By Carly Berlin
Editor’s note: This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.
On Friday, Gov. Phil Scott took executive action to extend motel voucher stays for unhoused families with children and certain people with acute medical needs through June 30.
Without the extension, this group of unhoused Vermonters would have faced a cliff next Tuesday, when the voucher program’s loosened winter rules will expire for the season. Democratic legislators had sought a three-month extension for all people sheltered through the program, a move Scott and fellow Republicans fiercely opposed.
Scott’s order came down just hours after Senate Republicans blocked an attempt to advance a bill that would have provided an extension for all 2,300 people currently receiving motel vouchers. The blockage essentially ensured that all unhoused people in the program would be subject to strict time limits on their stays beginning on April 1.
“While I’ve been opposed to the Hotel Motel program because it doesn’t serve those in the program well, I have also been clear that we have an obligation to protect children and Vermonters who are most vulnerable,” Scott said in a statement on Friday afternoon. “This executive order does just that without unwinding the important progress we’ve made.”
According to Amanda Wheeler, Scott’s press secretary, the extension will apply to just over 400 households. State data shows that 1,439 households are currently sheltered through the program.
Those eligible for the extension are families with a child under the age of 19 and “medically vulnerable” individuals. The order defines “medically vulnerable” as being “homebound”; requiring a lifesaving device that needs access to electricity, like an oxygen concentrator; in active treatment for cancer, “severe kidney/renal disease, or severe liver or heart conditions”; receiving Medicaid or Medicare-eligible “home-based” nursing services; or women in their third trimester of pregnancy.
This eligibility criteria leaves out a broad swath of people currently eligible for the emergency housing benefit, including Vermonters over 65, people fleeing domestic violence, people displaced by flooding, and more.
That means those individuals will still be subject to restrictions on the motel program come April 1: an 80-day allotment on motel stays, along with a 1,100-room cap on the program. Many people housed in motels already used up their 80-day limit for the fiscal year last fall, which resulted in a mass wave of evictions from motels between September and December. (The restrictions were eased for the winter months.)
In the fall, some families with young children left the motels pitched tents. That prompted considerable public outcry, including from some legislators who had agreed to the new restrictions last year to scale back the motel program’s pandemic-era expansion. Service providers and advocates demanded Scott take executive action, but at the time, he declined to do so.
The order on Friday comes after weeks of heated exchanges between Scott and Democratic leaders in the Legislature over the immediate future of the motel voucher program, tied to an annual budget adjustment bill.
Scott vetoed lawmakers’ first attempt at the legislation two weeks ago, citing concerns about increased spending and his disapproval of the three-month voucher extension.
Democratic leaders in the House and Senate conceded to Scott’s spending asks but held firm in their position to extend eligibility for the voucher program through June 30, proposing to do so with existing state funds.
Scott and Republican legislators fiercely opposed the full extension, arguing that the voucher program is a “failure” that has “warehoused” people instead of helping them. Still, Scott brought forward a counter-proposal to Democrats last week, offering to grant voucher extensions for families with kids and people with severe medical needs.
Democrats declined to take up the offer, refusing to carve out exceptions among a broadly vulnerable group.
“What we did was to try to stay steadfast behind the idea that nobody should be exited,” said Senate President Pro-Tem Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden Central, in a Friday interview before the order came down. “I think very few people in that program do not have major challenges.”
