Updated at 6:14 p.m.
The structure in Guertin Park, along Main Street in Montpelier, is little more than a roof over a wooden platform about 15 feet long and 7 feet wide. It has a shelf to sit on or prop your belongings on, and white painted patterns decorate the floor.
But to people without shelter in Montpelier, “the outside is a prison,” as Morgan Brown described it. Brown, who lives in the city and previously went through homelessness, said lack of funds and social perceptions make it difficult for unhoused people to enter businesses and public buildings.
The Guertin Park structure, located on an otherwise empty lot, gave them a place to sit and get out of the rain, Brown said. It evolved into a small social hub for people to spend time together and pass along tips about accessing resources and getting help.
It’s also been viewed as a thorn in the side of Montpelier city officials, police officers and firefighters. The structure has been the site of illegal fires, fights, public intoxication and harassment of passers-by since it was erected in a different location along the bike path four years ago, and those problems have continued in its new spot, the police and fire chiefs said at a council meeting last week.
At the April 27 meeting, the city council voted to take down the structure and put it into storage in the hopes of quelling these public nuisances. The city posted a notice at the structure on Tuesday telling the public it would be removed on Thursday.
But advocates for people experiencing homelessness told the council that removing the structure would do nothing to change the underlying issues that led people to congregate there in the first place.
“Homelessness and the gazebo are not the same problem,” said Susan Merchant, who formerly lived without housing and now performs outreach at the space. “You could put it on the moon and still have people coming.”
The motion passed 4-2, with council members Conor Casey and Lauren Hierl voting against it, according to city clerk John Odum. The vote was first reported by the Montpelier Bridge.
“By virtue of existing, is this structure inviting bad behavior and dangerous situations that would not exist otherwise?” Casey asked Police Chief Brian Peete at the meeting. “Or, if we remove it, will we just push that behavior into the shadows, and it’s still going to happen but we’ll be getting less complaints?”
Moving around
Guertin Park — also called the “pocket park” or “Guertin structure” by local residents — began as a structure along the bike path near Taylor Street, wedged between a parking lot and a pedestrian bridge over the river, Fraser said.
“The idea was it would be a little respite for people on the bike path,” he said. It was named for Jed Guertin, a local water quality activist who died around the time of its construction in 2018.
But not long after its construction, Fraser said, the structure began to attract people who would stay all day, making use of its seating and protection from the elements. The city started to receive reports of people walking on the bike path feeling harassed.
To this day, there have been no reports of violence against passers-by associated with the structure. But Peete said that in its original location, people there racked up 36 citations for drinking in public and other low-level violations.
The Montpelier Police Department has tried to beef up its services for people in mental health crises in recent years by offering deescalation training to officers and hiring a mental health liaison.
Peete said the department tried to deal with the problems with “conflict resolution and offering services.”
“But when we would have significant numbers of complaints coming in for disruptive behavior, that’s when the department went forward to try to establish some type of safety in the area by issuing citations,” he said.
In November 2021, the city moved the structure to a brownfield that was the former site of a bottle redemption center along Main Street close to Shaw’s. Fraser said city officials hoped it would be a better spot — more in “plain sight” but farther off the bike path, which still borders it about 30 feet away.
The city planned to use a grant to add additional amenities to make it more “park-like,” Fraser said, but didn’t get the money.
Meanwhile, as the weather got colder and Vermont entered yet another pandemic winter, even more people began to use the structure and the “behaviors” increased, Fraser said.
At the city council meeting last week, Fire Chief Robert Gowans said the department had gotten calls for three illegal fires on the site. He did not specify if any damage was caused by the fires or whether they were uncontrolled.
Gowans also said the city tallied 13 ambulance calls for drug overdoses, medical issues, intoxication and fights. (Vermont had a record-setting year in 2021 for the number of fatal opioid overdoses, driven by the powerful addition of fentanyl.)
Peete said the police department was called to the structure about 30 times in its new location, but police hadn’t issued any citations or arrested anyone since it moved. That’s because the citations from the previous site were mostly dropped by the courts when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, he said.
He said he was “extremely frustrated” with the courts for not enforcing quality-of-life issues. “Even if it’s something simple as working on a mediation process, or having folks going in to get help,” he said, the courts are dropping the cases “and not even worrying about it.”
