This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.
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On April 1, hundreds of Vermonters are set to lose their shelter through the expanded pandemic-era version of the state’s motel housing program. Agency of Human Services officials have begun to flesh out their plans to stand up a host of new emergency shelters by spring to accommodate them, yet many key decisions remain up in the air as the deadline set by lawmakers last year creeps ever closer.
The state hopes to establish temporary shelters in the five communities currently serving the highest numbers of households through the program, Department for Children and Families Commissioner Chris Winters said in an interview on Wednesday. Those communities are Rutland, Burlington, Central Vermont, Bennington, and Brattleboro, according to state data.
But exactly where the emergency shelters will be located remains an open question, Winters said. And choices around who will run the sites, how large they will be, and who will be given a bed are still undetermined.
“The real challenge is, of course, trying to get this done by April 1,” Winters said. “We have some big decisions to make really in the next couple of weeks.”
The agency is seeking $4 million in its mid-year budget request to stand up the emergency shelters.
At a House Appropriations Committee meeting on Friday morning, lawmakers asked members of the administration whether these new shelters would be large congregate settings, with many beds set up in one space.
“We’ve had two violent attacks in shelters – congregate settings,” said Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, a Democrat from Norwich. “What we know from the evidence on shelters in congregate settings is that they aren’t healthy for people.”
“These are not shelters that look like your gymnasium floor with cots,” said Jenney Samuelson, secretary of the Agency of Human Services, while testifying before the committee Friday afternoon. Samuelson added that the Department for Children and Families would provide more details next week.
Winters told VTDigger/Vermont Public that the shelters could be congregate settings, or “semi-congregate” set-ups that might look more like dormitories with shared rooms and common spaces, or individual “mobile units” that could offer more privacy. With many service providers for the homeless already stretched thin, he said the state is considering bringing in nontraditional vendors – potentially from out of state – to help staff them.
No matter the model the state uses, though, the sites will be time-limited, Winters emphasized.
“What we’re planning on is a three-month transition, from April 1 to July 1,” he said.
Asked what the state anticipates will happen come July, Winters said, “that’s the most difficult part of all of this: there is going to be a cliff at some point.”
As of Jan. 1, 681 households remained in the COVID-era program, which had less rigid eligibility constraints than a separate and ongoing emergency housing program that offers extended shelter in motels primarily during winter months.
That’s down from about 1,300 households as of July 1, 2023. Around 200 households had “found housing” as of late November, though that figure includes those who have moved into shelters or were staying with friends and family.
Vermont’s extraordinarily tight housing market has made finding stable housing options for people difficult, Winters said. The state anticipates that between 500-600 households will still be in the program by April 1, he said.
Citing anticipated budget constraints, Winters said the state will not be able to set up enough shelter space for all the people they expect will exit the program in April.
“We would love to set up 40 to 50 beds in each of the five communities. That would be the goal,” he said. “It still remains to be seen whether we can get there or not, depending on sites, staff to run them, community support, and the restrictions of the budget.”
By definition, those remaining in the pandemic-era program are from particularly vulnerable populations – the majority have a disability or are families with children – leaving difficult questions around who to prioritize for available spots, Winters said.
Since the state began evicting people from motels last summer, after federal funding for the pandemic-era version of the motel program ran dry, communities have clocked a rapid uptick in the number of people living unsheltered: on the streets, in parks, or in cars.
Service providers and advocates for unhoused people have raised concerns that the state’s course of action for those remaining in the program could push even more Vermonters to live unsheltered come spring, placing greater pressure on local service providers and communities. Many have also noted the sharp rise in homelessness across the state over the last several years, and cautioned against focusing solely on those who remain in the pandemic-era program.
In Brattleboro, if people currently living in motels were kicked out at once, “we would go from maybe something like 30 to over 100 people – literally overnight – who would be unsheltered homeless, with little or no capacity to assist them, other than providing tents and sleeping bags,” said Peter Elwell, interim executive director of the Groundworks Collaborative, in an interview.
“This is a really inappropriate way to move forward,” said Brenda Siegel, an advocate for unhoused people and former gubernatorial candidate. “It is shirking the responsibility of the state.”
Siegel and others also cautioned against the use of mass congregate shelters, noting a growing body of research that suggests non-congregate shelter – like the motel-based approach used in Vermont and many other states during the pandemic – provides better health and economic outcomes for unhoused people.
“We need to be building on the evidence as well as lessons from the pandemic,” said Anne Sosin, a public health researcher at Dartmouth College who studies homelessness. “We know that the current program suffers from a lot of problems, but this should be an opportunity for us to really reimagine our approach to interim housing.”
Sosin also criticized the lack of more robust planning undertaken to address the mass-unsheltering that many have seen coming for months, if not years.
“I’m really disappointed – as someone who’s watched this for almost four years – to see us not only fail to come up with a comprehensive plan to this problem, but to suggest that we’re running out of time right now,” she said.
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