2025 Policy Recommendation
- Immediately stand up critically needed safe, accessible, non-congregate emergency solutions for sheltering families and children in crisis. Provide quality services and service coordination to support families accessing these shelters who are navigating a variety of complex needs (special health care needs, mental health conditions, substance use disorder, etc.). Ensure there is a long-term plan to continue to shelter families with young children as needed and sufficient funding to sustain this strategy.
- Prioritize data collection related to the demographics of those navigating homelessness to inform outreach and mitigation efforts, and to recognize the racial disparities embedded in our systems impacting families with young children.
- Support families navigating housing instability with a continuum of services that move them into more consistent housing. Invest in strategies that support families in finding and affording safe and stable housing, including funding for the HOME voucher program for families and a potential expansion of the Family Supportive Housing program.
- Prioritize significant and sustained investments in the creation of new housing units to alleviate the housing crisis, which has only been exacerbated by extreme weather events. When creating new housing units, invested parties should aim to locate housing in priority areas and near services needed by families, including transportation, schools, and child care, but outside of areas at high risk for flooding. Priority should be given to creating or rehabilitating housing that is designed to be permanently affordable.
What It Means
Vermont is experiencing a long-term housing and homelessness crisis. On July 1, changes to the General Assistance Emergency Housing Program went into effect, capping the number of nights a family could utilize the program and limiting the total number of beds available statewide. This crisis became acute in September when families began reaching the 80-day cap. The 2024 Point In Time (PIT) count showed 3,458 unhoused Vermonters on a single night, including 737 children (this number is an undercount, as it includes only people engaged with shelter service providers on the PIT count day.) The number of people who did not have access to emergency shelter increased by more than 21% from 2023.
According to the most recent Vermont Housing Needs Assessment, Vermont has a rental vacancy rate of 3%, one of the lowest in the country, and well below the 5% rate of a healthy market. The state would need to create between 24,000 and 36,000 homes between 2025 to 2029 to meet the need, according to the report.
Why It Matters
High-quality stable housing is required to meet families’ basic needs and is a foundational building block for early childhood development. Without it, families and children experience high levels of toxic stress. According to the Harvard Center for the Developing Child, the basic principles of neuroscience show that providing supportive and positive conditions for early childhood is more effective and less costly than addressing the consequences of early adversity later in life.
In the first week of October 2024, families housed by the GA Emergency Housing Program began hitting the 80-day cap implemented on July 1, 2024. 220 households with 355 children and 17 households with a pregnant person qualified for GA Emergency Housing at this time. These families experienced a gap in shelter until adverse weather protections went into effect December 1. Families with children likely had no option but to resort to camping, living in cars, and navigating other dangerous housing situations.
Connects to VECAP Goal 1:
All children have a healthy start.
Spotlight on Equity
While the state does not currently break down GA Emergency Housing data by race, the Housing Needs Assessment shows that Black Vermonters are 5.6 times more likely than white Vermonters to be unhoused. Black Vermonters make up 1% of the population but were 8% of the people experiencing homelessness in the 2023 PIT count. Hispanic and Native American Vermonters also disproportionately experience homelessness.
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