Motel program restrictions mean 100 people in Washington County to be ousted

This story by Cassandra Hemenway was first published in the Montpelier Bridge on Sept. 4.

Melissa Casto-Gordon is one of 100 people in Washington County who will be forced to leave state-funded motel rooms at the end of September as new eligibility restrictions take effect.

Casto-Gordon said she has lived in the Montpelier area for over 20 years, 10 of those in a $750-per-month North Montpelier apartment. In the years before losing her housing, she worked at the Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital as an emergency room technician, at Price Chopper in Berlin and — briefly — at a sandwich shop in the Berlin Mall.

But in the last couple of years, two events left her homeless: a bout with shingles that resulted in a disability and the death of her longtime landlord.

“Up until his death, we paid rent; everything was good and secure,” she said. But the new building owner asked Casto-Gordon and her 20-year-old son to leave through a no-cause eviction. Her son found housing in another town. Casto-Gordon ended up in motels.

She is one of the 250 people temporarily housed in motels in Washington County, about 50 of whom are children, according to Rick DeAngelis, former co-executive director of Good Samaritan Haven.

The latest restrictions on the state’s four-year-old pandemic-era General Assistance Emergency Housing program (also known as the motel voucher program) went into effect at the start of fiscal year 2025, on July 1. New rules passed by the legislature last year cap the number of state funded motel rooms at 1,100 (although DeAngelis noted there are 1,400 households in the program).

The new rules restrict motel stays to 80 days per year and establish a list of categories that prioritize who can use the program based on their vulnerability. DeAngelis said priority categories include those with documented disabilities, families with children, people over the age of 65 (it was 60 before July 1), those who have lost housing due to floods or disasters and others.

“The legislature created the 80 days with this room cap under the idea that there are less people using the hotels … but that hasn’t been true in the last few years,” said Brenda Siegel, executive director of End Homelessness VT. “This is no plan to keep people sheltered.”

DeAngelis noted a particular concern for children in motels.

“One of the tragedies,” he said, “is there are a lot of children involved. … You have kids in the school system right now who are living in the (Economy Inn), who I’m sure are going to be impacted by these changes. They may retain their ability to continue going to school in Montpelier, but it could be highly disruptive.”

According to a Feb. 9, 2024 newsletter from Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman, “Vermont is a ‘shelter-first’ state. This means that people seeking refuge are first referred to the closest available shelters. When there are no shelter beds available, motel rooms are the backup.”

DeAngelis, however, said Good Samaritan Haven’s three central Vermont shelters remain perpetually full.

The state will relax motel program restrictions in December through March, 2025, for winter. That  leaves October and November, when hundreds of Vermonters currently in motels may end up on the streets.

In the meantime, DeAngelis said, Good Samaritan Haven is among the many organizations helping people find alternative housing, including — as a last resort — providing camping gear.

One Medical Illness

Sometime before the eviction, Casto-Gordon contracted shingles, a painful rash caused by the same virus that causes chicken pox. That led to Ramsay Hunt syndrome, which paralyzed one side of her face, affecting her vision, and has caused periodic week-long migraines, among other symptoms.

The disability put her into one of the priority categories for emergency motel housing, but because of the 80-day rule, her voucher runs out in September.

“It just shows that one medical illness or one catastrophic event can put somebody in my situation,” Casto-Gordon said.

She said she’s been on waiting lists for affordable housing for two years. Unlike many of her contemporaries at the Hilltop, Casto-Gordon considers herself lucky because if she can’t find housing in Vermont before Dec. 1, she can go to South Carolina to stay with her mother and step-father. It’s not her first choice; the weather is hot and humid, she said, and her step-father is “high-strung,” both factors that aggravate her medical conditions.

Long Waits for Housing

An Aug. 30 story in VTDigger reported that “Vermont would need to build between 24,000 and 36,000 new housing units to meet estimated demand over the next five years, according to the latest Vermont Housing Needs Assessment.”

That fits with Jennifer Armbrister’s experience as an outreach case manager at Good Samaritan Haven. Almost everyone in the motel program is on a list for housing, Armbrister said. Those interviewed for this story said they had been on the housing waiting list for as long as a year, or, as Casto-Gordon noted, even two.

