This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.
Good Samaritan Haven’s low-barrier homeless shelter in Barre City sees a lot of traffic. The 17-bed, year-round facility on Seminary Street is generally full, said Co-Executive Director Rick DeAngelis. In the last fiscal year, it served over 100 people.
The building, formerly a single family home, takes a lot of wear and tear: the floors are beat up, it has just one fully-functioning shower, and the dorms get “wicked hot” hot in the summer because they lack air conditioning, DeAngelis said. So Good Sam recently lined up funding and submitted a permit application for a roughly $300,000 renovation to address deferred maintenance and improve energy efficiency, including adding heat pumps.
But the permit came back with a surprise: to comply with the city’s flood zone building rules, Good Sam must, essentially, elevate everything out of the basement. Right now, that’s where the shelter houses its electrical panel, hot water heater, washer and dryers, and a large storage pantry with food, linens, and basic toiletries for guests.
“We were stunned, and shocked,” DeAngelis said.
Good Sam had registered the flood risk from Gunners Brook, which runs along the property’s edge — it has evacuated shelter residents multiple times in the span of a year — but, according to DeAngelis, floodwaters have largely spared the building, save for an inch of water that seeped into the basement in July 2023. It hadn’t run up against floodplain regulations during another renovation a few years ago, he said.
Now, the nonprofit is scrambling to figure out how to fund the elevation, and finding that state and federal money are scarce — or could take years to arrive. Complying with the requirements might mean they have to shrink the number of beds they offer, to make space to move everything upstairs. DeAngelis noted that zoning rules around setbacks mean they can’t expand the footprint of the building. The prospect of closing the shelter altogether — and beginning the painstaking process of looking for a new place to site one — is also on the table, DeAngelis said.
But he fears the implications of losing shelter capacity at a moment when Vermont sorely needs more. “We’re in the middle of a crisis, to provide shelter beds,” DeAngelis said, “Is there any relief from this?”
Good Sam’s predicament sets two of Vermont’s most dire needs at odds with each other: addressing its worsening homelessness problem, and adapting to more frequent flooding fueled by climate change. Those issues are interconnected, too; as flooding destroys more and more homes, more Vermonters are finding themselves unhoused.
“It’s a tragic situation, in terms of, you know, two goods that are kind of coming into conflict here,” said Ned Swanberg, a Vermont regional floodplain manager for Washington and Orange counties, who advised the city on Good Sam’s permit.
Renovations in a high-risk location
Good Sam’s renovation plans ran up against Barre City’s rules around “substantial improvement” of properties located in high-risk flood zones mapped by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The Seminary Street shelter is located in the floodway of Gunners Brook, a narrower area within the high-risk zone expected to have “higher velocities and higher frequency flooding,” Swanberg said.
The substantial improvement rules kick in anytime a property owner in the high-risk flood zone seeks to invest a certain amount of money in renovating a building. The threshold is $50,000, or half the market value of the building, whichever is less. (Barre city officials say they are attempting to repeal the $50,000 threshold, noting it is outdated.) Good Sam’s shelter was assessed at $205,000 last year, meaning their renovation plans hit the 50% mark.
Barre City’s flood zone building rules are tied to its participation in FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program. The idea behind the substantial improvement rule is to encourage the flood-proofing of older buildings over time, at a moment when a property owner already has cash on hand — and isn’t flooded out, Swanberg said.
“It’s really saying — we’ve got to deal with these structures, and make them safer. And the best time to do that is when somebody is not dislocated from their house,” Swanberg said.
In order for the city to keep its good standing with the National Flood Insurance Program — and allow its residents to maintain flood insurance policies — it has to enforce rules like the substantial improvement one, said Nicolas Storellicastro, city manager for Barre City.
“If we do not enforce our rules, and we’re caught not enforcing our rules — we risk flood insurance for not just Rick but everybody in the city,” Storellicastro said.
Beyond that, though, there’s the risk that the shelter will flood. Given it’s situated in the floodway, Good Sam is “fortunate” that it hasn’t been hit hard by repeat floods that have swamped the city over the past year, Storellicastro said.
“Everybody says how important it is to become flood resilient,” he added. “This is what becoming flood resilient looks like. And it’s hard. And it’s expensive. But we have to do it.”
The elevation work at Good Sam’s shelter would cost around $250,000, DeAngelis said, according to an initial estimate from the nonprofit’s contractor. The work would include moving the electrical panel upstairs, rewiring the building, and filling the space in — so that the building is more or less sitting on a slab, he said.
‘Who do we pick to save?’
The city expects to receive about $700,000 in state funds earmarked this past legislative session to elevate homes, Storellicastro said. Because that funding is set aside for residences, it’s not yet clear whether it could be deployed for a shelter. Doug Farnham, Vermont’s chief recovery officer, said Wednesday that “there hasn’t been a final determination on that.”
And aside from that technicality, Barre City faces a “terrible conundrum,” Storellicastro said. It has more residents interested in elevations than it has money to pay for them. Nine property owners are currently on the city’s list.
“Do we elevate, you know, maybe Rick’s shelter and maybe one other house? Or do we elevate three residences?” Storellicastro said. “It’s like The Hunger Games. Who do we pick? Who do we pick to save?”
City and state officials have encouraged Good Sam to apply for funding from FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Program, too. But money from that source could be years away. After Tropical Storm Irene, it took some property owners two to three years to complete the buyout process through FEMA, according to Farnham. And elevations sometimes took even longer than that, he said.
The state does expect to have another funding source for elevations, though. After it meets the state’s required match for FEMA funds, Farnham said the state anticipates it will have around $15 million available for more flood mitigation projects — particularly ones that don’t fit squarely into the types FEMA typically funds. Good Sam’s project could be a good example of one in need of that more flexible funding, he said, though the state will always prioritize trying to get a project funded by FEMA, to save the state money.
Good Sam has also put in a request for state funding dedicated to bolstering shelter capacity this winter. While it casts around for funding to elevate, the funding for its renovation is on pause. The lion’s share of that funding has been committed by the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, which needs to see that a project’s permit requirements are met before a grant is disbursed, said Pollaidh Major, the board’s director of policy and special projects.
That requirement is an acknowledgement of local and state safety controls, Major said, to assure “that when we’re investing public dollars in a project, it’s going to be available for occupancy.”
Sitting on the front porch of the shelter on an early August morning, DeAngelis said he understands that funders need to make decisions about funneling public investment into a property at risk of flooding. But on the other hand, there’s the dire need for shelter. At last count, Washington County had well over 400 unhoused people, already far outpacing shelter capacity. And next month, DeAngelis expects to see the need intensify as new limits on the state’s motel program set in. Every day, the Department for Children and Families calls to ask if they have any empty beds.
“Our staff really wants to protect people and make sure that they’re housed,” DeAngelis said. “So that sense of urgency and commitment drives me to do everything I possibly can to make this work.”
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