Housing advocates see the bill as a chance to protect people who would otherwise be homeless — by telling towns they can’t prevent hotels from renting rooms to those in a state emergency assistance program. The bill would also prohibit municipalities from interfering with efforts to set up emergency shelters.
By Ciara McEneany | Community News Service
This legislative session’s major housing bill drew a lot of attention last month for its impacts on Act 250 reform and single-family zoning. But housing advocates also see the bill as a chance to protect people who would otherwise be homeless — by telling towns they can’t prevent hotels from renting rooms to those in a state emergency assistance program.
The “Housing Opportunities Made for Everyone” — or HOME — bill would also prohibit municipalities from interfering with efforts to set up emergency shelters. The measure overwhelmingly passed the Senate last month and has been widely supported by housing groups looking to deal with the state’s persistent housing crisis. In recent weeks, legislators have been hearing testimony on the bill.
Vermont has a shortage of 40,000 housing units, has the second-highest homelessness rate in the country and the lowest vacancy rate in the country, according to Anne Sosin, interim director for the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition.
“Vermonters are entering homelessness faster than they’re exiting it, and we are concerned that these numbers will only continue to grow as pandemic supports come to an end this year,” said Sosin.
Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, motels and hotels have been providing housing for 1,800 households through the state’s emergency general assistance program, people who would otherwise be homeless, according to Alison Calderara, chief of programs and advancement for Capstone Community Action.
Said Sosin: “Hotels play a critical role in sheltering Vermonters experiencing homelessness. More than 80% of Vermonters experiencing homelessness are shelters and motels. There’s a critical gap in that motel shelter capacity.”
Emergency shelters across the state have provided resources and housing in the last few years too. But proposed shelters in the past have been shot down by restrictive zoning rules or outright bans in some communities.
“We have heard of examples around the state where emergency shelters have not moved forward because there have been barriers for zoning and permitting,” said Katarina Lisaius, senior advisor to the commissioner for the Department for Children and Families. “The idea of not limiting the language for emergency shelters in S.100 is to not have zoning and permitting limit the viability of a shelter in hours or seasonality.”
Groups that work with Vermonters struggling to find housing also worry about the July 1 ramp down of the Emergency General Assistance Program, the Covid-era policy that is funding folks’ stays in hotels and motels. But advocates are hopeful the deadline will push legislators to act fast.
“I think that in terms of where we are right now, particularly with the pandemic programs ending, we’re in a serious place,” Calderara said.
She added: “I know that legislators care deeply about this, and they’re paying attention to this and recognizing that inadvertently … regulations that we put into place many years ago, in a different time, are now working against us, and that it’s reasonable for us to re-look back at some of these rules that we may have set up and think these aren’t working for us anymore.”
The Community News Service is part of the Reporting and Documentary Storytelling Program at the University of Vermont.
Fine then hope all the hotels change their buildings into condo’s thus killing off another industry in VT, tourism.. Without hotels the flatlanders won’t have anywhere to stay when spending their money here.
Business shouldn’t have to accept people who they know will trash their property…that’s not why they got in business. The government created this mess by making VT Un affordable and business UN friendly. .
Eligibility for a hotel room at the expense of the Vermont taxpayer is entirely by the honor system. What is to deter participation in a place where you would normally be paying more than $1000/month for a small apartment? And the motels owners are laughing all the way to the bank. Based on the chronic problems experienced at and around motels formerly available to paying customers in Berlin and Shelburne, it is absurd and insulting that a bill should be proposed to prohibit a town from denying such use for a motel.
Cities and towns can regulate other “short term rentals” and impose all manner of silly regulations on property owners such as limiting their choice of window styles. A town must opt in to allow a pot shop to do business. This is NOT a matter for the state to involve itself in.
We are importing our problems.
We should only be able to take people’s property by imminent domain process, not some dictate.
The solution is to build homes, that people can own.
The problem is we have a gravy train of people getting rich off of keeping people homeless, dependent upon the state, whereby we build “affordable housing” at the cost of $525 per sq ft, That would be like paying $514,500 for a 14 x 70 mobile home.
Vermont has a pandemic of corruption and wasteful spending. They want you living off the state, funded by the taxpayers to build, funded by the taxpayers to pay the rent….it’s a great gig if you are hooked up with their inner circle, otherwise known as crony capitalism, brother to socialism.
We’ll never have affordable home ownership because people in Montpelier are getting rich of subsidized housing…….
If an itinerant person somehow wanders north from the states south of us on a Friday night and wakes up on a Saturday morning in Brattleboro or Bennington or even Rutland, does that suddenly make the person a “…fellow Vermonter who is without a home…” and as such, eligible for all of the costly Vermont taxpayers funded rights, benefits and large$$ that the progressive/liberal/democrats are advertising and bestowing on the homeless? Just asking…
Probably so.
If the state is so bent on tucking it to the Municipalities responsible for health and safety issues at the establishments engaged in this sort of housing, the police protection to the rest of the area surrounding these places then they better be ready for some lawsuits asking for reimbursement. If this proposal becomes law, and it may well, be prepared because the state cares not for the well being of citizens who live in these communities, pay their bills, taxes, and are not a burden to the rest of society. That was a conclusion that was easy to figure out at a community meeting in our town/city between State Officials, and citizens nearly a year ago.. They would not give a straight answer to ANYTHING !
They are paying attention to the homelessness because they are the ones causing it with their policies. Basic housing is a United Nations right as stated on the Declaration of Human Rights. Homeless people are easy to control, especially when given basic universal income and some very basic housing. I suspect that when S.5 passes, the state will have more homeless people to add to their registry. This is the end game people, destruction of the middle class, making them dependent on government handouts, aka Socialism.