This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.
State officials are working to assemble three emergency family shelters following the evictions of over 1,000 people from Vermont’s motel voucher program this fall.
Two sites – the former State Police barracks in Willison, and the Waterbury Armory – will be ready to serve as family shelters by Nov. 1, Joshua Marshall, communications and operations manager for the Department for Children and Families, confirmed in an email Wednesday morning.
A third location in Montpelier is also in the works, though “some renovations are required,” Marshall said. “We are working to bring this up as a family shelter over the next few months,” he added.
The move comes as Gov. Phil Scott’s administration has faced mounting pressure from municipal leaders, lawmakers, and service providers over the last month to intervene on the current mass wave of evictions from Vermont’s emergency housing program. The step toward creating the new shelters for families is the first public action administration officials have taken in response.
At a press conference midday Wednesday, Scott said his administration decided to act now after assessing the scale of need.
“Now that we have that information, and trying to figure out where we have capacity – we’ve decided to move forward on that,” he said.
As of Oct. 15, 724 households – amounting to 1,175 people – have exhausted their motel vouchers, hitting a new 80-day-limit on motel stays, Marshall wrote in an email Tuesday.
Nearly 300 children have left the program since the new limits kicked in last month, Marshall said. DCF anticipates around 100 additional households will exhaust their nights by the end of October.
The 80-day time limit, along with an 1,100-room cap on the motel program, will both be lifted during the winter months, beginning Dec. 1. But facing a severe housing shortage and a lack of family shelters, some families evicted from the motel program this fall have had no option but to pitch tents outdoors – a situation that has become increasingly dire as temperatures drop.
State officials have stressed in recent weeks that the number of families in need of shelter is far smaller than the number that have had to leave the motels, as some have succeeded in finding alternative places to live, at least temporarily.
“We have, I think, six families, maybe a couple more, in the Chittenden County area, and I believe there are some in the Barre area,” Scott said when asked how many families the state has identified as needing shelter. “The vast majority are in Rutland,” he added, noting that the state has tried and failed to secure a shelter provider there.
The state has determined which families are in need, in part, by identifying those that have engaged with state staff, he said.
“So maybe there’s more – I don’t know,” Scott said. “But we don’t have the information as to where they went when they left the program. So they may be with family members. We don’t believe they are out on the street, but we’ll find out.”
DCF did not provide a number on how many families the three shelter sites will be able to accommodate – or how much the shelters will cost – as of press time.
The new shelters, first reported on by NBC5, are specifically set aside for families with children, though many other vulnerable Vermonters have been evicted from the program since mid-September, including people fleeing domestic violence, elderly people, and people with severe disabilities.
“From my standpoint, kids come first. They’re the most vulnerable,” Scott said. “They’re caught in the middle of this situation, and I want to do everything we can to help them.”
Disability “is characterized in different ways,” he added. “I just want to make sure that those who are impacted, those who are truly disabled, we’re able to meet their needs as well, and I believe we’re interacting with them.”
Service providers and advocates have raised the alarm in recent weeks that people with complex medical needs – who have dementia and severe schizophrenia, among other conditions – have also had to leave the motels. Individuals who rely on oxygen machines, have multiple sclerosis, and who have recently experienced acute mental health crises, have reported losing, or being on the verge of losing, their motel shelter.
“We do know that there are other medically vulnerable people who come – who are brought to our attention,” said DCF Commissioner Chris Winters at Wednesday’s press conference. “We try to make sure they are connected with all the services and all the benefits that they are eligible for.”
Many details about the three new shelters remain uncertain – including, critically, who will run them.
“There are so many partner organizations and advocates out there who are emphasizing the urgency of this moment, the need for more shelter space,” Winters said. “We’re confident that those nonprofit and community organizations will step forward – will help make this a reality.”
Nonprofit organizations serving unhoused people have repeatedly stressed that they are operating at capacity, particularly as they attempt to address the mounting needs of people leaving the motel program.
Asked if the state would be willing to staff the facilities with state employees, Scott said, “We’ll have to see. If we hit a brick wall, in some respects, we’ll have to get creative – and that’s one of the ideas that we’ll have to contemplate.”
Some towns slated to host the state shelters have already signaled their pushback. A statement from Waterbury, shared by the town’s zoning administrator, Mike Bishop, on Wednesday, says the town had not been contacted by the state about this latest attempt to use the Armory building as a homeless shelter. The state can do so now only if it uses state employees to staff it, the letter says – if officials want to use a third-party, they will need to seek a new zoning permit.
At a Statehouse press conference Tuesday – before news of the new state shelters had arrived – service providers from across Vermont cautioned officials against setting up large, congregate shelters like the ones the state stood up last spring.
“This warehouse solution is an even less effective band-aid solution than continuing to provide motel emergency housing,” said Libby Bennett, executive director of the Groundworks Collaborative in Brattleboro.
Scott said these new shelters will be different from the ones from March, and will provide more privacy. “These are more confined. Think office space,” he said. “It will get the families separated from each other.”
Asked how the state plans to notify families that these shelters will be available, Scott gestured to the reporters in the room. “Through all of you, for instance,” he said.
“We don’t have a direct connection with them because we don’t know where they are at this point, but we’ll make that information available to all of you, and hopefully we’ll figure out from there what the need is,” he said.
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