Vermont plans to open emergency homeless shelters in Waterbury and Williston on Friday for families with children who are living outdoors after new limits were placed on the pandemic-era motel program.
The shelter at the Waterbury armory will house 10 families, and the former state police barracks in Williston will take seven, Department for Children and Families Commissioner Chris Winters said.
“This is going to be meaningful for up to 17 families and really important to them — it’s potentially a lifesaving measure,” Winters said.
The shelters could house up to 70 people, which is significant but will fall far short of meeting the total need, Winters acknowledged. The shelters are expected to operate through April 1. They will offer services related to transportation, food and employment.
The legislature capped the motel program at 1,100 rooms starting in September. In addition, it set a new limit of 80 days that a person can use the emergency housing program. Both caps are lifted in winter. As a result, more than 200 people were evicted from their motel rooms in September. The fallout soon became clear, Winters said, as families with children resorted to sleeping in cars and camping.
The state owns both buildings and has retrofitted them with partitions to create a degree of privacy, Winters said.
Plans for a Montpelier location are also in the works, Winters said. The state would have liked to open a facility in Rutland, as well, but has not been able to identify a suitable location, he said.
The original plan for Waterbury had been to create space for 40 individual homeless people, but community members and local leaders raised concerns about that proposal. Winters is scheduled to attend a Waterbury Selectboard meeting on Wednesday evening to outline the latest plan.
No one was at the armory building on Tuesday, but there were signs of recent interior construction, including sawdust on the ground outside and new plywood walls visible through a window.
Town officials say they were informed of the plans by Winters on Monday.
The town’s Development Review Board concluded earlier this year that the state would need a zoning permit if the use of the building changed from a National Guard armory to a homeless shelter. The state argues it needs no such permit and has appealed this conclusion to the Environmental Division of the Superior Court.
Waterbury municipal manager Thomas Leitz said the issue could come down to staffing. If the state operates the shelter, it may not need a permit. If it hires another organization to do so, there could be problems, he said.
“Our zoning rules say the state has to directly operate the shelter,” Leitz said. “That, I think, is the crux of the issue.”
Whether the shelter conforms to local zoning will be up to the zoning administrator, he said. The state is planning to hire a contractor to manage the shelter 24-7, but a number of state staff members will provide oversight and services, he said.
Selectboard member Kane Sweeney said he’s a big supporter of more housing but thinks the state has effectively forced the shelter onto the town with little notice or collaboration.
“At this point, there is not a whole lot we can do about it,” he said.
The zoning issue is important but won’t derail the plan, he said.
“There is no way we are going to get into a pissing match with the state over a permit when it’s the difference between people having a roof over their head or not,” Sweeney said.
Related Stories
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!
