Ryan Mullan stood in front of the Travel Inn in downtown Rutland, sipping Zinfandel from a mug that read “This is the day that the Lord has made.”
It was just before noon on a Thursday in early March, and Mullan had a pronouncement to make.
“It’s the best motel in Rutland,” he declared, a hand perched jauntily on his hip, as if daring me to disagree. Mullan, who is 30 and a self-proclaimed “free spirit,” said he had lived in the motel since last May, when his apartment across town was condemned.
He is a beneficiary of the state’s vast motel voucher program, expanded during the pandemic to allow for social distancing among homeless Vermonters and to provide shelter to those with nowhere else to go. At present, about 2,700 people are living in one of 75 motels around the state.
The place Mullan called home is just off Route 7 — a low-slung building the color of stale cornflakes. Despite his proclamation, it’s a one-star establishment, situated in the midst of a bevy of fast food joints and gas stations.
At any given time, two people smoked cigarettes along the motel’s white balconies, like a rotation of sentinels.
I chalked up Mullan’s generous assessment of the locale to his 11 a.m. buzz and a giddiness at the prospect of a public platform. But Zinfandel notwithstanding, he had his reasons, he assured me.
For one, each morning at around 7 a.m., the motel’s owner, Ish Patel, sets out free, scalding-hot coffee on a burner, along with a dozen Dunkin’ Donuts. Rooms at the motel are cleaned every couple of days, courtesy of a housekeeper, Lori Barbour, who until recently lived in the building for nearly seven years.
And unlike other area motels, Mullan said, Patel addresses problems promptly — be they bedbugs or drug dealers. (The police almost never have to visit the Travel Inn, other than to deliver a warrant, Barbour said later. She said she hadn’t heard of an overdose on the property for perhaps 18 months.)
“It’s like the Garden of Eden — but, you know, worse,” Mullan said, roaring with laughter at his own joke.
Vermont’s efforts to house the homeless in motels during Covid have been touted by some as a humanitarian triumph. When the pandemic reached Vermont, the state rolled out its most generous housing assistance ever. Officials loosened the criteria for a free motel room, offering nearly unrestricted access to housing for those who needed it. Over the last year, the state has housed a total of more than 5,300 people in motel rooms.
“The state of Vermont responded as best as any state did relative to this issue,” said Michael Monte, CEO of Champlain Housing Trust, a Burlington-based affordable housing nonprofit that’s helping transition motel residents into permanent housing.
While Covid ran rampant in some homeless shelters around the country, nobody experiencing homelessness is known to have died of the virus in Vermont, said Ben Truman, spokesperson for the Department of Health.
“People were immediately placed in motels around the state. Programs were set up to respond to the needs of individuals. It happened pretty quickly. That was tremendous,” Monte said.
The state, meanwhile, hasn’t had to foot the bill. The federal government has financed the program, through Coronavirus Relief Fund aid and Federal Emergency Management Agency reimbursements. The price tag? More than $6 million last month, including security and food, and $31 million to date, according to Geoffrey Pippenger, senior advisor to the commissioner of the Vermont Department for Children and Families.
At the Travel Inn, Mullan was focused on more prosaic concerns. He eagerly offered advice to a newcomer: Lay low, lock your door at night and avoid the food at the restaurant across the street.
Mullan does not have any plans to move out of the Travel Inn, he said. But his time at the motel may nonetheless be coming to a close: As Covid cases decline and federal funding dries up, the state is seeking an exit strategy for the pricey and labor-intensive motel program. Under one proposal from the state, benefits for many could expire as soon as late April.
The uncertainty and lack of affordable housing in the state leave residents in a bardo of sorts: They are perpetually waiting to leave but unable to make plans to do so. They languish, left to the whims of the state’s myriad and complex bureaucratic systems. Life becomes a series of endless days.
Mullan snuffed out his cigarette and turned back toward his room: “I want to f—ing get out of here, if you couldn’t tell,” he said.
A place to call home
The state has run the motel voucher program, formally known as the General Assistance temporary housing program, for more than 40 years — historically, on a much smaller scale. Before the pandemic, the state might pay for 300 rooms on a particularly frigid night and usually far fewer.
