Cities and Towns Plead for State Help in Handling Homelessness

Vermont cities and towns urgently need the state's help in handling their growing homeless populations, and the problem can’t wait until the next state budget cycle is complete, leaders from five municipalities said at a press conference in Montpelier on Wednesday.

Officials from Winooski, Rutland, Montpelier, Barre and Brattleboro issued their demands directly to the Scott administration, the legislature and the judiciary. They gathered on Wednesday to speak with reporters amid planned reductions this month in the state’s motel program, which has housed thousands of homeless people for the past several years.

“We are calling on state government, all three branches, to take immediate charge of this situation and assume their legal responsibilities for this population in need,” Rutland Mayor Mike Doenges said. He noted that Vermont has agencies in place that are charged with helping vulnerable residents, and the state owns vacant buildings, land and other sites that can be used for temporary housing.

He demanded that the state set up encampments with bathrooms, showers, trash disposal, supervision and support and that prosecutors, courts and police work together to curb behavior that’s causing public safety problems.
“All of these resources need to be brought to bear now,” Doenges said. Without help, he said, cities and towns that are already overwhelmed just won’t have any means to help people who are living outside.

“All of the municipalities here would give the shirts off their backs to help those in their communities,” Doenges said. “The problem is, we have run out of shirts and have nothing left of our resources to give.”

Vermont’s motel housing program was created in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic to help keep people out of congregate shelters. In the years since, the state has paid millions of dollars to motel owners to continue the program while searching for other, less expensive solutions.
A critical housing shortage is contributing, with the result that Vermont is regularly singled out as the state with the highest rate of homelessness in the nation. According to a report last month from the Vermont State Housing Authority, there were 3,458 Vermonters living without homes on a single day this year, including more than 700 children. More than a third of them had not had a home in a year or more, the report said.

Earlier this year, under pressure to save money, lawmakers reduced the capacity of the motel program, bringing the number of rooms from 1,300 to 1,100 beginning on Sunday, September 15.

Miranda Gray, deputy commissioner of the Department for Children and Families' economic services division, said her agency received more than 1,300 calls on that day. More than 200 other households will be asked to leave on Thursday, she added, as they exceed an 80-day limit on motel use. Another 400 households will reach that limit in mid-October, she said.
Bill Fraser, the longtime city manager in Montpelier, said his municipality is unable to keep up with the needs of its homeless population, some of whom are camping.

“We’re already sending public works highway officials to clean up feces and trash,” he said. “We have police doing wellness checks. We have firefighters. A huge percentage of our responses for public safety are going to the homeless population.”

Winooski Mayor Kristine Lott said police charges and citations for illegal behavior were routinely dismissed.

"Limited staff are cleaning up unsanitary messes; volunteers are exhausted and at a break point," she said. In neighboring Burlington, the city has distributed water, portable toilets and dumpsters to three homeless encampments.
Asked about the municipalities’ plight at his press conference on Wednesday, Gov. Phil Scott said the state doesn’t have the means to provide shelter and aid for all who need it, either.

“We’ve been trying to wean ourselves off the hotel-motel program for a number of years now,” he said. “It’s just not sustainable on a long-term basis.”

He added that he would rather the state create more emergency shelters than use land for camping.

“I don’t know what buildings they are referring to,” the governor said of vacant state buildings that municipal leaders suggested for housing.
Josh Hanford, director of intergovernmental relations for the Vermont League of Cities & Towns, said he doesn't know of any other state that is still operating an emergency motel housing program the way Vermont is.

“Part of the frustration for municipalities in Vermont is they feel some other states dealt with some of these issues weeks, months, years ago,” Hanford said. "Even in California, the governor has taken a pretty strong stand in response to homeless encampments.”