Burlington will open an emergency overnight shelter this weekend ahead of an arctic blast that’s projected to bring bone-chilling temperatures into Vermont.
The pop-up shelter at the Robert Miller Community Center will be open from 5 p.m. to 8 a.m. from Friday night through Tuesday morning and will accommodate roughly 100 people, about half of the number believed to be living outside in the greater Burlington area.
At a vigil in City Hall Park on Thursday to highlight Homelessness Awareness Day, officials warned that the impending storm could be life-threatening to people who remain outside for extended periods of time. The National Weather Service says wind chills could reach as low as 40 degrees below zero.
“This is the coldest that we have experienced or witnessed in years,” said Sarah Russell, the emergency services director at the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity, which will staff the pop-up shelter.
The impending storm comes as homelessness advocates are preparing for the upcoming Point-in-Time Count, an annual nationwide exercise aimed at tallying the number of homeless people on a single night in January. This year’s count will occur on January 29 and will reveal whether Vermont has made any progress in its efforts to reduce homelessness.
Cold weather has always posed a danger to those experiencing homelessness, but the nation’s worsening housing crisis has led to a spike in exposure-related deaths in some parts of the country.
Vermont has largely been spared, according to a joint investigation from Seven Days and Vermont Public last year. The outlets found that while at least 82 people died while homeless in Vermont between 2021 and 2024, none were caused by hypothermia alone.
The state was providing more wintertime shelter then, though. A dramatic increase in the prevalence of unsheltered homelessness has since left more people exposed to the elements.
After temperatures fell to 17 degrees below zero one night last month, police in Barre responded to a call of a dead body behind a local business. They found Richard Govea, 51, in a state of “paradoxical undress,” typically associated with the final stages of hypothermia in which the victim irrationally sheds layers of clothing.
In Burlington, meanwhile, outreach workers are mourning the death of Perry Thornley, a well-known member of the local homeless community.
Thornley was found unresponsive in Battery Park on January 8 and later died at the University of Vermont Medical Center. His cause of death is still pending, and it is not yet clear whether the elements played a role. But local service providers say his loss has hit them hard.
At Thursday’s vigil, Burlington Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak mentioned Thornley by name and asked attendees to honor his memory with a moment of silence.
“Perry’s life mattered,” she said.
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