The long wait also fits with the experience of Annette Parry and her daughter and caretaker Donna-Jo Newton. The two have been living at the Economy Inn in Montpelier (formerly the Econolodge). Both have documented disabilities, including, in Newton’s case, severe anxiety and depression exacerbated by the stress of homelessness. They have been on every housing waiting list they can find for a year. In Parry’s case, the disabilities list is long and includes scoliosis, early dementia, “emotional hoarding,” and severe anxiety.

Mother and Caretaker

Parry’s roots run deep in Barre. Her maternal grandfather built the family house in Graniteville and worked in the granite industry, and her father comes from Spencer mountain in Orange, she said. The mother-daughter team has seen a lot of loss in the past few years, starting with the death of Parry’s 25-year old son, of cystic fibrosis, in 2017, and followed by the death of both Parry’s parents and Newton’s 54-year-old  father. Newton said she doesn’t allow herself to feel the grief so she can get through each day in the hotel.

Despite the local ties, Parry and Newton, like Melissa Casto-Gordon, found themselves homeless about a year ago after a no-cause eviction from the affordable apartment they’d been in for six years in Barre City. The mother and 29-year old daughter were separated for eight days after the eviction; Parry, who insists that Newton is the only person who can care for her, refused food and medication until they were able to be together again, prompting Newton to get official recognition for the 24/7 caregiver work. The state now pays her $522 per month for that work, she said. Combined with her mother’s $926 in disability pay, the two live on just over $1,300 per month.

Every day brings a new complication, the latest one being a delay on the waiting list from the Barre Housing Authority over an eight-year-old past due bill of $3,921 — BHA’s  legal fees from a court dispute, which Parry and Newton say they won. Any delay on the housing list means the pair face the very real possibility of living on the streets.

Newton said she is painfully aware that one outcome could be living in a tent, but she doesn’t want to see that happen to her mother. At the same time, her mother, Parry, said her therapist told her that she may have to go into a nursing home when her motel eligibility runs out.

“If that happens, I’m just giving up,” she said in an interview in her room at the Economy Inn last week.

Depression and anxiety are not an uncommon outcome for those without housing. In an interview with The Bridge, homeless advocate Brenda Siegel said, “The data shows us that within three weeks to 30 days of living outside you will develop some kind of mental illness or disability.” That’s if you didn’t have one — or several — to begin with.

Sleeping in a Van

Cheryl Stearns considers herself “one of the lucky ones,” because she has a vehicle.

As of Aug. 29, she had 26 days left at the Hilltop Inn, she said. It won’t get her through until the winter eligibility opens on Dec. 1, but she’s got a backup plan: she’ll sleep in her van.

The van is not retrofitted for camping. Stearns said she’ll lay one comforter on the floor in the back and pile on two more for the cold nights in October and November before the adverse weather program kicks in.

“I checked with all my relatives and everybody I knew here, and nobody has any room for me to stay with them,” she said.

Like most of the other people who are unhoused and living in motels, Stearns is on several wait lists for housing. But unlike most, her wait may be brief.

“I have been lucky enough to get on a couple of short lists because I’m 65 and disabled,” she said. “So I’m keeping my fingers crossed. … What I hope is that it doesn’t snow before November, December.”

Matthew Oldershaw was living in Keene, New Hampshire in 2014 when he was assaulted in the streets and thrown into a granite fountain. As a result, he suffered several broken bones and, he says, a brain injury. Ultimately, Oldershaw said, his doctors prescribed two ounces a month of medical marijuana, but the limit a person can have on hand in New Hampshire is three-quarters of an ounce. For that reason, he said, he crossed the border to Vermont, where both medical and recreational marijuana use is legal. He ended up in the motel program.

Oldershaw and his wife Kimberlin Gowell both have disabilities, he said, which they manage while raising their 8-year-old autistic child. They have just enough disability pay and food stamps to get through each month, while supplementing their 80 state-paid motel days with about a week per month that they pay for themselves.

If they have to, Oldershaw said, they can wipe out their bank account and pay for the hotel rooms out of pocket for the interim between when their voucher runs out and the winter program starts, but it doesn’t leave anything for other expenses and medications.

Before he got into the motel program, Oldershaw said he and his family spent a night in the woods, without camping gear or sleeping bags. He doesn’t want to do that again.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Motel program restrictions mean 100 people in Washington County to be ousted .