MONTPELIER — James Thompson needed a phone.
Thompson, who has lived without permanent shelter for months, had been sleeping at the Statehouse for several days and knew it would only get colder. But to find an apartment, he needed to call landlords. And to call landlords, he needed a phone.
Housing advocate Josh Lisenby — who’s been camping at the Statehouse for the past three weeks as part of a protest demanding expanded hotel program eligibility — tried to help Thompson sign up for Q Link, a federal program that provides free phones to low-income households. To qualify for Q Link, applicants must fall within an income bracket or show that they participate in another government benefits program, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP.
Lisenby helped Thompson submit an initial application for SNAP. But the next step in the process was … a phone interview.
In other words, when Thompson tried to get a phone, he found that he needed a phone.
Thompson called the process “the Bermuda Triangle.” There was no clear way out.
“I thought it would be quick and easy,” Lisenby said. “It was a dead end.”
Activists at the Statehouse encampment, including Lisenby and Brenda Siegel, continue to push for expansions to the emergency hotel housing program. And on Tuesday, the Scott administration said it would soon release so-called adverse-weather guidelines. The guidelines will dictate parameters for relaxing housing eligibility rules as the temperature drops.
But as state leaders in Montpelier deliberate the hotel program’s future and other housing policy measures yet again, people using the program and others experiencing homelessness say they face persistent anxiety about whether or not they will have a place to stay.
“I don’t have a car. I don’t have a house. I just need some footing, like some solid footing or some balance, to be able to get my life back,” said Lynn, who has been using the housing program. “I do understand how people can think we’re invisible because there are people abusing the system. But for the people that really need it, they really need it.”
VTDigger agreed to identify Lynn by only her middle name to protect the privacy of her children.
Meanwhile, Vermonters — both people in the hotel program and others out in the elements — have said the range of programs meant to provide stability and a route out of poverty can be nearly impossible to use. If you do not have a phone, internet connection or a permanent mailing address, you might not make it through means-testing processes.
“It’s a lot of work to be poor. It’s a lot of work to be experiencing homelessness,” said Josh Davis, executive director of Groundworks Collective, a housing support organization in Brattleboro. “It’s really challenging.”
‘I feel like I’m in a spin cycle’
On the Friday before Halloween, Lynn sat in the breakfast room of a Colchester hotel and put the cheery hold music on speakerphone.
She had to call the Economic Services Division to renew her housing voucher. There were 37 callers ahead of her, then 16, then one. In between the clips of music, a recorded voice said she could go to the state’s online portal to check her benefits.
Vermont’s MyBenefits portal said: “Currently benefits lookup is unavailable on this site. We do not know when the benefit lookup feature will be available again.”
The paragraph beneath that refers visitors back to the phone line.
The site has been down since mid-August, said Tricia Tyo, deputy commissioner of the Economic Services Division.
After a couple of automated phone menus and more than an hour on the line, Lynn reached someone from the division’s Burlington office. Because of the governor’s motel housing pause, she and her children are guaranteed their room until Dec. 1.
“Oh that’s awesome,” Lynn said. She exhaled. “I have a place for Thanksgiving.”
Lynn, a single mother of four, had owned and lived in her home for more than two decades. But in December 2020, she couldn’t pay the balance on her electric bill. The electric company shut off her power, therefore cutting the heat.
They managed until March, when a pipe burst and flooded her house. She moved her family to a hotel in Williston.
Lynn paid for the first couple of months out of pocket, draining the savings she had left, until she learned they qualified for the state’s hotel housing program. Over the past few months, she’s moved to four different hotels, all while spending five to six hours each day searching for permanent housing and helping her youngest son with remote school.
The bank has since foreclosed on her house.
Lynn and her kids were kicked out of the Williston hotel in late September, when hotel management said her room was in disarray. Lynn tried to contest the hotel’s assertions but ultimately was forced to leave.
She scrambled for shelter in the following weeks, and they moved three more times. She kept calling the state asking for a new placement and paid for a few stopgap nights with gift cards. When she finally found a room in Colchester, she had to find a way to get there with too much stuff to carry on public transit. Her daughter’s car had been towed from the Williston hotel.
Lynn does not have a driver’s license, so her daughter rented a van. But by the time they arrived at the hotel, they were too late. The hotel had booked out their room to someone else. They spent the night in the van in the parking lot.
“I feel like I’m in a spin cycle,” Lynn said.
