“Donna” walked up the steps to her Burlington apartment building on Monday afternoon and pulled on the front door. It was locked from the inside.
Four days earlier, in the middle of the night, a small electrical fire had started in a basement utility closet at the 169-year-old St. Paul Street building, smoking out Donna and her neighbors. The fire left a dozen people of modest means looking for places to stay in a city that already doesn’t have enough.
With money from the American Red Cross, Donna, a 50-year-old woman who asked Seven Days not to use her real name, had slept in a South Burlington hotel. But the assistance was only meant to cover two days of lodging, and Donna’s prepaid debit card was running out. She’d returned home to see if she could move back in — or at least retrieve her cigarettes.
She called a property manager employed by the building’s owner, Joe Handy, who is one of the city’s largest landlords.
“I’m sitting here with my thumb in the air, trying to figure out what I’m going to do,” she told the man.
The apartment wouldn’t be ready for another month, she heard the property manager say. He suggested that Donna call Burlington Housing Authority, which administers her Section 8 voucher. But that office was already closed for the day and doesn’t provide emergency housing anyway. The state agency that does, the Department for Children and Families, didn’t have a room available anywhere in the county.
Unbeknownst to Donna, the city has an ordinance that requires landlords to pay for tenants’ housing when they’re displaced through no fault of their own. Handy wasn’t doing that. Then again, no one from the city told him that he had to.
All Donna knew was that she might be able to get a room at the former Champlain Inn, a homeless shelter just down the street. She picked up a grocery bag containing her medications and started walking.
No one had been injured by the smoke and flames. The historic building can be repaired. Yet the small fire had pushed Donna and many of her neighbors to the brink of homelessness as they looked for help that was supposed to be there — but wasn’t.
In the early morning hours after the fire broke out, tenants made their way to the Green Mountain Suites Hotel in South Burlington, where the Red Cross put them up for the weekend. Handy himself drove some of them there. By Monday morning, though, the tenants were on their own. Those who had renter’s insurance or financial means could afford to stay in hotel rooms for longer; finding one in the Burlington area for less than $150 per night would be its own challenge during college graduation season.
Others waited in long lines at the state economic services office near Church Street, only to be told that its emergency housing program — better known as the pandemic motel program — was already full. They’d have to go to another county to get a room.
Lenora Travis and Rachel Kelley went to Handy’s office above Handy’s Service Center downtown. They wanted their landlord’s help, but Handy wasn’t in.
“He hasn’t forked over a penny,” Travis, 63, said from a nearby sidewalk. “He hasn’t called any of us to see if we need any assistance with anything.”
The city’s ordinance regarding relocation expenses is meant to protect tenants from homelessness and financial burden after the city deems their home unlivable. The city hasn’t blamed Handy or the tenants for the fire at St. Paul Street, which started in an electrical box. But inspectors ordered him to rewire much of the building — a process Handy told Seven Days could take six months. In the meantime, the city determined that the building is uninhabitable, so the ordinance applies, according to Patti Wehman, manager of the city’s Code Enforcement division.
However, Wehman acknowledged in an interview on Tuesday that she hadn’t informed Handy that he’s responsible for his tenants’ relocation costs.
“I presumed he is aware because he’s been in business for so long,” she said.
Handy said he doesn’t plan to pay for tenants’ expenses because he doesn’t think the ordinance applies to what he called an “act of God.” He said he would return their security deposits upon request. “That’s all I can do right now,” he said.
Outside Handy’s office on Monday, Travis had urgent concerns. She needed to get inside the apartment to retrieve her cat, Shiloh, whom she planned to leave with the Humane Society of Chittenden County, which provides temporary care for pets during times of crisis.
Kelley, 19, was making phone calls and exchanging text messages to figure out a plan for the night. Her mother and brother live nearby, but sleeping on the floor of their small apartment was a last resort. The St. Paul Street address was her first place of her own; she afforded the $1,350 monthly rent with the help of a Section 8 voucher.
Kelley hadn’t thought to purchase renter’s insurance, though Handy said the leases required it. She said she can’t afford to pay for hotel rooms on the wages she earns working in home health.
“I don’t make much myself,” her mother, Amber Robertson, later explained. “So it’s hard for me to help her.”
“There’s no way I should be going into a shelter from having an apartment.” Lenora Travis
Kelley and Travis both had stayed in Burlington homeless shelters previously — Kelley when she was a child, and Travis when she moved to Burlington several years ago. Neither wanted to do so again — especially at the Champlain Inn, a shelter established in a defunct motel during the pandemic that doesn’t require guests to be sober. Travis works at a nearby gas station that shelter guests frequent.
“There’s no way I should be going into a shelter from having an apartment,” she said.
More than an hour before the Champlain Inn opened on Monday night, people were already lining up. If there were more people waiting than rooms available by 6:40 p.m., the shelter operator would hold a lottery to determine who could sleep there.
So Donna stood on the sidewalk and racked her brain for other options. She’d had a stable place to live for more than a decade, getting by on her disability checks. St. Paul Street, she said, was “middle-class living.” This was something else.
She called two people she knew and asked to stay a couple of nights with them. No luck.
She talked to the Red Cross and the crisis line for the Howard Center, which sent a street outreach worker to check on her. She wondered aloud whether she could convince the hospital to admit her overnight.
Every 20 minutes, another bus dropped off more people carrying bedrolls. Donna was sweating inside her puffy coat and winter cap.
A petite woman from the shelter walked outside and took down the names of would-be guests on a clipboard. She reappeared a few minutes later with an open laptop. Using an online program, she had entered their names into a digital wheel of fortune. A spinner would randomly decide who would stay and who would need to find another place.
Donna got a room.
She asked the shelter worker what that meant. She was told she may have to wait outside like this every night at 6:40 p.m., no guarantees.
The reality of her situation washed over her. Was this the only help out there? “I need somewhere to live,” Donna said. “I can’t just be running around. I’m on meds. I need to be somewhere.”
She added: “There’s something wrong with the whole thing.”
The original print version of this article was headlined “Burned | A fire shuttered their Burlington apartment building. Where to next?”
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This article appears in May 10-16, 2023.
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