Four years ago, Igor Motriak hurt his back while working a construction job. The injury put him out of work, and the loss of income put his housing on the line. The 42-year-old immigrated to the Vermont from Ukraine in 2016, and because he lacked a green card at the time of the injury, he couldnโt access benefits like pandemic-era unemployment insurance or stimulus checks. He worried he would lose the Barre apartment he shared with his wife and two children and end up homeless.
โI was in very bad situation,โ Motriak said.
Motriak sought help from Capstone Community Action. The central Vermont anti-poverty nonprofit drew on a pool of flexible funds โ boosted by Covid-19 relief aid โ aimed at diverting homelessness or exiting households from emergency shelter. People in need could get small amounts of money for things like security deposits, short-term rent help, or moving costs, to help stabilize their housing situations.
Motriakโs family got funding to catch up on rent and cover utility bills, which Motriak called โa miracle.โ Paired with some longer-term rental assistance, the funding helped them stay put. They live in the same apartment today.
But the funding for the housing stabilization program they benefited from is expected to drop back to pre-pandemic levels this coming fiscal year, which begins on July 1. As Vermont sees rates of homelessness tick up โ and the state scales back its safety-net motel voucher program for unhoused people โ service providers worry that a potential two-thirds funding cut could stymie their efforts to prevent people from losing their housing in the first place, and to place people experiencing homelessness into housing.
โItโs extremely poor timing to be losing these funds,โ said Alison Calderara, chief of programs and advancement at Capstone. โWe really wanted to be able to have all the tools in our toolbox to be able to place people into stability.โ
The โflexible client-based financial assistanceโ funds, as theyโre dubbed in the homelessness services world, flow from the Department for Children and Familiesโ Office of Economic Opportunity to local nonprofits like Capstone.
Last fiscal year, the office awarded about $5 million in these flexible funds to nonprofits across the state, according to the officeโs director, Lily Sojourner. This coming fiscal year, the loss of the one-time money means a likely 70% cut in funding for the program, Sojourner said.
As the Office of Economic Opportunity decides how to divvy up its pot of funding, its priority is expanding emergency shelter capacity, Sojourner said. That means devoting ongoing funding for shelters that got jump-started last year with one-time funds.
This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.