About 2,800 unhoused Vermonters are currently living in motels as part of the state’s emergency housing program, and earlier this month, the Vermont House greenlit a spending bill that would keep them there until June 30.
On Wednesday, the Senate’s powerful Appropriations Committee finalized its response. Its draft of this year’s budget adjustment bill, H.145, would extend the program through June as well — but not for all.
The committee also nixed $9.2 million that the House set aside for organic dairy farmers, although members indicated they’d address the farmers’ plight in separate legislation.
In total dollars, the difference between the House and the Senate budget-writing panel’s positions on emergency housing is relatively small: just a little over $2 million. But the Senate language signals a significant policy shift.
The House had set aside $21 million to keep everyone eligible for housing in motels through June 30, the end of the current fiscal year. The Senate version would also continue the program until that date — but new eligibility requirements would kick in starting May 31.
At that point, only people fleeing domestic violence, families with children, those aged 60 and over, pregnant people, people with disabilities, and certain households that recently lost their housing would remain eligible.
“I feel a bit like Solomon here,” said Sen. Jane Kitchel, D-Caledonia, the committee’s chair. “How do you split the baby?”
As it stands, federal funding for the emergency housing programs — which Vermont had dramatically scaled up in the Covid-19 pandemic-era thanks to Congressional aid packages — is projected to run dry March 31. Gov. Phil Scott’s administration has argued forcefully that the expanded emergency housing program, absent federal dollars, is unsustainable and must be wound down.
But administration officials have suggested that they could live with extending the program through the end of the current fiscal year if eligibility were further restricted. And they’ve also argued that with participating motels already at capacity, many are on the streets anyway, and the first-come, first-served model in place doesn’t allow the state to prioritize those who need help the most.
Kitchel has repeated the same argument herself several times, and while Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden Central, sounded a note of dissension on Tuesday, he made clear before Wednesday’s committee vote that he was now on board.
“Yesterday, I was essentially arguing for the House position. I actually like this better, now that I think about it,” Baruth said, noting that the current proposal puts money aside for expanded shelter capacity and would guarantee housing through the spring, when sporadic bouts of cold could have been problematic.
“I think this gets us where we need to go on all of those fronts. It won’t make everybody happy. But I think it’s the best given the options,” he said.
The appropriations committee voted unanimously to advance the bill.
The state’s fiscal year begins in July, and the annual budget adjustment act is a midyear true-up of the current budget. Once a minor affair, it has ballooned in size and importance since the pandemic as lawmakers have worked at a rapid pace to get unprecedented surpluses and federal aid money out the door.
In more ways than one, the Senate’s version of the budget adjustment attempts to split the difference between Scott’s position and the House. All told, the upper chamber’s bill would spend about $32 million less than the House approved but about $66 million more than the governor initially proposed.
The House had also set aside $50 million in one-time money to the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board to subsidize more affordable housing construction in their version of the budget adjustment.
The Senate panel’s proposal would whittle that down to $25 million, plus set aside an extra $2.5 million for expanded emergency housing capacity. Legislative leaders have signaled they are likely to appropriate much more for building in the coming months, but would rather have those conversations as part of their work on the “Big Bill,” as the annual state budget bill is called.
Housing advocates and affordable housing developers have asked for $175 million this legislative session to maintain an aggressive pace of construction. But VHCB’s own leader came before the Senate panel last week to tell lawmakers that while appropriating more money sooner rather than later would send an important message to developers, there was no way the board could get $50 million in new money out the door by June 30 anyway.
Also out of the Senate’s budget adjustment bill: the $9.2 million for organic dairy farmers grappling with soaring production costs and declining milk prices. Sen. Bobby Starr, D-Orleans, a member of the appropriations committee and chair of the chamber’s agriculture panel, said there’s still an intention to get money out to struggling farmers soon, but said the House proposal came together at the last minute and hadn’t yet been properly vetted.
“It was an issue that was here before the bugs were all worked out of the solution,” he said in an interview, adding that a stand-alone bill dealing with the matter was “a pretty sure thing.”
“I mean we’re all very concerned in regards to the issue,” he said.
Jason Maulucci, Scott’s press secretary, wrote in an email that while the governor’s office appreciated the Senate’s spending reductions, it “remained concerned” about roughly $50 million in spending that exceeded the governor’s proposal.
“The Governor believes some of the extra initiatives would be more appropriately contemplated during the normal FY24 budgeting process, so that everything is evaluated with a broader perspective,” Maulucci said.
The bill is expected to hit the Senate for a vote by the full chamber later this week. Once it advances, House and Senate negotiators will then likely head to a conference committee to hash out a compromise.
Clarification: This story was updated to note that people with disabilities will also remain eligible after May 31.