Service providers in other parts of the state have also identified transportation as a challenge for people moving between or out of hotels. Gwen Williams, a community service coordinator at Upper Valley Haven, which provides shelter and other services for adults and families in White River Junction, said hotel program participants in the area generally have to rely on friends for rides. Public transit does not run on the weekends or at night.
Tyo said the state has begun paying for some transportation to hotels over the past few weeks, which is new for the hotel program. However, the policy applies only when local hotels are at capacity, and they have to place people in another district.
“A lot of times those [community] partners, a case manager or some motel outreach worker will be working with them, but they don’t have a contract to provide transportation,” Tyo said. “So oftentimes, it’s really up to the client to figure out that piece.”
‘Over the moon’
The first thing Tyler Vandenbergh noticed when he opened the door to his new motel room: “It’s warm.”
Vandenbergh and his partner Colby Lynch had been sleeping in their van for weeks, feeling the temperature drop each night. On Wednesday, they were admitted into Vermont’s general assistance housing program.
The van rolled into the parking lot at the Quality Inn in Barre around 3 p.m. Lynch and Vandenbergh stood under the motel’s canopy while the clerk checked their paperwork through a window. They signed a rental agreement stating that they would not smoke in the room, host pets or guests, use cooking appliances, or bar housekeeping staff from the room.
The clerk handed them a pair of key cards.
Lynch described the couple as “housing insecure.” They were living in a run-down home in Randolph until their landlord told them in August they would need to leave. She immediately started looking for housing options but could not find anything before they were displaced last month. The van seemed like their best option while they searched for a plan B.
“It was harder every day. Then, we thought we might be sleeping in here for months. And then it started getting scary,” Vandenbergh said.
Their first application for the hotel program had been denied, in part, Lynch said, because she did not have the proper paper trail, such as written eviction notices. As they searched for their next place to live, she said the cold kept them from sleeping and took a real toll on their mental health.
For Lynch, it’s gotten harder each night to keep depression at bay.
“I do the best I can, but it’s a whole ‘nother level when you’re living in a vehicle,” she said.
Knowing they could come home to a motel room each night would change that, they said.
“I’m over the moon right now,” Lynch said in the parking lot.
“I feel like we’re actually going to move forward now,” Vandenbergh said. “Just the support alone. Like, even if we knew it was a week away — just the indefinite not knowing, that’s the scariest part.”
The state’s response
Tyo said the state recognizes that people using the general assistance motel housing program are already facing challenges that can be compounded by uncertainty.
“It makes everybody anxious, this last-minute pivoting that has gone on … since May, when we put the rules in place,” she said.
And more broadly, she said, “accessibility for all of our programs is always something that we worry about.”
She said the state is piloting a simplified SNAP application and funding local providers to help with direct outreach.
But the state’s ability to help people is often limited by federal rules, Tyo said.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, reimburses the state for the hotel program, which has cost about $2.7 million per month since July, Tyo said. But this money comes with restrictions, and the state is subject to audit.
“If we haven’t done all of the things that we need to do, then the feds can take the money back and we would have to backfill this,” Tyo said. “That would just be on the state then to pay those debts, so we have to be very careful.”
Tyo said she expects the FEMA reimbursement will end in December, which is one reason the state plans to shift to a new Emergency Rental Assistance Program next year. The emergency rental program would allow Vermonters to stay in hotels, but renting month-to-month, as “more of a medium-term, more sustainable thing,” Tyo said.
The hotel program, in its current form, “won’t be an allowable expense for FEMA after 12/31, with the information we have now,” Tyo said.
House Speaker Jill Krowinski, D-Burlington, and Senate Pro Tem Becca Balint, D-Windham, released a joint statement earlier this week expressing support for expanded hotel program eligibility through winter and for allowing the hundreds of Vermonters who lost their voucher this summer to return to the program. This is what Siegel and Lisenby have been demanding for weeks.
Davis, the director of Groundworks in Brattleboro, said the state has allocated tens of millions of dollars to bringing new housing online, “and a lot of that prioritized for people experiencing homelessness.”
“And so I advocate for tying the timeline of the motel program, as it stands right now, with bringing that housing online,” he said.
Mike Dougherty contributed reporting.
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https://vtdigger.org/2021/11/05/bermuda-triangle-vermonters-experiencing-homelessness-face-challenges-getting-help/
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