Pre-pandemic, homeless Vermonters were eligible for shorter stays. Those on disability or Social Security and families with children under age 7, for instance, qualified for 28 days in a motel. In “catastrophic” instances — such as condemnation of a home, domestic violence or death of a spouse — a family could receive 84 paid days in a motel room.
Everyone else — adults who are chronically homeless, for instance, or families with kids over 7 — was eligible for a room only when the temperature fell below 20 degrees, known as a “cold weather exception.” Rooms were, and still are, available only when nearby shelters are full.
Those short-term stays rarely serve as a bridge to long-term housing. The average length of time it takes homeless families to find stable housing is 125 days, according to the state’s Housing Opportunity Grant Program 2020 report.
In March of last year, when Gov. Phil Scott declared a state of emergency, administration officials moved quickly to shelter homeless Vermonters in motels. Almost anyone who was homeless and fell under a certain income became eligible under the relaxed criteria.
A year later, the state is providing motel rooms each night to about 2,700 Vermonters. That includes 2273 adults and 423 kids.
The state pays between $60 and $129 a night per room — an average of $88, according to Pippenger. I, however, would not be staying on the state’s dime — though at $70 a night, plus tax, I’d be staying cheap. I did so to see how those whose lives had been upended by the pandemic were spending their days, and how guests, and the state, were grappling with an uncertain future.
Patel checked me in just after I pulled up in the nearly vacant parking lot at about 4 p.m., and pointed me to half a dozen packages of Ramen Noodles arranged alongside a rack of brochures advertising tasting tours and sightseeing routes. “No one goes hungry here,” he assured.
I was assigned to Room 34, in a separate, rear building shielded from the road. The low-ceilinged room had the slightly smoky, grungy ambience of a low-end casino. It was snug and neat enough, notwithstanding the chipped ochre paint and an overexerted heater that roared to life every 10 minutes. The sheets were decidedly not clean. On the plus side, despite the claims of Yelp reviewers, there were no visible bugs.
The dearth of natural light, I learned later, was by design. About five years ago, according to Barbour, the housekeeper, someone — she assumed it was a guest — had absconded with four flat-screen TVs through a back window. Patel had the windows walled over. Now, the TV is padlocked to the wall. The rooms are dark.
The motel operates as its own mini ecosystem, part of the grinding mechanism of the state’s social service apparatus. The days are marked by the arrival of food: The 7 a.m. doughnuts — guests rush to snag glazed ones. Lindley Food Service, the Rutland Meals on Wheels supplier, delivers coolers of food each afternoon in sealed airline-esque food containers. (For dinner: “Beef stew with ‘burgundry’ wine sauce” and broccoli, frozen into blocks.)
Case managers show up from the Homeless Prevention Center of Rutland several times a week. One afternoon, a volunteer from the peer support organization Turning Point Center Rutland left drawstring bags on every door, filled with two doses of Narcan nasal spray to reverse overdoses, a plastic Covid-safe resuscitation device, and myriad flyers offering recovery support, HIV prevention tips, and counseling.
The rooms have no kitchens and minimal storage space. And for those who don’t have a vehicle — most of the motel’s denizens — there’s no way to leave.
Residents have compensated for the lack of creature comforts by forging a sense of permanence where they can. A few doors down from Room 34, 59-year-old Kevin Corey planted a garden last year in the rocky, unforgiving soil behind the main building. He put in flowers, added garden gnomes and watered daily, he said proudly.
Patel and his wife hung windchimes from the porch roofs.
Guests got to know their neighbors — or those they liked, at least. One woman, who was fleeing domestic violence, had piled up a mountain of stuffed animals on the bed for her three kids, ages 10, 6 and two months. Mullan bought a hot plate to cook for himself, as well as an easy-bake oven — ”not the one from the ’90s for the girls,” he clarified.
Doing the math
For Brandon Graton, the room and the social services that come with his stay have been a “godsend.”
Graton, who said he is on disability because he is bipolar and suffers from anxiety, lost his IT job in 2013 and became homeless after a series of suicide attempts and mental health breakdowns. He said he has been at the Travel Inn since mid-February, following brief stays at motels around Bennington. These days, he remains holed up in his room, he said, on his computer or composing music on one of his six guitars.
