Vermont’s housing and homelessness crisis is the result of multiple factors, including a lack of sufficient permanently affordable housing units, skyrocketing housing and constructions costs, more people moving to Vermont, increasing short term rentals, a failure to ensure a living wage, a failure to provide adequate mental health and substance use services (and continuing to criminalize people who use drugs), and more. While we urge the Legislature to make the sustained long-term investments necessary to ensure perpetually affordable housing with the necessary support services to meet the demand, we also urge the Legislature in the shorter-term to provide the resources necessary to ensure sufficient emergency shelter. 

The Alliance supports the Housing & Homelessness Alliance of Vermont (HHAV) in its request for the Legislature to ensure there is sufficient state funding in FY26 to:

• maximize the capacity of Vermont’s affordable housing developers
• maintain Vermont’s existing homelessness prevention infrastructure; and
• provide emergency shelter for unhoused Vermonters.

LEAD ORGANIZATION: Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont

Data and Talking Points

• The ’24 Point In Time number represents a five percent increase over 2023, which was Vermont’s previous record high.
• The Point in Time number is an undercount, as it reflects only the people who engaged with our state’s dedicated and perpetually under-resourced shelter service providers on the PIT count day
• Black Vermonters are 5.6 times more likely than white Vermonters to be unhoused this year.
•