We all want our downtowns to be safe and supportive spaces for our communities, but that’s not possible when people’s most basic needs are not being met. Over the last few years, policy decisions by state leaders have contributed to thousands of Vermonters becoming unsheltered and pushed onto the streets. Today, Vermont has one of the highest rates of homelessness in the country, and more than half of Vermonters without homes are left without any shelter. People are not on the streets by choice. They are there because of the scarcity of housing and shelter – a scarcity that is the result of political choices made by Vermont’s leaders.
A law passed earlier this year reduces capacity in our homelessness response system by 400 rooms for most of the year, and for the first time, capacity will remain limited during Vermont’s severe winter months. Furthermore, the Scott administration is creating new barriers that will make it harder to access a motel shelter, which will make our homelessness crisis worse.
When the legislature created the Vermont Homelessness Response Continuum earlier this year, its goal was to create a true “continuum” of services for people experiencing homelessness–a tiered system supporting unhoused Vermonters from crisis intervention to permanent housing, to reduce reliance on emergency motel vouchers. Instead, the Scott administration is only implementing restrictions on access to emergency shelter in motels and reducing capacity – without addressing the legislature’s goal of increasing prevention services, motel alternatives, and permanent solutions. As a result, hundreds more households eligible for shelter will be turned away due to insufficient capacity created by arbitrary limits set by the state.
On September 1, the administration rolled out its vision for the new Vermont Homelessness Response Continuum – but the administration’s program rules don’t fulfill the legislature’s intent of addressing the problem of homelessness in our state. Instead, the administration is putting more people out on the street and shifting responsibility to local communities. The administration’s failure to plan and prepare its own staff has resulted in the removal of households who were already in the state-run shelter program, forcing people to scramble to reapply for the benefits they already qualify for. Simultaneously, the state eliminated after-hours service through its VT211 helpline. Eligible individuals and families were removed from emergency housing because the administration’s phone lines were out of service or busy. Getting through often meant hours on hold—only to be disconnected. When people finally managed to reach the state to reapply for benefits, many were wrongfully denied the emergency housing they were entitled to receive because intake staff was inadequately trained or because some procedural hurdles had been overlooked, forcing them back onto the streets.
Beyond the chaos caused by the administration’s failure to prepare for the launch of the new program, the administration’s rules will perpetuate (and worsen) many of the issues that plague our current emergency shelter system: too few beds, too many barriers to accessing support, and no path to permanent housing. The Scott administration is exploiting a law passed with good intentions to circumvent the process and force its well-known agenda to abandon community members experiencing homelessness.
Undermining Access, Rights, and Legislative Intent
- Legislative Intent Ignored
The rules fail to reflect the legislature's intent to end unsheltered homelessness and make homelessness rare and brief with a continuum of services. Instead, the rules only limit emergency housing capacity and restrict eligibility by creating administrative hurdles. - Rights and Access Restricted
Access to vital services is curtailed in ways legislators explicitly rejected. These rules take away people’s rights to live in integrated settings, exercise self-determination related to services and treatment, and maintain their dignity. - Public Feedback Dismissed
Despite extensive input from unhoused individuals, service providers, and community members, the administration ignored their feedback and issued rules that seem to be deliberately designed to exhaust applicants into abandoning their entitled benefits and rights and giving up hope.
Our unsheltered neighbors are living-and dying-on our streets. We’re demanding that the administration address these problems now. We all need to protect our unhoused neighbors. Our government owes them, and all of us, more than the cruelty and unfairness it unleashed under the new rules of the continuum.