This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.
There was a moment last fall, a few months after moving into her new three-bedroom apartment, when Hannah Patten felt like she was finally at home.
The 37-year-old single mom had been homeless with her two middle-school-aged children for ten months after Patten left her ex-husband, who she said was abusive. The family of three secured the rental with a short-term housing voucher last June. When Halloween came around, her kids rolled their eyes at making jack-o’-lanterns, but they indulged her. Patten had the sensation that she was watching the scene from above.
“It was just really nice to sit around the table and carve pumpkins and just… be free like that,” she said. “That’s the best way to explain it — is free. We’re just free, we’re happy, we’re healthy, we’re secure.”
Patten’s temporary rental aid from the state — slated to end this summer — was intended to act as a bridge toward long-term federal assistance. She had banked on obtaining a Section 8 voucher to help her family stay put. Patten wanted to remain in the apartment to see her kids graduate high school.
She had gone through round after round of applications with the Vermont State Housing Authority, advancing her status over the course of months. By May, it seemed like she would be granted her ticket to permanent security any day.
But late last month, she got a phone call that rocked her. Patten’s caseworker told her that the housing authority was putting her back on their waitlist — and she had little chance of getting off of it. A recent federal funding reduction meant the housing authority had halted issuing new vouchers. Hers had been on the brink of getting rubber-stamped, a letter from the Vermont State Housing Authority later confirmed.
As the news sank in, Patten burst into tears. She had dutifully submitted each and every document required of her. She had spent months scouring rental listings to find this apartment. So much had to go right to get here, and now, it was unravelling.
“I am doing anything and everything,” Patten said. “Then you’re just…you’re giving it to me and then taking it right away.”
No new vouchers
The nine housing authorities that administer federal rental vouchers in Vermont are reacting to a collective loss of roughly $11 million for the remainder of 2025. That cut is the result of three factors: a recent funding reduction from Congress, the absence of a typical inflation boost to keep up with rising rents, and a clawing back of reserve funds from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that could have been used to support more vouchers, according to Kathleen Berk, executive director of the Vermont State Housing Authority.
The result: the state’s largest housing authorities have ceased issuing new vouchers off their lengthy waitlists, and have rescinded vouchers from 144 households who had been searching for a place to use them.
Most of the eight regional housing authorities in the state — along with the Vermont State Housing Authority, which covers areas that don’t have a local agency — are now attempting to shrink the number of vouchers on their rolls by not reissuing them when tenants give them up.
Cumulatively, the nine agencies estimate that they will need to shelve 991 vouchers by the end of 2025 to get within budget, according to data aggregated by the Vermont State Housing Authority. That amounts to about 14% of the 7,122 vouchers in use as of late May.
“It’s dramatic,” Berk said. “We’re trying to solve an affordability housing crisis, while at the same time, Congress continues to not adequately fund one of the most basic successful programs that [the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development] has ever made available to low income folks across the country.”
Over half of Vermont renters are considered cost-burdened. Federal housing vouchers are one of the state’s most critical tools to help move people out of homelessness and sustain housing for Vermonters who struggle to afford market-rate rents. Section 8 voucher recipients pay a third of their income toward rent; a local agency administering the federal program pays for the rest.
While the recent funding cuts are largely the result of budget decisions made by Congress, the Trump administration has signaled its desire to see steeper reductions to federal rental aid and new time constraints and work requirements for tenants who receive it.
A motel to a home
For Patten, losing her shot at a voucher undid nearly two years of effort to gain stability.
In September of 2023, Patten and her two children fled their home, after she had endured physical assaults from her former partner for about six months, she said. Before that, Patten had served as his caretaker following an injury; the family relied on state support. Soon after Patten and the kids left, the family entered the state’s motel voucher system. The family moved from motel to motel; Patten’s kids switched from school to school. (VTDigger/Vermont Public are not including Patten’s location to protect her safety.)
All the while, Patten sent in applications to housing programs, a task that amounted to its own job. She broke down in the lobby of a Motel 6 when her caseworker informed her that she had been granted a year-long housing voucher through a little-known program administered by the state’s Department for Children and Families — meant to tide her over to longer-term aid.
“I started bawling right in the middle of the motel, because it was like — I’m almost there,” she said.
But she still needed to find an apartment where she could use the subsidy, a task that took another four months, since the unit needed to be big enough for her family and was required to rent for under $1,400 a month. Available rentals are so scarce in Vermont that the majority of people who do secure a Section 8 voucher — roughly 60% — end up forfeiting the help because they cannot find a suitable apartment before their time runs out.
Finally, a landlord Patten met through an online listing offered to lower the price of a roomy three-bedroom apartment so it would fit within her allotted budget. He also offered her a job at a local business, where she still picks up a few shifts each week. Patten rented a U-Haul and moved in a few weeks later.
Now, a year onward, she’s faced with the prospect of moving out.
A bottleneck
The federal cuts to Section 8 have begun to send ripple effects through Vermont’s homelessness response system.
Earlier this spring, Patten secured an extension on her short-term voucher, which is now slated to expire in August. The Department for Children and Families has historically awarded more time when recipients of its 12-month Vermont Rental Subsidy program have appeared on the brink of securing longer-term help, according to Miranda Gray, the deputy commissioner of DCF’s economic services division.
Further extensions now appear unlikely.
“We need to see what makes the most sense — understanding that there might be bigger barriers,” Gray said. “It’s not just a matter of if they need a little more time to get through the process.”
“It’s just going to add strain to a system that is already really strained."Miranda Gray of the Vermont Department for Children and Families, on the Section 8 reductions
DCF has already shifted its internal policy around the program, in light of the Section 8 cuts. In late May, the Department stopped granting new short-term rental vouchers, Gray said, because officials do not know whether they will be able to bridge the 60 households currently in the program to long-term assistance.
She worries that the Section 8 funding reduction will tighten a bottleneck in the state’s efforts to house Vermonters experiencing homelessness.
“It’s just going to add strain to a system that is already really strained,” she said.
A chance to dream
When Patten moved into the apartment a year ago, she set herself a goal. Within two years, she’d be off state assistance — she’d have landed a job that would allow her to cover the rent herself. After that, she imagined buying land and building herself a house.
“This apartment gave me the chance to kind of dream of our futures and what it could be,” she said, sitting in her living room on a late spring afternoon. “And that’s all gone now.”
As the end of August creeps closer, Patten worries that she will need to again seek a state-funded motel room to assure her family’s shelter — if one is available. A motel voucher would come at significantly greater expense to the state than the DCF subsidy that helps pay for the rental.
“To me, it’s going to be a very gloomy summer,” she said.
But there was a shred of hope to hang onto. As a reporter packed up her car, Patten ran down to the sidewalk. She had just received a call for a job interview. A position with the state, to help families like hers navigate the byzantine benefits programs meant to offer them stability.
Maybe it could deliver the security she sought.
