This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.
When Mary Mojica’s Waterbury apartment flooded last summer, all she could grab were a couple of boxes, some clothes, and her dog, Bella. Since then, Mojica, 59, has taken up residence at the Days Inn in Colchester, with the aid of a voucher from Vermont’s emergency housing program. Her efforts to find a rental she can afford on her disability income have stalled. And her days at the Days Inn will soon run out.
On a recent afternoon, Mojica stood in the hotel parking lot, peering up at Bella, who was poking her nose through the blinds in Mojica’s balcony window.
“It’s hard for her to be in, like, a room,” Mojica said. “But it’s better than being outside. That’s what scares me.”
This past legislative session, lawmakers passed new limits on the emergency housing program in an attempt to rein in costs as the state scales back the program’s pandemic-era expansion. Those limits will largely come to bear in September. Beginning July 1, participants’ stays were capped at 80 days a year — outside of the winter months, when the cap will be lifted. For many, including Mojica, that 80-day limit will hit early this fall.
The new law also imposes a cap on the total number of rooms the state will pay for this fiscal year: On Sept. 15, an 1,100-room limit will kick in (it will also be lifted during the winter). No such cap exists now. One month out from that date, the program is oversubscribed: 1,416 households remained in the program as of Aug. 12, the latest data available.
By definition, all of the households currently sheltered through the motel program meet vulnerability criteria, including families with kids, people with disabilities, and people fleeing domestic violence.
Officials had speculated whether program participants would ration their 80 days throughout the year, or use them all in one go — potentially allowing the state to reach the new room cap through attrition. The current data suggest that most motel program participants have stayed put since July 1.
That poses a timing problem. If they don’t leave within the next month, about a third of the households in the program will use up their 80 days by Sept. 19, said Miranda Gray, deputy commissioner of the Department for Children and Families’ economic services division, in an interview on Thursday. More households will run out their clocks later in September and early October; because they pay a portion of their income toward their motel and hotel stays each month, they have essentially bought themselves more time before their 80 voucher days run out.
Come Sept. 15, then, DCF anticipates it will have more people currently in the program than it can legally shelter anymore, because of the room limit.
“We would have some households who would remain eligible for, beyond the 15th, that could potentially not have access to a room,” Gray said.
DCF has put forth a prioritization policy aimed at determining which households will be placed in available rooms. Anytime the number of eligible households surpasses 90% of hotel and motel room capacity, certain households will get priority access to available rooms: families with children ages 19 or under, people who are pregnant, people experiencing domestic or other types of violence, and people over the age of 65. People over the age of 50 who also meet another criteria — such as having a disability, having experienced a natural disaster or having been evicted — will get priority, too.
Asked how the department decided on these priorities, Gray acknowledged that everyone currently in the program “has a significant need.” DCF considered who might have the hardest time living unsheltered if they are not able to stay with someone else, Gray said, and arrived at prioritizing older people.
But the prioritization scheme will put younger people with extreme disabilities in danger, said Brenda Siegel, executive director of End Homelessness Vermont.
“What happens if somebody is on oxygen and they are put outside?” Siegel said. “If that oxygen cannot be plugged in, those people end up in the emergency room. And essentially, if they are left outside, they die. And that is the reality of what is being done here.”
Siegel argued that the new law does not give the department an avenue to create priority categories. But Gray responded that she “met with several attorneys, and it is within our purview,” and noted that the law mandates the department to get to 1,100 rooms. The prioritization policy “will get us there,” she said.
The motel program room cap emerged as a contentious issue during the final weeks of the legislative session. Lawmakers and members of Gov. Phil Scott’s administration pointed fingers at one another when asked who came up with the idea. DCF Commissioner Chris Winters expressed a desire for lawmakers to provide more clarity around who to prioritize when motel room spots became more limited, but the law itself ultimately offered little guidance.
When asked what she expected DCF to do as it prepared to downsize the program, Rep. Diane Lanpher, D-Vergennes, a lead budget writer, emphasized that lawmakers spelled out vulnerability criteria in the bill. Yet lawmakers’ new vulnerability criteria were nearly identical to what the state had already been using to decide who needed a room.
As the state prepares to shrink the motel program, there are signs that need for shelter exceeds its current capacity. Since July 1, over 300 additional households have contacted DCF trying to access a voucher, Gray said. Even without a cap in place, the department has not had hotel and motel space for those households.
At the Days Inn, Mojica is counting the days until her voucher expires.
“Hopefully something changes,” she said. “Otherwise, I don’t think I could last in a tent, not even a day, right now, with my dog.”
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