Vermont limits emergency motel shelters for homeless, forcing many to leave this month

BERLIN, Vt. (AP) — Hundreds of Vermont’s most vulnerable and homeless people are being forced out of the publicly funded motel rooms they’ve been living in this fall as the state ends its pandemic-era motel voucher program. The move has sparked outcry from city leaders and homeless advocates, who say many have no place to go.

The largest exodus — about 230 households — is expected Thursday, when they reach the new 80-day limit on motel room stays imposed by the Legislature starting in July. Those affected include families, people with disabilities, the elderly, pregnant women and people who have experienced domestic violence or sexual assault. natural disaster such as fire or flood.

A new cap of 1,110 hotel rooms that the state can use to house these people during the warmer months of April through November also went into effect Sunday. Some households that have not yet used up their 80 days have been denied rooms because there is no room, homeless advocates say.

In central Vermont, in the towns of Montpelier and Barre, between 100 and 140 families will be leaving motels this fall. The state estimates that about 1,000 households will be without motels statewide, said Jen Armbrister, outreach manager for Good Samaritan Haven in Barre.

Shelters in the region are consistently full, and homeless advocates are scrambling to find housing in a state with a housing crisis that had the second-highest per capita homelessness rate in the country in 2023, according to an assessment by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“I can’t tell you how many families I’ve met and I’ve told them I really pray I never have to have this conversation with them, but we don’t have any options,” Armbrister said. She had to tell them that if they didn’t have a place to go, the best she could do was put them on a list to get a tent and sleeping bags. But there was no place nearby to camp.

Households will be eligible for motel accommodations again on December 1, as winter approaches. But until then, some don’t know where they will live.

Nova and Bruce Jewett are scheduled to leave the Hilltop Inn in Berlin on October 1. Bruce Jewett, 63, is a disabled veteran with cancer who is unable to camp due to a back injury.

The couple is looking for a place to live but there is none available. They are always getting a hold of it or told that someone else is looking at a place or that it is already rented, he said.

“It bothers me because I’m a veteran and I don’t believe veterans should have to deal with this,” he said.

Heidi Wright, 50, is scheduled to leave the Budget Inn in Barre on Sept. 28. She suffers from seizures, as well as depression, anxiety and emphysema, and she said doctors have discussed getting a pacemaker.

“My hands are tied… and I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she said.

People are desperate, said Armbrister, who met with Wright on Wednesday and told her she would do whatever she could to keep her housed.

“There is no solution. We are meeting with as many organizations and teams as we can to try to find a solution, but nothing has been found yet,” Armbrister said. “It’s really, really sad. It’s traumatic.”

Leaders from more than a dozen Vermont cities and towns on Wednesday called on the state government to do more to address rising homelessness rates and related challenges. They say local governments and service providers are dealing with the consequences and that municipalities lack the expertise and resources to address them.

“Our first responders can’t answer calls, our residents are reluctant to use public spaces, our limited staff is forced to clean up unsanitary messes, volunteers are exhausted and our nonprofit partners are at a breaking point,” Montpelier City Manager William Fraser said in a statement.

The state has been trying for several years to get rid of the hotel and motel program without much success, Republican Gov. Phil Scott said at his weekly news conference Wednesday.

“It’s just not sustainable in the long term,” he said. “It’s a difficult situation. I understand the municipalities’ point of view as well, but we also don’t have the resources and so we find ourselves in the situation we’re in,” Scott said.

The long-term approach is to try to create more shelters, he said, although he added that when the state set up emergency shelters last spring during another cutback in the motel program, few people used them.

While Vermont is working to create more housing, it can’t come soon enough.

According to a recent state housing report, Vermont’s shortage of rental apartments contributed to a tripling of the homeless population between 2019 and 2023. City and town leaders say the number of homeless people is now more than 3,400, up from 1,100 in 2020.

Vermont has a rental vacancy rate of just 3 percent statewide, and it’s estimated at 1 percent in Chittenden County, which includes Vermont’s largest city, Burlington, and is the state’s most populous county.

To meet demand, house the homeless, normalize vacancy rates and replace homes lost to flooding and other causes, the state will need to create between 24,000 and 36,000 housing units between 2025 and 2029, according to Vermont’s latest housing needs assessment.