This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.
A person was found dead at an encampment behind a shopping center on Route 302 in Berlin on Saturday night, James Pontbriand, chief of the Berlin Police Department, confirmed in a Tuesday interview.
The department has released little information about the deceased person, such as the person’s name, age, and gender. Their cause of death has not been determined, but Pontbriand said the department does not suspect foul play.
“Anytime there’s a death — or an untimely death — that the circumstances aren’t immediately apparent to us, we do an investigation in coordination with the medical examiner’s office, and that’s basically what’s happening in this situation,” Pontbriand said. “It’s a little more public because it happened in that location, but we’re treating it as we would any untimely.”
Good Samaritan Haven, which operates a network of shelters in Washington County, had been working with the individual during the week prior to their death, according to Julie Bond, the organization’s executive director. The person had recently lost their housing via a no-cause eviction, she said, and had not camped outside during the winter before.
Outreach workers with Good Sam were in “constant communication” with the individual for the six days after they lost their housing, according to Bond. The person was not eligible to stay at a shelter because they had a partner and dog, Bond said, so Good Sam paid for the person to stay in a motel room starting on Thanksgiving evening.
But the individual called the outreach team on Friday, saying they were back at their camp – for reasons that were unclear, Bond said. The individual died the next day.
“It’s heartbreaking,” Bond said.
The death in Berlin comes on the heels of the deaths of Tammy and Lucas Menard, who were found dead in their tent in Wolcott last Wednesday. Both had experienced significant health issues, and were forced to leave Vermont’s motel voucher program this fall after reaching their 80-day limit, according to advocates who worked with them. The cause of their deaths has not yet been determined, and the Lamoille County Sheriff’s Department, which responded to the scene, has said foul play is not suspected.
It’s time for Vermont to reckon — have a reckoning with itself — about if we really are committed to protecting our most vulnerable.Brenda Siegel, executive director of End Homelessness Vermont
The series of deaths has occurred as harsh winter weather sets in across Vermont. They also come after the mass un-sheltering of over 1,500 people from the motel program this fall, the result of new limits intended to cut down the program’s cost. Those cost-cutting measures were passed by lawmakers and signed by Gov. Phil Scott earlier this year. Many people who left the motels have ended up living outdoors. In some corners of the state, encampments have grown noticeably.
“Every death is tragic. These two people — they were people, they had family members,” Scott said at a regularly scheduled press conference on Wednesday, speaking about the Menards. “These things do happen. But we have to do whatever we can to prevent them.”
Scott sounded a familiar note on the motel program, emphasizing that its expansion in recent years has been financially unsustainable, and that bolstering the state’s emergency shelter capacity would ultimately better serve unhoused Vermonters. He described the state’s efforts to open two emergency family shelters last month as “mostly positive,” and noted that the state faces workforce challenges in trying to staff more shelters.
“There are no easy answers here,” Scott said. “But I do know that we couldn’t afford to continue with the hotel/motel program, nor did we think that it was in the best interest of those who are participating in it, to be housed — warehoused — in hotel/motels throughout Vermont. It just wasn’t healthy.”
As of Dec. 1, the new motel program limits have been waived for the winter months, allowing some who exited the motels this fall to re-enter. But this winter, the program’s cold weather rules are stricter than in recent years, and the Department for Children and Families expects to have fewer motel and hotel rooms available for people in need.
“It’s time for Vermont to reckon — have a reckoning with itself — about if we really are committed to protecting our most vulnerable,” said Brenda Siegel, executive director of the group End Homelessness Vermont. “We’re going to have to own these loss of lives — and learn from it.”
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