The department is also awaiting guidance from the Montpelier Policing Task Force on whether the city should amend its public intoxication laws, he said.
Advocates argued the calls for medical and police were a positive sign — not a negative one. Merchant said that many people who spend time at the space don’t have a phone and like the fact that emergency medical providers are close at hand if they need help.
People may be congregating in the space because there are few options for places to go during the day in Montpelier, said Ken Russell, the head of Montpelier’s Homelessness Task Force.
Montpelier has a night shelter, but it does not have a steady and inclusive day shelter, Russell, who is also the director of Another Way, a community center geared toward helping psychiatric survivors in Montpelier.
Another Way, a nonprofit that operates independently from the city, hosts programming and facilities that unhoused people can use. But it’s not a “low-barrier” shelter that will admit anyone regardless of drug use or behavior, Russell said, and its priority is to provide capacity and assistance to psychiatric survivors.
In fact, it can exacerbate the problem by removing people from the social stability they have in certain places or forcing them to move further away from services like the nearby night shelter, he said.
It can also be more dangerous for drug users, because they can end up farther away from hygienic spaces or have to use drugs alone, he said.
There’s also a less measurable need: for people who have nowhere to go to feel connected with others. Merchant likened it to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. “You have to have shelter,” she said. “You have to have sustenance, but then it’s like, the human psyche craves camaraderie.”
In fact, many of the people who spend time at the structure are not homeless, but are local motel residents or apartment dwellers who want to interact with people outside, according to Brown.
Some at the city council meeting pointed out that people at the space may be frustrated dealing with bad actors they can’t get rid of, as well.
“We’re not helping if we’re allowing people from two different groups to cohabitate in the same space,” including people with behavioral issues and others who just need a place to go, said Councilor Jennifer Morton.
A focal point
On all but the coldest days of winter and spring, people walking by Guertin Park would observe at least two or three people sitting under the awning of the structure, bundled up in multiple layers of coats against the cold and wet.
On warmer days, some people bring out small foldable chairs to expand into the space around the structure. Tucked in a corner could be bundles of people’s belongings, food, or other supplies donated by the local church or Good Samaritan shelter.
On a rainy day in early May, Merchant was there as well, smoking a cigarette and chatting with others in the space. She’s started bringing a trash bag when she comes to clean up what she calls the “frat house” appearance of the space.
Merchant, who lives in a motel up the road, said she’s found the structure useful for finding people who may need her help as an outreach worker for Another Way. “It’s a focal point for people to feel comfortable being picked up, maybe for a ride, or for supplies to be dropped off,” she said.
“In the summertime, it’s cases of water, has everybody got lunch?” she said. “In the wintertime, has everybody got hand warmers? Does anybody need socks?”
At the city council meeting, Councilor Jack McCullough said people in social services are “good at finding people where they are.” But Merchant said she is worried about exactly that.
“When they take that (structure) away, they’re gonna have, ‘OK, I’m looking for so-and-so, where do I find them? Where are they going to be?’’” she said. “And that once again, for our outreach, that’s really hard.”
She also pointed out that some of the nuisance issues city officials cited were the result of the lack of public amenities. In particular, there are few public bathrooms in Montpelier and even fewer that are open in the evening, forcing people to urinate and defecate outside.
At the meeting, Casey said the city had recently decided to apply for state funding to provide a public restroom. Montpelier has been discussing the issue since at least last summer, when it came up during debates about its new encampment policy.
It also has a Homelessness Task Force, led by Another Way’s Russell, which had been working on suggestions to resolve the Guertin Park issues before the council voted to take it down. But Brown, a former member of the task force, resigned months ago in frustration with the lack of power the task force had to make actual change.
“(The) city council was kicking the can down the road,” he said. “Anytime the task force has come to them with stuff they’ve often panned it.”
As they voted to remove the structure, the council discussed options for moving it to Another Way or another spot and asked the task force to take a look at it. They also discussed the need for real alternatives, like a warming shelter or day shelter.
“It’s a crappy situation all around, and the city of Montpelier and the city council are not gonna fix homelessness,” Morton said.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the central mission of Another Way community center.
