Op-Ed: Family shelter proposal does not remotely address the crisis

October 18, 2024  |  Submitted by Frank Knaack and Brenda Siegel 

MONTPELIER – While details are still coming in, on Tuesday the Vermont Department for Children and Families announced the State of Vermont will be setting up three emergency family shelters later this fall. 

As reported by WPTZ-Channel 5, these facilities will shelter 11 families with a combined 21 children. According to the most recent data from the Vermont Department of Children and Families, 724 households have already used their maximum number of nights in the General Assistance Emergency Housing Program (over 1,100 people). These numbers show that the state’s action this week does not remotely address this crisis. 

This announcement came hours after shelter, food security, and service providers from Vergennes to Brattleboro held a press conference calling on the administration to take immediate action to end the mass un-sheltering happening across Vermont. 

The providers said that the humanitarian crisis is human-made and has catastrophic implications. They called on the governor to take immediate action to ensure safe, non-congregate shelter for all vulnerable Vermonters recently evicted from the General Assistance Emergency Housing Program and immediately allow reasonable accommodations for people living with extreme disabilities and medical vulnerability. 

The providers said that ad hoc mass shelters, or hastily put together family shelters, will not address this crisis adequately. The providers all offered their organizations as willing partners in working out a humane and safe solution that can work. They cannot shoulder this burden alone and the state cannot put more of this responsibility on providers and municipalities. 

“Much of the action that has been taken to cause these harms has been taken in the name of being more fiscally responsible,” said Peter Elwell, Retired Brattleboro Town Manager and board member at both Groundworks Collaborative and Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont. “It's actually not. It is simply shifting those costs to institutions and individuals who are less able to bear those costs than the state of Vermont is.” 

The human and economic costs of failing to provide shelter are greater than the costs of shelter. Homelessness is linked with a broad range of negative health conditions, including premature death. People experiencing homelessness also are far more likely than the general population to be a victims of crime. Unsheltered homelessness is harsh and alienating. In addition, the economic costs associated with the failure to provide shelter – including on health systems, schools, criminal legal systems, and other public services – fall on municipalities and local providers to cover.

“The towns in Central Vermont, still reeling from two years of floods, infrastructure damage, and housing loss, now face an additional strain on local resources,” said Julie Bond, Executive Director of Good Samaritan Haven. “They are supporting our most vulnerable neighbors who have no roof over their heads. By forcing these individuals out of motels, the financial burden is shifted to service providers, municipalities, local hospitals, and neighbors. Good Sam’s outreach team has been working tirelessly in collaboration with End Homelessness Vermont to triage the disastrous situations for the ultra-vulnerable in Washington County and beyond who rely on motel sheltering. I’ll remind folks that for someone with diabetes, insulin requires refrigeration, and this isn’t possible in a tent. Living outdoors with lung cancer is a travesty. Imagine having a disability, having just given birth last week, and now being told you can no longer stay in your motel—that’s a system failure. Experiencing oxygen deprivation, suffocation, or worse because there is nowhere to plug in one’s oxygen machine is a horror.”

Susan Whitmore, executive director of John Graham Housing and Services in Vergennes said the John Graham Shelter is the only one in Addison County that takes families with children and its waiting list has doubled in the past month. “At this point, the only resource we have for families we cannot shelter in Vergennes is to give them camping equipment. Yet, when a mother or father asks us where they can camp legally and safely, we cannot give them direction because we have not received any resources or direction in this regard,” Whitmore said. “Existing encampments are not safe spaces for children, elders, and the disabled. And yet, that’s where many of them are going.”

Providers also highlighted how the mass un-sheltering has exacerbated food insecurity and access across our state. 

“The vulnerable populations being unhoused from the GA hotel program have a wide range of dietary needs and restrictions,” said Autumn Moen, legislative policy lead at Hunger Free Vermont. “Allowing people to stay in hotels while we work towards permanent and dignified housing for all would offer at least some degree of facilities for choosing, storing and preparing food options.”

This crisis has also been magnified by the administration’s decision to not allow for reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities and who are medically vulnerable.

“It has been one month since the mass un-sheltering began in Vermont,” said Brenda Siegel, Executive Director of End Homelessness Vermont and Founding Member of Housing First Vermont. “And it is worse than even I could have imagined. Because I could not have imagined a world in which access to a reasonable accommodation to remain sheltered would be eliminated. We have turned over every rock and boulder to try to help keep people alive and we have no tools to do so. To see the downplaying of disability, when the administration is fully aware of people on oxygen, in wheelchairs and with significant health needs who are outside is very disappointing. Their ability to survive matters and attention must be paid to that. We have many clients that the administration is fully aware of that are unlikely to survive outside. Our state has no authority to remove access to reasonable accommodations for people living with disabilities. What we are asking for is reasonable accommodations to be made for people who need them and that can start today.” 

Only the governor has the authority to take action now, either through emergency authority, calling for a special session, or utilizing additional state funds, and begin to address some of the harm that has been caused.

Frank Knaack, executive director of the Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont, pointed out that this mass un-sheltering shows that the state does not have an adequate plan to ensure shelter for those in need. “Vermont has a statewide shelter capacity of approximately 540 beds, and all are full. The hotel/motel program has served as the state’s backup plan. The governor has known this for months, yet here we are exiting vulnerable Vermonters at a level nearly twice the capacity of the entire state’s shelter system,” he said. “This is unconscionable and is completely avoidable. Let’s be crystal clear, this is a policy choice. We urge the governor to take immediate action to ensure shelter for the over 1,000 vulnerable unhoused Vermonters.”

Research suggests that non-congregate shelter offers many additional benefits compared to the congregate model, including a greater feeling of stability, safety, health, and well-being for individuals in shelters, more high-quality engagement with staff, reduced interpersonal conflict, greater focus on future goals, and designated personal space and security for belongings. 

“Large-scale congregate shelter settings do not work,” said Libby Bennett, Executive Director of Groundworks Collaborative in Brattleboro. “It contributes to additional trauma for people who have already lived through any number of traumatic experiences. This warehouse solution is an even less effective solution than continuing the hotel/motel program. At Groundworks Collaborative, we are seeing an increasing number of people lining up at our door waiting to come into our day shelter. People are coming in draped in wet blankets, having slept outside in the elements. We have medically vulnerable people with chronic disease sleeping outside waiting for a shelter bed to open up.”

Shelby Lebarron, on staff at End Homelessness Vermont, just recently found permanent housing after almost a year in the GA hotel/motel program herself. “I want to talk about a recent single week in our work at End Homelessness Vermont, a week that was extremely personally painful and in which I felt entirely hopeless,” she said. “We had one client who was blind and had a C-section on October 7th and she was scheduled to be exited on October 9th. We had another client whose induction date fell the day after she was scheduled to be exited. She had an extremely high-risk pregnancy. We had a single mom of four who had just delivered her newborn a couple of weeks early. And yet another who had already run out of her 80 days, but had been self-paying. Her money ran out to self-pay just as her induction date arrived. It sounds unbelievable because it is.” 

This piece was submitted by Frank Knaack and Brenda Siegel on behalf of multiple contributors named here from Groundworks Collaborative, Hunger Free Vermont, Good Samaritan Haven, John Graham Shelter, End Homelessness Vermont and Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont.