BARRE, Vt. — A calendar hung by the door inside Lisa and Fred Allard’s small room at the Knoll Motel. Each day of March had been marked by a big, black X. With their state voucher set to expire at the end of the month, the Allards were preparing to pack up their car and find a place to park and sleep in it.
They would need to save enough money to keep the Jeep running in order to power the oxygen compressor that Fred, 73, relies on to breathe. The former tow truck driver also has heart failure and dementia, according to Lisa, 56, who serves as his caretaker. She planned to pay out of pocket for the couple to remain at the motel a few more days, so Fred could get to medical appointments nearby. She had been calling shelters and apartments trying to find somewhere for them to relocate but without any luck thus far.
The couple’s brindled pug mix, Penelope, tucked herself into her owners’ laps as Lisa and Fred sat atop the motel room bed and ironed out their plans. Not long ago, the couple had owned a manufactured home together in St. Johnsbury, Vt., Lisa said, but they sold it and moved to California four years ago in an ill-fated attempt to better their lives. They have struggled with housing insecurity since.
“It’s been a rocky, up and down road for us,” Fred said. “But I think we’re at the bottom of the barrel now.”
The Allards exhausted their 80 allotted nights of state emergency housing assistance last fall. During the winter months, the state loosens the rules for its motel voucher program, which acts as an overflow for traditional shelters that are typically full. Under the looser rules, the state does not count the winter nights towards a family’s 80-night maximum. That exception ends on April 1.
The Allards are among nearly 260 people – including 42 children – who the state anticipates will be ineligible for additional housing aid as of Wednesday, according to data provided by Miranda Gray, deputy commissioner of the Department for Children and Families’ economic services division. The motel voucher program has provided about 1,200 rooms at any given point during the winter, sheltering around 2,000 housing insecure people at a time.
The springtime ejection of unhoused people from motels across Vermont has become a regular feature of the state’s homelessness response in recent years. Lawmakers and Gov. Phil Scott’s administration have scaled back the motel voucher program since federal COVID-era cash dried up in 2023. But the contentious program remains the single largest provider of shelter in a state that has seen record levels of homelessness persist beyond the pandemic.
Previous mass evictions have been marked by heated political battles over the program’s cost and effectiveness – as well as eleventh-hour extensions. But the lead-up to April 1 has been relatively quiet this year, as lawmakers’ attention has been focused on their latest attempt to reform the state’s homelessness response system.
At a Statehouse news conference on Tuesday, a coalition of housing and civil rights organizations called on the governor’s office to intervene as the state’s adverse weather condition policy is set to expire. They pointed to an executive order Scott signed one year ago that gave voucher extensions to families with children and people with acute medical conditions.
“For those most vulnerable, the prospect of being unsheltered, even in today’s weather, may be a matter of life or death,” said Alex Karambelas, a policy advocate at the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont.
“Vermont has the resources to continue to house everyone who is served by this system and then some. What we lack is not the resources, but political will in the executive branch,” Karambelas said.
Scott’s move last year came as Democratic leaders fought for broader extensions for all people with motel vouchers, sparking a weekslong fight. It was one clash among many over the last several years, as Scott has attempted to end the motel program and Democratic lawmakers have argued that it can’t be fully eliminated without a replacement.
Now, for the first time in recent memory, a bill that would restructure Vermont’s homelessness programs appears to have broad bipartisan support. H.938 would bolster efforts to build more community-based shelter and would continue to pare back the state’s reliance on motel rooms as shelter. The bill would not eliminate the use of motel rooms, as a separate bill sought to do earlier this year.
The bill passed the House on Tuesday morning, and gives some indication that the Democratic-controlled Legislature and Republican Gov. Phil Scott’s administration might work together to create a more cohesive, statewide homelessness response – and avoid the yearly churn out of motel rooms. But the bill offers little solace to people who must exit this week.
As motel vouchers expire, Julie Bond, director of the Central Vermont shelter provider Good Samaritan Haven, expects to see the number of people sleeping outdoors rise over the coming months. Last summer, Good Sam counted over 250 unsheltered people in the region – more than twice the number of local shelter beds, Bond said in an interview.
Good Sam is opening a new year-round shelter in Montpelier on Wednesday, meant to coincide with the end of the state’s winter-weather exemption in the motels.
From the Knoll Motel 10 minutes down the road, Lisa Allard recently called to try and secure a spot. She was told she and Fred wouldn’t qualify because they had a dog, and because of Fred’s high medical needs, she said. (Bond confirmed that the shelter does not accept pets, and said that it can’t accommodate some complex medical conditions.)
“There’s not much we can do,” Lisa said.
This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin and VTDigger intern Brendan Rose, was produced through a partnership between VtDigger and Vermont Public. This story was republished with permission from VtDigger, which offers its reporting at no cost to local news organizations through its Community News Sharing Project. To learn more, visit vtdigger.org/community-news-sharing-project.