This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.
The city of Montpelier is asking people to leave an encampment that has grown this summer at the site of a former country club where the city hopes to develop housing.
On Wednesday, city workers put up orange barricades around the parking lot at the top of Country Club Road, along with signs that read: “No camping: High Sensitivity Area.”
The sprawling, city-owned former-Elks Club has become a popular destination for dog-walkers, and hosts a community garden and youth sports events. Good Samaritan Haven operates a seasonal homeless shelter at the site, which closed for the summer in May.
Since then, Good Sam outreach workers have observed a steady increase in people setting up camp along the property’s edges. Rick DeAngelis, the nonprofit’s co-executive director, estimated about 12 to 15 people were currently camping there.
With shelters generally at capacity – and no sanctioned campsites — Good Sam has few places to point the campers toward. Many popular campsites are in flood-prone areas, DeAngelis said; last month, Good Sam evacuated many unsheltered people up to the high ground shelter at the former country club.
“We just don’t have options for unsheltered people — or very, very few options for unsheltered people – to, you know, to be safely,” DeAngelis said.
Richard Taylor began camping at the site in late July, he said Thursday. He had shuffled through several Good Sam shelters, he said, but left recently because he was concerned about contracting COVID-19 there. He had not yet heard that he needed to leave his campsite at the former country club.
Asked where else he would go, Taylor said he’d likely set up camp elsewhere in town.
“Hubbard Park,” he said. “Or in a cemetery.”
While camping overnight at public parks is prohibited in Montpelier, the city has generally looked the other way as long as campers haven’t caused issues, said Bill Fraser, Montpelier city manager. The city has a separate policy that guides how it handles encampments on other property, focused on diverting camping away from “highly sensitive areas” like grounds near a school or cemetery. The policy also lays out public health and safety issues that can prompt officials to ask campers to leave, including criminal activity and excessive amounts of waste, among others.
“Bad behavior” over the last few weeks at the former Elks Club property led the city to take action there, Fraser said.
Assistant City Manager Kelly Murphy noted that the city had received complaints about the property through the police department and from city staff. Those included people driving vehicles onto the former golf course, theft of farm implements at the community garden, human waste, and “threatening behavior.”
DeAngelis said Good Sam had had some success intervening at the encampment when issues have arisen, including encouraging one camper who had been “severely mentally distressed” to seek care at a hospital. When the organization received word early this week that the city was considering banning camping at the site, “we were surprised and disappointed,” DeAngelis said.
The city’s policy gives encampment residents 24 hours to relocate, but Fraser said the city doesn’t plan to stick to that hard-and-fast deadline, nor escalate enforcement if people take longer to leave.
“People have to figure out what they’re going to do, and we have to be respectful of that. And we have to understand that we don’t have a good place to tell them where to go,” he said.
Good Sam is now tasked with trying to help people relocate, DeAngelis said. The organization estimates that around 90 people are currently living outside in Montpelier, Barre and Berlin. And as new limits on the state’s emergency housing program kick in next month, DeAngelis said he expects another 80 to 100 households to lose their assistance.
“We only have so many tools in our toolbox, and they’re not great tools, unfortunately, right now,” DeAngelis said.
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