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Reflections from Josh Davis, Executive Director
The speed at which we’ve been working and reacting to changes over the past year is nothing short of remarkable and we barely have time to take a collective breath before diving right into what’s next.
Since last March, agencies like Groundworks across the state—working with our State partners—effectively ended homelessness in Vermont. The eligibility requirements for the State of Vermont’s General Assistance (GA) emergency housing programs were dropped so that anyone and everyone that needed housing was welcomed into the motel program. For a brief moment, we accomplished something that we—as advocates—have been working toward for years: everyone in this state had access to shelter. This accomplishment speaks volumes about who we are as Vermonters to prioritize housing for everyone during the pandemic. And the investment was incredibly successful as we’ve only had a nominal number of positive COVID cases—preventing the nightmare scenario of COVID running rampant through our shelter system statewide.
The motel program was not designed to end homelessness. The State has been spending the equivalent of the typical annual program budget each month—roughly $5 million per month—to shelter Vermonters experiencing homelessness in motels. Unsurprisingly, there has been a strong push to unwind the program.
The State began re-introducing eligibility requirements for new motel program participants on June 1st. For specifics, you can read the complete State of Vermont General Assistance program rules here.
The re-introduction of the eligibility requirements apply to people new to the program as of June 1 and will apply to all program participants as of July 1. This means
on July 1 there are some people currently staying in motels that will no longer qualify and will have to leave the motels.
Our current estimates are that roughly 20% of current participants will no longer qualify. Additionally, many people in the motels will qualify for an additional 84 days in the program, which means another, much larger cohort of households will exit the motels in late-September.
Over the next few months, we’ll continue to work out the details on how to align our services and resources to support people in the motel wind-down while simultaneously opening the new and greatly-improved Groundworks Drop-In Center.
Our plan is to open the Drop-In Center for daytime shelter beginning July 1 and open for 24-hour shelter in late-September as more households exit the motels.
We will continue to split staff between the motel program and the new Drop-In Center—as the majority of people we’re serving will not lose access to motels until September. For those who will lose access come July 1st, Groundworks has been purchasing and collecting donated tents, tarps, and sleeping bags in usable condition for those who will have no option but to camp. (See more details on the tent drive below.)
We continue to work and advocate for permanent housing for the people we serve. We know how to solve homelessness—we’ve been scraping together the necessary resources to permanently house one household at a time for decades. What we need now is the coordinated investments to ensure the availability of affordable housing units, subsidies, and service dollars simultaneously to end homelessness permanently.
Thank you so much for your attention to and support for these issues and our work,
Josh
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