Hours of his day are spent navigating the byzantine system of benefits. A call to Economic Services to renew his motel voucher? Set aside two and a half hours to wait on hold, he advised. He missed his March doctor’s appointment because he couldn’t get a ride.
He has therapy weekly on Zoom with a counselor in Bennington and calls his case manager at least once a week. He tries to advocate for himself, he said. “I’m a good little soldier with that stuff,” he said.
Even with his advocacy, he doesn’t have an estimate for when he’ll find a place of his own. More vexing still, the math just doesn’t add up, he said. He gets $850 a month in disability payments. Apartments in Rutland are at least $700, he said, not including utilities.
Indeed, the state has done a better job getting people into emergency housing than getting them out. According to the 2020 Housing Opportunity Program annual report, about half of homeless families in their programs ended up in permanent, stable housing. Only 3% of the 2,724 adults who participated in the “Coordinated Entry Housing Navigation” program did so in the state’s target of 28 days. On average, it took homeless families more than four months to obtain stable housing.
Some nonprofits, including ANEW Place and Champlain Housing Trust, both in Burlington, and Groundworks in Brattleboro have bought hotels to help facilitate that transition. There’s also a shortage of case workers for the burgeoning homeless population, said Sarah Phillips, director of the state Office of Economic Opportunity.
And, according to Rick DeAngelis, executive director of the Good Samaritan Haven in Barre, “There aren’t enough units, quite frankly, to accommodate the need.”
Graton said he tries not to think too much about what the future holds. After all, it’s not in his hands.
“Navigate all you want, but if there ain’t no room for you, then there’s no room for you,” he said.
Chad Bourn said he cried at work when he heard that an apartment he had hoped to secure was already claimed. Bourn, who’s 40 but looks older, smoked a cigarette from a desk chair he set up outside his room. He wore a red hoodie and baggy jeans over gray sweatpants. His eyes were piercingly blue in his hollowed-out face.
Bourn said he moved back to Vermont from Texas in February 2020 hoping to save some money. After staying at the Open Door Mission in Rutland, he got a room at the Travel Inn soon after Covid hit. He took a job at Mill River Lumber, stacking lumber for $14 an hour.
But two months ago, he learned he had earned too much to keep his motel voucher, he said. Unable to find an apartment, he picked up the tab at $950 a month.
Bourn quit his job in early March. The work was taking a toll on his body, he said. He’s diabetic. He’s hoping his stimulus checks can hold him up until he can return to Texas. Perhaps, without a job, he could requalify for his motel voucher. Other days, he thinks about buying a tent and living in the woods for a few months. He’s done it before, he said. And it would save him the expense.
To make matters worse, he lives in constant fear of being sucked back into drug use. After eight years clean, he relapsed last summer, he said, his voice growing quiet with shame.
He leaves the motel to go to church on Sunday with his parents, he said. He occasionally sees his four kids, ages 18, 19, 20 and 21. Otherwise, he stays in his room.
Since arriving in Vermont, “It’s kind of all spiraled downhill for me,” he said.
Patel’s panopticon
There is an unspoken rule at the Travel Inn that its rooms are private — not to be invaded by visitors, or a knocking reporter. To venture out is by default to move into the public view. The balconies and parking lot have become a de facto town square, the site for socializing, kids’ play and drug deals. Everyone knows everyone else’s business, though they pretend not to.
People peered over the railing as they smoked. To gain access to this socially sanctioned voyeurism, I walked to a nearby convenience store and bought a pack of cigarettes as an excuse to skulk outside and scope out my surroundings. I have never in my life bought cigarettes. I skulked, and tried not to inhale too deeply.
Meanwhile, Patel presides over it all from his living area behind the front office, where he can watch the action through 16 cameras, like a guard over a panopticon. “Cameras watching cameras,” said Dennis Barbour, who is married to Lori, the housekeeper.
Patel watches everything, Barbour said, but he homes in on the drug dealers.
Studies show that substance use, from alcohol to methamphetamines, has increased since the start of the pandemic. The state set a record for opioid-related fatalities in 2020; Vermont reported 134 between January and November 2020, eclipsing the 2018 year-long total of 130 deaths.
