With Vermont’s universal motel vouchers set to expire in the coming months, housing advocates have been worried about people being pushed onto the streets.
Montpelier’s city government has outlined a new policy that would decriminalize public camping and set up a system for providing services to people living in encampments.
“This is someone who has no other choice” but to live in a camp, said Assistant City Manager Cameron Niedermayer, who helped draft the policy. “There’s no reason to punish people.”
Niedermayer developed the policy alongside the Montpelier Homelessness Task Force, which will give its feedback on the plan July 7. The Montpelier City Council plans to consider it July 21.
The state capital already hosts 25 to 30 people living in camps, said Rick DeAngelis, executive director of Good Samaritan Haven, which runs a shelter and does outreach in the city.
He praised the policy for its “intentionality” about how it handles encampments, which is rare for most Vermont communities.
“They’re trying to respond compassionately while addressing the issues of community concerns about people camping around them,” he said.
Montpelier Police Chief Brian Peete said he saw the new policy as an opportunity for his officers to better connect people with resources rather than trying to act as middlemen or handle the situation themselves.
“A lot of times at night, when [we encounter] somebody that’s freezing cold, there’s nothing we can do to help them,” he said. “And that weighs pretty heavy on all of us who have to deal with that situation.”
He said the policy would also free up officers to “do the things we need to be doing from a public safety standpoint,” rather than dealing with societal problems.
Broadly, the policy would allow people to camp in city-owned areas, with certain exceptions, such as school property and high-activity sections of parks.
The city plans to send an outreach specialist from Good Samaritan to new encampments, with assistance from Washington County Mental Health Services. The plan also has a multi-step guide, including outreach, to address public health or public safety issues.
Montpelier recently paid for Good Samaritan to hire an outreach specialist to help deal with immediate needs of people experiencing homelessness.
“We realized, we don’t know what we don’t know,” Niedermayer said. “Someone might be more willing to talk to her than to a police officer.”
The Montpelier and Barre police departments also added a shared mental health liaison from Washington County Mental Health Services, who may be able to provide some support services, Peete said.
But he said the liaison’s bandwidth is limited. They originally were hired to deal with crisis calls only but are being tasked with follow up calls, coordinating calls and now helping with encampments.
“This just shows we can’t overburden the people who are in this space,” he said. “We have to find ways to bring more people into this space, to make more resources, so we can do this type of work collectively.”
Some lingering questions remain. A city ordinance bans camping in public parks, including Hubbard Park, a 194-acre park that brushes against downtown. But the policy, as drafted, bans camping only on public park trails and pathways.
DeAngelis said Hubbard Park could be a good choice for some campers because it has bathrooms, access to downtown and relative privacy because of its size. “When I saw the policy, I said, ‘Is there anywhere you can actually camp?’” he said.
Niedermayer said the Montpelier City Council will have to decide how to handle such issues but believes the non-interference policy should include park spaces.
“While I don’t want a family of five to use Hubbard as their campground, if they have no other choice, why would I take that away?” she said.
That ties into the non-interference philosophy of the new policy, she said. Beyond intentionality, the policy would provide more flexibility in how to help people who choose to camp within the city limits.
“We certainly owe people in this position more than just floundering,” she said.
Peete said what’s going on in the state is “extraordinarily frustrating,” but that everybody is doing the best they can with the resources available to them.
“What’s critical for us is to make sure that we keep focused on the end result, and the end result is that human being,” he said. “We figure out how to help people … then hopefully we can get to a place where we have some breathing room. And then we figure out how we make sure that we minimize … the chances for these types of things to happen again.”
