Armory shelter discussion focuses on timing as state appeals Waterbury’s permit requirement
February 26, 2024 | By Lisa ScagliottiFEB. 29 UPDATE: This story was updated with information from the second meeting held by the Waterbury Select Board about the armory shelter proposal.
The state of Vermont has filed an appeal of the Waterbury zoning administrator's determination that a proposal to repurpose the former Vermont National Guard armory as a temporary homeless shelter needs a change of use permit from the town.
The appeal follows a second visit last week by state officials to a well-attended Waterbury Select Board meeting to discuss details about the state proposal to open a 40-bed shelter at the armory.
Chris Winters, commissioner of the Vermont Department for Children and Families (right) addresses a meeting of the Waterbury Select Board on Feb. 19. With him are Deputy Commissioner of Economic Services Miranda Gray (center) and Lily Sojourner, interim director of the state Office of Economic Opportunity (left). Photo by Lisa Scagliotti
On Feb. 8, Waterbury Zoning Administrator Mike Bishop wrote to the state Buildings and General Services Commissioner Jennifer Fitch that the proposed new use of the armory as a shelter with the state hiring a contractor to operate it would require a town permit. The state had two weeks to challenge that decision.
Assistant Attorney General Gregg Harris filed an appeal at the end of last week writing that the state questions whether the town has the authority to require the permit in this situation, and whether a change of use permit applies to this project.
The Waterbury Development Review Board would review this challenge. As of Feb. 28, no meeting date has been scheduled yet. Bishop said it likely would be on an April agenda for the board. The DRB would also be the town board to consider a change of use permit application.
Second public discussion
State Commissioner of the Department for Children and Families Chris Winters in late January shared a plan for the state to expand its shelter capacity as it looks to shift away from its program relying on motels and hotels as temporary housing for hundreds of unhoused Vermonters. Municipal Manager Tom Leitz responded with a five-page letter listing questions and concerns raised by town officials and community members including issues of operations, safety, timeline, and impact on town services.
Winters and other Human Services staff attended the Feb. 19 Waterbury Select Board meeting to respond with further details. Timing has been a top concern to state officials – both the pace of rolling out the project and questions over how long the shelter would be in place.
Winters started there. “It feels rushed because it is rushed,” he told the 60 or so people in the meeting room at the Main Street fire station and another 80 viewing online. “It’s kind of an all-hands-on-deck moment across the state and we are scrambling – to put to mildly – to put together projects to put together shelter for people who need it.”
Vermont and much of the nation, Winters said, is “facing unprecedented levels of homelessness” due to inflation, dwindling federal funding for pandemic-era poverty programs, and a lack of affordable housing. “We need more housing units. We need especially more affordable housing units and a more affordable housing market,” Winters said. “But that’s going to take time.”
He explained that more temporary shelter is needed to address a cohort of unhoused Vermonters who have been living in hotels and motels with the state picking up the tab. State funding was to end for that program as of April 1 although lawmakers now are working on extending that through June. Winters acknowledged that decisions by the legislature and governor will impact the timing details, but he and his staff remain focused on finding new sites.
“The goal has been April 1 to July 1 but the legislature might move the deadline,” Winters said of the Waterbury proposal. “April 1 is not a hard and fast date at this point. But the bottom line is we still need more shelter and we still need options other than hotels.”
Questions over timeline and timing
In his first visit to Waterbury on Jan. 29, Winters explained how the state would transfer the former armory from the Military Department to Buildings and General Services, make improvements including adding a fire sprinkler system, modifications to bathrooms and temporary partitions to prepare the space for use as a shelter through the end of June.
“I know this is asking a lot of your community and I know you have a lot of concerns about it,” Winters said. “We are going to do our damndest to make sure that the community is understanding what we’re trying to do, is a part of the solution, and if you have concerns, we do want to address them and we want to make this work.”
There currently are about 450 shelter beds in Vermont and Winters’ department is charged with adding 100 more beds over the next year with Waterbury being just one of multiple locations under consideration. Winters called the Waterbury proposal “not our first choice” but an option as others have fallen through in other communities.
“Is the state willing to sign an agreement that this is going to be a 90-day proposal and not longer?” asked Select Board member Mike Bard.
“I’d be hesitant to lock into 90 days,” Winters replied, adding that he could envision reviewing the operation at the end of 90 days “to see how it’s going.”
Picking up on reactions in the audience to Winters’ answer, Select Board Vice Chair Dani Kehlmann said she wanted everyone to “work hard to lower the heat in the conversation.” Community members are reacting, she said, “in response to feeling manipulated and/or lied to – to sound a little bit extreme. But people feel really in the dark. They feel like they’re being fed canned responses that don’t feel authentic. Lots of people react really distrustfully to that.”
Winters’ reply to the 90-day question is important, Kehlmann said. “That felt very different than it did three weeks ago. I am personally not angry about that. That makes sense. I had a suspicion that was it all along,” she said. “But I think when people feel that their experience and the words are not matching up, it gets very heated and I would love to try to cool that because we want to be good partners.”
Addressing concern that the shelter would be in place longer-term, Winters said that costs associated with ongoing operations such as food, security, staffing, and transportation would likely prevent it from operating much longer than planned. “But I can’t say to you today it’s absolutely only going to be 90 days.”
Not a ‘drop-in’ shelter
Lily Sojourner, interim director of the state Office of Economic Opportunity, addressed questions around operations saying that the shelter would be run 24/7 with residents able to stay there all day.
Residents would be referred from the hotel-motel program and they would be adults, not with children, and many would be over age 60 with disabilities, Winters said, acknowledging that they likely “would be an additional stressor on first responders” for medical attention.
