieve greater participation in the affairs of the community;

  (9) to make more frequent and effective use of other programs related to the purposes of this chapter;

  (10) to coordinate and establish linkages between governmental and other social service programs to assure the effective delivery of such services to low-income persons; and to encourage the use of entities in the private sector of the community in efforts to ameliorate poverty in the community.

  (c) The Director is authorized to adopt rules pursuant to chapter 25 of this title appropriate to the carrying out of this chapter and the purposes thereof. (Added 1981, No. 173 (Adj. Sess.), § 1, eff. April 20, 1982.)