This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.
With colder weather approaching, the rules governing Vermont’s motel voucher program are about to shift for the winter – and will be more restrictive than in prior years. Meanwhile, shelters across the state are getting seasonal expansions up and running, though not all are ready to open as winter arrives.
Beginning on Dec. 1, the caps that have pushed over 1,500 people out of the motel voucher program this fall will be lifted for the winter. A 1,100 room-cap that has been in place since mid-September will no longer be in effect. An 80-day limit on vouchers will be lifted, too; motel stays between Dec. 1 and March 31 will not count toward that time limit, meaning people who ran out of time at the motels this fall will have a chance to reenter.
The room cap and day cap are expected to come back into play this spring.
But the cold-weather rules that determine who can access the motel voucher program this winter will be narrower than in the past. In recent years, the program’s eligibility requirements have been loosened during the coldest months of the year, allowing anyone seeking shelter potential access to a motel room. The policy was intended to get people inside during frigid, life-threatening weather.
This winter, the rules will be tighter. Legislation passed this spring restricted winter access to motel vouchers to people who meet the program’s vulnerability criteria, including people over the age of 65, families with children, people with disabilities, and more.
But meeting one of those criteria is not a guarantee of getting a room. Last winter – even without a room cap in place – motels participating in the voucher program were regularly full, prompting the state to turn away around 60 households a day because of lack of space, officials said in January.
Anticipating rooms could fill again, the Department for Children and Families put in place a prioritization policy this fall that will continue this winter.
Anytime the number of eligible households surpasses 90% of hotel and motel room capacity, certain households will get priority access to available rooms: families with children ages 19 or under, people who are pregnant, people experiencing domestic or other types of violence, and people over the age of 65.
People over the age of 50 who also meet another criteria – such as having a disability, having experienced a natural disaster or having been evicted – will get priority, too. That leaves younger people with disabilities or who have faced one of those hardships out of the priority list.
DCF anticipates between 1,300 and 1,500 rooms could be available through the motel program come December, Joshua Marshall, a DCF spokesperson, wrote in an email on Monday. Because hotels and motels are private businesses, “capacity can vary greatly,” he added.
That outlook signals a trend of diminishing motel room capacity. Last January, a little over 1,600 rooms were in use; a year prior, the program had capacity to serve about 1,800 households.
Ahead of Dec. 1, people in need of shelter can call DCF’s Economic Services Division to get preauthorization for a room. So far, DCF has authorized nearly 600 households to be housed the night of Dec. 1, Marshall said, including people that are currently in the program and others who exhausted their 80 nights and will be reentering.
Winter shelter expansions
More traditional shelter options are also opening up for the winter, though they may not meet the remaining need. And some projects have hit roadblocks.
When lawmakers decided to restrict motel program access during the winter, they also earmarked $10 million for the development of additional emergency shelters, specifically intended to bolster seasonal shelter access for people who won’t meet the program’s eligibility requirements this winter.
DCF prioritized six projects to receive a portion of that funding, including a modest expansion of Good Samaritan Haven’s seasonal shelter in Montpelier and five beds at an Upper Valley Haven shelter located across the state line in New Hampshire (where beds are expected to be used by Vermonters, according to a recent DCF report to the Legislature).
Two new, year-round shelters in Franklin County – one for people fleeing domestic violence, and another for youth – received a portion of the funding and are aiming to open in December and January, respectively, according to the report.
But not all of the winter shelter projects are on track to open as scheduled. In Burlington, the Committee on Temporary Shelter, or COTS, is working to acquire the former Social Security Administration office at 58 Pearl Street to turn it into a 30-bed low-barrier seasonal shelter. The organization had hoped to open on Dec. 1, but the federal acquisition process has moved slowly, said Rebekah Mott, COTS’ director of development and communications.
COTS is now awaiting the deed transfer to the building, which Mott expects to take place this week or next, and then the organization will need to hire staff to run the shelter and order supplies. She anticipates the shelter will be able to open its doors on Jan. 15. Given the later start, the shelter is slated to stay open later, too – until the end of April.
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“We have concerns for the number of unsheltered people that are in our community, and we are stepping up to do what we can, when we can,” Mott said in a Monday interview.
The last project primed to get a slice of the $10 million pie is a Rutland Housing Trust project at the former Loretto Home. But after Rutland Mental Health Services notified officials it didn’t have capacity to staff the new shelter, the state has been looking for another provider.
“At this time, the state is in touch with representatives from the city and local agencies and will continue to partner with them to explore options,” Marshall, from DCF, said Monday.
If that project falls through, DCF may use some of the remaining funds to help pay for two state-run family shelters in Waterbury and Williston that opened on Nov. 1 and will remain running until April 1.
Other shelters are also adding space ahead of the winter, through longer-term funding streams. In Brattleboro, the Groundworks Collaborative is in the process of adding twelve more beds to its overnight shelter ahead of the winter, for a total of 46, executive director Libby Bennett said in an interview. That expansion is part of a ramp-up plan to incrementally add beds ahead of the organization’s new shelter project, which will replace the former Morningside House in 2026.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont’s motel program poised for more limited winter access.