This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.
A Vermont Superior Court judge has issued a temporary restraining order against the Agency of Human Services, requiring that the state give motel voucher program recipients adequate notice before ending their benefits — and give them enough time to appeal.
The order, issued by Chittenden County Superior Court Judge Samuel Hoar on Thursday, says that state officials must provide due process before terminating emergency housing benefits.
That means officials must tell motel program participants in writing why their benefits are ending, deliver that notice in a way the person will likely receive, and provide the decision “in advance of any termination to afford a reasonable opportunity to dispute the termination,” Hoar wrote. The notice must also tell individuals they have a right to seek an expedited appeal.
“For many people, access to emergency housing is literally a matter of life and death,” said Maryellen Griffin, a staff attorney at Vermont Legal Aid, which is representing service providers and motel program participants in the ongoing case. “This allows people to understand what is happening to them before it happens to them.”
The order is the latest ruling in a long-running suit that Legal Aid brought over a year ago, when the organization sought to halt the evictions of motel program participants at the end of the 2024 winter-weather eligibility period.
Legal Aid wanted the state to pause evictions at the time in order to adequately screen unhoused people for continued eligibility granted by a newly-passed law, which expanded who counted as having a disability. A judge denied their preliminary injunction last March.
The case picked up steam again this spring, Griffin said, as the latest round of evictions from the motel program began on April 1 after a prolonged political battle at the Statehouse.
In some instances, state employees told motel program participants that they were ineligible to remain sheltered the very same day that they needed to leave, Griffin said.
Susan Merchant, a 53-year-old with severe osteoarthritis who had been living at the Hilltop Inn in Berlin, attested in a court filing that one morning last month, she received a call saying that her voucher was being terminated “and I needed to leave my room.” The day prior, a Department for Children and Families staffer had told her that her voucher had been approved for seven days, according to the filing.
Merchant believed she should still be eligible to remain in the program. “I don’t understand what the problem is, and they could not explain it to me,” she attested in the filing.
Legal Aid ultimately helped Merchant through the state’s appeal process, Griffin said, and discovered she was simply a missing document. Once that was provided to the Department for Children and Families, Merchant’s voucher was renewed.
Thursday’s order gives people a chance to challenge their voucher terminations in instances where they are incorrect, Griffin said. The notices must be provided in writing, not given over the phone, and must be specific to the individual’s case, she said. That differs from a common practice DCF uses when motel program rules change: directing motel owners and service providers to slip general notices under peoples’ doors.
For people whose vouchers are terminated for legitimate reasons, the order provides more time to plan their next steps, she added.
The order applies to people who have received motel vouchers since September 2024 and either continue to receive the benefit or were “subsequently terminated, not renewed, or informed that they were ineligible.” (The temporary order does not outline retroactive relief for people who have already lost their vouchers, though the court could consider future action).
Brenda Siegel, executive director of End Homelessness Vermont, said the order is a victory.
“This is a huge win for people who are in the hotel/motel program, and certainly for our clients who have been being denied without notice and exited pretty regularly in the last couple of weeks,” she said.
The Department for Children and Families did not provide a response to questions on Thursday afternoon.
The order will remain in effect for two weeks, until the next hearing in the case on May 16. At that point — if state officials have not proposed a plan to comply with the order that the plaintiffs have agreed with — the judge will decide how to proceed, Griffin said.