The motels are no exception. When it comes to active use, “there’s a lot,” said Tracie Hauck, executive director of Turning Point Center Rutland. The organization has set up coaches 20 hours a week at the Quality Inn in Rutland, which Hauck called “a hotbed of activity.”
Sometimes, violence follows. In November, a man was shot and killed at the Quality Inn. After crime and police calls spiked at motels around Vermont, the state hired private security at eight motels, including the Quality Inn and Econolodge in Rutland.
The Travel Inn has been quieter, residents said. But they nonetheless described feeling a constant wariness.
Around 10 p.m., several cars arrived for quick drop-offs at different rooms. Guests pointed out the repeat on-foot visitors who arrived during the day carrying tote bags.
When Patel sees too many comings and goings in a particular room, he won’t renew the occupant’s stay at the end of the month, said Lori Barbour.
For her part, she’s learned where to check for the paraphernalia: under the mattress and in the drawers. Earlier this winter, she said, she found a dresser drawer full of bloody needles. Another time, a guest had woven needles into the hem of the window curtains.
If Patel is the overseer, Barbour, who works seven days a week, is his boots on the ground. She keeps tabs on guests, checking in on them or admonishing them as necessary. As she emptied the trash in one room, she asked about a woman’s granddaughter. Later, she allowed another to stay with her boyfriend, who had his own voucher for a room at a Travel Inn.
Barbour, 51, moved in nearly seven years ago with her husband, Dennis, after their home was condemned. When a housekeeper left, Barbour took over. The couple negotiated a monthly rate — and stayed.
Barbour knows the challenges of the streets: She struggled with drug use and spent two years in prison, she said. She got out in 2008 and said she’s been clean ever since.
Even when she lectures her motel charges, she said, “I fully understand where people are coming from … The state needs to figure something different out. There’s not enough help for the people.”
Headed home?
Last month, Ken Russell, executive director of the Montpelier drop-in center Another Way, held a “Freedom and Unity Forum” as a platform for homeless Vermonters at the Hilltop Inn in Berlin to share their experiences seeking housing.
One speaker said his future hung on the success and work of his case manager, leaving him in complete dependency. Another described feeling traumatized at the daily approach of sirens.
“I’m treated like a little person,” one man said.
Russell held the event, he said later, “frankly, to humanize the population.”
That’s the biggest need as state officials determine the future of the motel voucher program, he added. Soon, the federal government expects to stop paying the full cost of motel rooms. Increased needs have strained the system and understaffed agencies are exhausted, said Phillips, of the Office of Economic Opportunity.
Providing permanent housing to those in motels is estimated to cost the state about $50 million — “a lot of money,” Russell acknowledged. Ultimately, it’s realistic if the state chooses to prioritize it, he argued. “It’s willpower,” he said. “Do we care enough about these folks?”
The Department of Economic Services has put forward its own plan, which would shift control of the motel voucher program from the state to the local organizations, while investing more money in housing and shelter, and providing more services to those who do end up in motels.
“We truly believe that communities are better able at solving these issues than through the blunt instrument of a state motel voucher,” Phillips said.
Phillips promised that the state wouldn’t abolish the program abruptly and has no plans to do away with the motel voucher program entirely.
More than a dozen housing and social service providers objected to the DES proposal in a letter to lawmakers earlier this month. It would result in an “exponential increase in literal homelessness,” they warned.
It’s also a missed opportunity, said Maryellen Griffin, a housing attorney for Vermont Legal Aid.
She pointed out that the American Rescue Plan, the most recent federal stimulus package, included $5 billion to address homelessness, plus billions more for rental assistance and housing vouchers — a windfall for the state.
“We have a plan and a road map to end homelessess; now we have the money to do it,” she said. Griffin urged state officials to use their imaginations to consider what’s possible. “This is an opportunity to end the state’s homelessness forever. We could do this. We could do this right now,” she said.
At the Travel Inn, Graton said he didn’t know how long he’d be in a motel room.
Ultimately, where he ends up doesn’t much matter to him. He does like Bennington, he said. Graton’s only criteria? “Somewhere with a roof over my head, he said. “Put me in Alaska, I don’t care.”
Editor’s note: This story has been edited to remove an offensive reference.