The Burlington City Council, anticipating a “crisis” following the end of the state’s motel voucher program this summer, passed a resolution on Monday night directing the city to explore how it should respond.
The resolution, passed unanimously, calls for a study on the city’s current policy for camping on public lands and a review of other Chittenden County shelter options for when Burlington shelters are full.
It also calls for Mayor Miro Weinberger’s office and the council to seek state funding “to assist Burlington and other municipalities to find resources to alleviate the full cost of supporting the unhoused on city services.”
Councilor Joan Shannon, D-South District, and Weinberger were absent.
The council plans to devote a working session to the topic at its June 5 meeting.
About 1,800 households across the state are living in hotels and motels through the pandemic-era program, which was funded with federal Covid cash. Despite mounting pressure from housing advocates, Gov. Phil Scott’s administration and Democratic leaders in the Statehouse have declined to extend the program with state funds, and it’s slated to end July 1.
The original version of the resolution proposed by Councilor Zoraya Hightower, P-Ward 1, called for the city to explore “camping options when shelter capacity has been reached” — leading some councilors to propose postponing the vote.
Councilor Sarah Carpenter, D-Ward 4, made a motion to postpone, saying she wanted to hear more from Weinberger.
Weinberger noted his opposition to Hightower’s original proposal in a memo he sent to the council before the meeting.
“Further study of sanctioned camping is a waste of valuable staff time and would send the wrong message to the public that this option is under serious consideration,” Weinberger wrote in the memo.
The council then debated Carpenter’s pitch to delay. Hightower, defending the original resolution, said the city needed “momentum and action” to address an anticipated rise in homelessness.
“I trust the people at this table,” Hightower said. “I don’t necessarily trust the mayor’s office to move this forward because they’ve been so opposed to doing this.”
Councilor Gene Bergman, P-Ward 2, said the idea to delay “really feels like a burying of our heads” and later described the issue as “a storm that is coming.”
After council Progressives pushed back on postponement, the council recessed twice, finally coming to a compromise: Carpenter withdrew the motion to postpone and Councilor Ben Traverse, D-Ward 5, proposed an amendment that removed the “camping options” language.
“I don’t think that we should just be focusing on camping options, and certainly not just options here in Burlington,” Traverse said. The amendment passed, changing the line to instead explore “Chittenden County sheltering options,” reflecting Traverse’s view that the “forthcoming crisis” is “not just a Burlington problem.”
“It’s a regional problem that we need to be addressing, not just here on the city level, but regionally in partnership with our colleagues on selectboards and city councils and administrations around Burlington,” Traverse said.
Following the eventual passage of the amended resolution, Council President Karen Paul, D-Ward 6, praised the work of the council.
“I think what we’ve seen tonight is — it may be a little bit messy sometimes, but we saw democracy and collaboration in action,” she said, “and I just want to give a huge shout out to all of my colleagues for working so hard to get us to a place where we can all agree.”
The issue of camping on public lands prompted several people to comment in the public forum on Monday, including some repeating a misconception that the resolution would immediately allow camping in public parks. Hightower sought to clarify that.
“We’re not talking about any of the parks,” Hightower said. “We’re talking about specifically other public land.”
Another public comment on the issue came from State Rep. Troy Headrick, P/D-Burlington, who lamented the end of the state’s voucher programs and said Burlington has “to prepare for a larger number of unhoused residents coming back to the city.”
“And nobody will disagree that the general assistance hotel program or the plan being presented tonight is a band aid. Nobody disagrees with that,” Headrick said. “But if we get rid of the band aids that wound is going to reopen, it is going to become infected and then infection is going to spread.”
Correction: Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this story understated the number of Vermonters currently using the motel voucher program.