New rules set to go into effect on July 15 will dramatically slash the number of homeless Vermonters receiving state benefits to stay in motels, a practice that came under fire from lawmakers this winter after emergency assistance spending on motel stays spending skyrocketed to $2.2 million fiscal year 2012 and roughly $4 million in 2013. 

The legislature cut its funding for that program to $1.5 million in this year’s appropriations bill — and officials at the Vermont Agency of Human Services say the new eligibility rules will keep that spending in check. But advocates for the homeless are raising the alarm that the new rules are too strict, and will leave vulnerable Vermonters without any place to turn if homeless shelters are full. 

Chopping motel benefits before other relief programs are in place is like “pulling away the life raft before people know how to swim,” says Rita Markley, who directs the Committee on Temporary Shelter (COTS) in Burlington.  

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Kathryn Flagg was a Seven Days staff writer from 2012 through 2015. She completed a fellowship in environmental journalism at Middlebury College, and her work has also appeared in the Addison County Independent, Wyoming Public Radio and Orion Magazine.

8 replies on “Homeless Advocates Balk at New Motel Housing Rules”

  2. If your state is going to fund something like this, you have got to have accountability. I sure wish the economic climate were right enough for the private sector to get some more charity projects going.
    “At least it’s in the summer. They won’t freeze.”
    I strongly suggest giving this issue more attention so people can donate winter clothing and the like.

  3. All that money in a state with just half a million people! The tax burden this places on the middle class, working class, and working poor is just not sustainable. Where I live, across the border into New Hampshire, I’m considered a hard core liberal. If I were still in Vermont I’d be called a Tea Partier.

  5. We need a healthy and growing economy to support all these programs. I’m thinking of the IBM getting slowly strangled to death for lack of one decent road.

  6. Its time to rethink our approach to the problem of ‘houselessness’.
    $4M equates to ~100 tiny houses on wheels, ala Tumbleweed Tiny Houses or the equivalent. 100 tiny houses would fit nicely in 100 backyards spread around the state. Safe, stable and high quality housing would provide qualifying house-less people and families with the ability to keep and/or acquire income producing jobs. Stable incomes would allow folks to pay modest rents to the owners of the backyards or vacant lots where the tiny houses would reside. Modest rental income would help participating homeowners increase their incomes and their ability to spend thus producing additional knock-on effects. New relationships would form where perhaps there were none.
    Tiny houses are cheap to operate (highly efficient) and cheap to maintain (tiny square footage) and can last indefinitely. They can be designed as off-grid structures to minimize their impact on local services. Features might include modest DC electrical systems powered by modest solar arrays and a few batteries, passive refrigeration (in cool and cold months), rain water harvesting and storage (in warmer months) and hand powered reverse osmosis filters (for potability), very modest plumbing and/or gravity fed water supply, utilization of simple onsite greywater systems and reliance on Urine Diverting Dehydration Toilets (UDDTs), tiny marine wood stoves or tiny sealed combustion marine propane heaters for space heating, alcohol powered marine ranges for cooking, etc. Tiny houses can be constructed with non-toxic local materials like white pine and/or spruce framing, cellulose insulation, northern white cedar siding, trim and interior paneling (and even roofing), locally produced windows and doors and locally fabricated tandem-axle trailers. Tiny houses are also perfectly adapted to utilize reclaimed materials when they are available (framing, windows and doors, fixtures, etc.). Vermonters would build the structures.
    The state could build more tiny houses each year until our house-less population becomes negligible. The tiny house program could be designed in such a way that residents could contribute funds to eventually own the structures themselves. Tiny houses can be located in town centers such that residents would not need cars and could rely on walking, bicycling and/or mass transit to get to work, school and to shopping. Ultra-efficient tiny houses would allow people to survive far better on limited incomes and/or to work less in order to spend more time with family, attend to educational needs and/or volunteer their time to give back to the community. A fleet of tiny houses would actually allow the State to get something tangible in exchange for the outlay of public funds.
    We could basically eradicate houselessness for once and for all. Surely this is smarter than wasting millions on motels?

  8. Homelessness will never go away completely because some people simple don’t want to work, or they just can’t figure out life. There are lots of jobs out there in the world. My advice to homeless people is to get one.

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