This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.
At the Quality Inn in Barre, a clock is ticking for Terri Ann Garrett and her 6-year-old granddaughter.
Garrett has stayed at the motel since May with the aid of a voucher through Vermont’s emergency housing program. For years, she had lived in an apartment in Vergennes, but after leaving for a brief stint to work a job in Texas earlier this year, the property owner got in touch and claimed she had abandoned the place, Garrett said. Upon returning to Vermont, she has struggled to find an apartment she can afford for her and her granddaughter. And on Sept. 19, their motel voucher will expire.
Garrett, who works part-time at an elementary school in Barre, has been calling shelters across the state to see if they can take her in. Some have told her they don’t accept children; she’s waiting to hear back from others. She’s worried she and her granddaughter may end up living in her car. And if they do, Garrett fears the state might intervene, jeopardizing her custody over her granddaughter.
“We have long conversations about where we’re going to go, and right now I don’t even know what to tell her,” Garrett said of her granddaughter. “It’s nothing that a 6-year-old should be worried about.”
Over the next several weeks, new limits on the emergency housing program will push out hundreds of households, like Garrett’s, all of whom have previously been deemed vulnerable by the state for one reason or another — because they have children, are elderly, or have a disability, for instance. Those limits were passed by lawmakers this past legislative session in an attempt to wind down the program’s pandemic-era expansion.
“We have long conversations about where we’re going to go, and right now I don’t even know what to tell her. It’s nothing that a 6-year-old should be worried about.”Terri Ann Garrett, recipient of a Vermont motel voucher
Beginning July 1, participants’ motel stays were capped at 80 days a year — outside of the winter months, when the cap will be lifted. Those 80-day limits are kicking in beginning next week, and will come to bear in waves, according to Miranda Gray, deputy commissioner of the Department for Children and Families’ economic services division.
A timeline provided by Gray shows that, as of Sept. 9, state officials projected that:
- 291 households would reach their 80th night on Sept. 19;
- Another 131 households would reach theirs between Sept. 20 and Sept. 27;
- 113 households would reach their 80th night on Sept. 28;
- An additional 371 households would reach their 80th night between Sept. 29 and Oct. 8.
(Gray noted these numbers will change as people come and go from the program.)
At a press conference late last month, Gov. Phil Scott corrected a reporter when asked about the hundreds of people expected to “enter the streets.”
“Be careful how you say that,” Scott said. “It’s not that they’re going to be entering the streets. They may be finding alternative housing. So I don’t want to set the expectation there’s going to be this mass number of people out on the streets for this safety net that we were providing.”
The new time limits will impact everyone currently sheltered through the state program, without exception.
In addition, the state must shrink the number of rooms available through the program. The state will only pay for 1,100 rooms this fiscal year, with the exception of the winter months, when that cap will be lifted.
‘First-come, first-serve’
The cap takes effect this Sunday, Sept. 15 — before anyone reaches their 80 day-limit. As of Sept. 9, 1,386 households were sheltered through the program. That number includes 1,707 adults and 529 children.
“There could be people who might not have access to a room on the 15th, but that just means that they have some days that they can use later,” Gray said. “Once we hit the 19th, we are going to have households who are not going to have access to a motel room until we get to December 1st.”
In order to come into compliance with the cap, the Department for Children and Families, which administers the program, has put forward a prioritization policy aimed at determining which households will be placed in available rooms.
Priority groups include families with children ages 19 or under, people who are pregnant, people experiencing domestic or other types of violence, and people over the age of 65. People over the age of 50 who also meet another criteria — such as having a disability, having experienced a natural disaster or having been evicted — will get priority, too.
During the legislative session, lawmakers offered little guidance on how the state should prioritize who gets the newly limited rooms in the motel program; in the absence of that direction, the department created its own policy. But at a recent meeting of the Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules, some lawmakers questioned the department’s direction — and appeared to be grappling with the impact of the caps they put in place.
Sen. Ginny Lyons, D-Chittenden Southeast, expressed concern that many people with disabilities would be left out of the prioritization scheme. Nicole Tousignant, the head of DCF’s economic services division, countered that it simply comes down to numbers: 1,100 rooms is too few to prioritize everyone with disabilities, she said.
“I guess we’ll have to disagree on that,” Lyons said. “Just targeting a number doesn’t make sense when you have people who are incapable of finding a home without assistance.”
Anyone who doesn’t meet one of the priority criteria will have a check-out date this Sunday, Tousignant said during a separate meeting with local service providers on Wednesday afternoon. That will be about 300 households.
Those households “can call on September 15th, and we will house them first-come, first-serve until we hit that 1,100 cap,” Tousignant said.
The department has so far released little information about the potential geographic spread of the upcoming motel exits, something service providers called out at Wednesday’s meeting.
“I don’t think that, in Chittenden County, I have any more of a clear understanding about who is exiting this program and when, and what we can expect, and how we can plan for it,” said Sarah Russell, special assistant to end homelessness for the city of Burlington and co-chair of the Chittenden County Homeless Alliance.
Other providers asked where to direct people to, as shelters across the state are generally full — and where they could, legally, direct people exiting motels and hotels to set up camp — and received few answers. Some noted that the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity plans to give out camping supplies.
“If it was just me, I’d be out in a tent somewhere,” said Garrett, at the Quality Inn in Barre. “My granddaughter is my highest priority, and I need to keep her safe.”
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