A chilly wind swirled around the Travelodge parking lot in South Burlington on Tuesday morning as several residents packed up their things.
Among them were E.J. Bressette, 26, and Abbie Lawrence, 27. The couple said they’ve been at the motel with the aid of a state voucher for the past three months, and that they lost their housing more than a year ago.
“I just had a lot of family problems,” Bressette said. “We lost our property, lost my job all at the same time.”
Having the place to stay has helped them get back on their feet somewhat. They were able to replace lost IDs. Both of them have been looking for jobs.
“But it’s kind of hard to get the work and then not knowing I’m going to have a stable home,” Bressette said.
State officials say about 235 households exhausted their stays in Vermont’s motel voucher program for unhoused residents on Tuesday. The Department for Children and Families anticipates about 172 more households will have used up their allotted days by the end of the month.
As of April 1, the emergency housing program’s loosened winter rules ended for the season. That means an 80-day limit on motel stays, along with a 1,100-room cap on the program, came back into effect on Tuesday. Those restrictions resulted in a mass wave of evictions from motels between September and December.
Democrats in the Legislature had sought a three-month extension for all people sheltered through the program this winter to head off a repeat of the fall, using existing department funds. Gov. Phil Scott and fellow Republicans in the Legislature forcefully opposed the move, arguing the program has failed the people who have used it. The dispute over whether to include the extension in a midyear spending package led to a weeks-long stalemate.
But late Friday, Scott issued an executive order extending motel voucher stays through June 30 for a narrow group of people already in the program: families with children and certain people with acute medical needs.
The 11th-hour extension leaves out a broad swath of people who were eligible for the emergency housing benefit over the winter, including Vermonters over the age of 65, people fleeing domestic violence, people displaced by flooding, and more.
Last-minute changes to the program’s rules have left participants like Bressette and Lawrence confused. The couple thought they still had time left on their voucher. But their caseworker told them they had to leave the motel by Wednesday, unless Bressette could get a doctor’s note. As of 10:30 a.m., the couple planned to try driving down to the doctor’s office in Berlin, Vt.
If they couldn’t get their documentation in hand and their voucher approved, the couple planned to live in their car.
“This is really creating a lot of last-minute chaos,” said Brenda Siegel, executive director of End Homelessness Vermont. “While I am grateful that some people will be protected…this order is not an order that’s made in such a way that is actually humane,” she said.
Many individuals spent Tuesday trying to call the Department for Children and Families to confirm their eligibility for the extension, facing multiple hours on hold. About 30 people who had already exhausted their 80 days in motels in Barre, Berlin and Montpelier were trying to reach state employees to provide medical documentation, according to Julie Bond, executive director of Good Samaritan Haven, a service provider in Washington County.
“People are still trying to get in touch with the state,” Bond said at around 1 p.m. If they weren’t able to get their voucher extended before check-out time, they would need to leave their rooms, she said. “There could be dozens of people outdoors as of late this afternoon with nowhere to go.”
“Medical vulnerability” as outlined in Scott’s executive order refers to individuals who are “homebound,” require a lifesaving device that needs access to electricity, like an oxygen concentrator, or are receiving active cancer treatment, among other stipulations. That is far more limited than the disability criteria used for the program in the past.
Asked how the Department for Children and Families is determining whether motel program participants meet the criteria for the extension, Miranda Gray, deputy commissioner of DCF’s economic services division, wrote that households can self-declare that they meet the new definition. The department “goes through a screening and will house for 7 days which allows the client time to get a release signed or medical records together,” Gray said.
Moving forward, Gray noted, “eligibility will be closely monitored and assessed based on documented medical needs.” The department plans to introduce a “more specific” evaluation process in which state officials will review medical records “to determine whether an individual’s condition requires placement in a hotel or motel.”
“The focus is not solely on whether an individual uses medical devices, but rather on their need for assistance due to the use of these devices,” Gray wrote. “Simply having a device does not automatically mean that an individual is homebound or requires emergency housing.”
The department plans to meet with local service providers on Wednesday to discuss the guidelines of the executive order — a day after going into effect.
Some service providers, including Bond and Siegel, pooled donations in the fall to pay for some of their clients to remain sheltered in motel rooms after they lost their state vouchers. But as this latest round of evictions begins, they lack the resources to meet the need, they said.
“We are giving out tents and sleeping bags where we can,” Siegel said.
Steve Anzano, 56, who receives disability benefits for what he described as “mental health challenges,” doesn’t meet the Scott administration’s threshold for “medically vulnerable.” He has 14 more days before his voucher expires at the Harbor Place hotel in Shelburne.
Anzano said he ended up in the motel program after leaving housing where there was drug activity. As someone in recovery, he said he needed to get away from that.
“But I didn’t have a backup plan,” Anzano said. “When you don’t have a landing zone or something to hold on that’s buoyant, it gets shaky and hard.”
He’s going to move to ANEW Place, a shelter in Burlington, where he’ll have roommates and pay a fee with his SSDI income.
He said that will be less comfortable than at Harbor Place, where he’s grown used to feeling safe — and having his own room.
“It’sgonna be a can of sardines,” Anzano said. “But life happens, you know, you just have to roll with the punches.”
This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin and Vermont Public reporter Elodie Reed, was produced through a partnership between VtDigger and Vermont Public.