Maggie Burke, executive director of Waterbury Ambulance Service, told the state officials that the local agency is a nonprofit with municipal funding covering just under 30% of its budget. Shelter residents likely will be under- or uninsured, Burke pointed out, requesting that the state consider reimbursing the ambulance service for calls.
“I’m also worried about burnout for our crews,” she said, suggesting that the state consider setting up a preventative care program that the ambulance service could assist with to provide health screenings for shelter residents. Winters promised to follow up with Burke.
Security is another concern raised by local residents and officials, including whether a shelter will attract more people to Waterbury than it can accommodate, and what may happen if shelter residents are not abiding by the rules and are asked to leave.
Winters explained that the Waterbury location is not easily accessible for many unhoused individuals in the region and it would not operate as a “drop-in” facility. “We don’t want to encourage people thinking they can come here and get a bed for the night,” he said.
Residents would be referred there through caseworkers in the hotel-motel program, he explained, and they would typically leave for a new housing situation.
“We try not to exit someone without a plan,” Winters continued. “But again, being completely honest, if they are a danger to someone else in the shelter, if they are causing a lot of disruption and making it impossible for the other people who are trying to stay there, we will call law enforcement.”
Winters said such situations don’t occur often, noting that the armory would serve people already in the state’s program and not be “a low barrier shelter where someone can walk in off the street – they might be using substances – they accept all comers. There are a few shelters like that across the state. This is not that.”
Sally Dillon, who volunteers with the Waterbury Fire Department and heads the ambulance service board, said she contacted the Berlin Police Department to ask about increased calls to the Hilltop Motel which is in the state’s hotel-motel program. She said she was told that since July, the department had at least 169 calls to the motel. “That’s more than our town can handle,” she said.
Waterbury has no local police department and contracts with the Vermont State Police which assigns two troopers to the town. Winters said the state police are aware of the Waterbury shelter proposal but he did not have any details yet regarding how it would be addressed.
The shelter would likely have two staff members present at all times in addition to caseworkers assisting residents with various social services. Municipal Manager Leitz asked if the shelter would serve 40 people overall or if the population would change. “Our goal is to move people out as quickly as possible, but to keep beds filled,” Winters said, noting that when the hotel-motel program began, it was serving about 1,300 households and now that has dropped to about 580 households as people are assisted to move into more permanent housing.
Specific daily operations details would need to wait until an operator is hired for the shelter, state officials said. “We know this is not ideal,” Winters said. The state would prefer to have more permanent shelters in place with in-state contractors to operate them, he explained. Vermont operators lack capacity to do more though. The state is now reviewing four bids from out-of-state for an armory shelter operator, with a possibility of adding a state employee for oversight, Winters said.
Other communities are watching
Audience members offered comments and asked questions including Tamatha Thomas-Haase, who lives near the armory. She reminded state officials that the neighborhood flooded twice in 2023, expressing concern for shelter residents who may be elderly and disabled. “When we flood, we become an island,” she said. “I hope whoever operates this shelter understands the need for evacuation in the case of flooding.”
Winters said there would be an emergency management plan for the shelter that addressed evacuation during a flood.
Waterbury Center resident Rob Hofmann, whose career has included several state commissioner-level positions, shared that before he moved to Waterbury 30 years ago, he lived in Brooklyn and volunteered with his wife at an overnight homeless shelter.
“In some ways the people that were there seemed so different than us. They looked different. They were different economically, different color of their skin – but in so many other ways they were just like us,” he recalled.
He thanked Winters and the other state officials for attending the meeting and answering questions and he acknowledged the select board’s role in convening the session. “I appreciate that our elected representatives are kicking the tires, putting these people through the paces and asking the tough questions,” he said. “I would just hope that we can approach this from a how-can-we-make-it-work standpoint … how would we want to be treated if we were in their shoes?”
Randall Street resident Scott Mackey reiterated the shared concern about how quickly the plans are moving forward. “I could wait longer to get a permit for the deck on my house than the timeline that’s been put out here,” he said.
“I do think Waterbury wants to be part of the solution,” he said. “Bring us a proposal that’s thought out, that’s in scale with the community. Let us look at it. I guarantee this community will support it.”
In their separate comments, both Winters and Mackey noted that the Waterbury proposal is an example other communities are likely watching.
“If you rush it through like this and say we don’t need to follow the rules, we don't need a permit… I just don’t think it’s going to help your chance for success,” Mackey said. “And then you’re going to have other communities where you’re going to try to build these things, and they’re going to say, well, look at what happened over in Waterbury – we don’t want it here.”
Winters ticked off a list of other towns where the state is looking to locate shelters including Bennington, Brattleboro, Rutland, St. Albans, Hyde Park, Hartford, Springfield and Middlebury. “We have to be able to site shelters in other towns across the state. So if this goes poorly, that’s a black mark on the state,” he said.
Winters stressed that he and his staff would stay in touch with town officials as more information becomes available to fill in details for the shelter proposal. He also offered to return for additional community meetings as plans move forward. No further dates are scheduled for Winters and state Human Services staff to return. A hearing on the zoning permit would be handled by staff from the Attorney General’s office and the Buildings and General Services Department.
Despite the many hurdles ahead, Winters more than once stressed that he wants the armory shelter project to succeed. “We want this to work,” he told the audience. “It’s my hope that this is a temporary project that could be welcomed by the community. That the folks who are here – who might go for a walk, might go get groceries, might go to the park, might go to the library – could be welcomed by the community and accepted and respected as individuals, and even offered some help.”
ORCA Media records Waterbury Select Board meetings. They are online at ORCAMedia.net. The meetings with state officials regarding the armory proposal were held on Jan. 29 and Feb. 19