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.

Session Results

Result: Bill passed and Vetoed by Governor – status to be determined

Pre-session goal: Ensure there is sufficient state funding in FY26 to 1) maximize the capacity of Vermont’s affordable housing developers, 2) maintain Vermont’s existing homelessness prevention infrastructure, and 3) provide emergency shelter for unhoused Vermonters.

The Alliance’s work in the 2025 session focused on supporting advocacy on the second and third pre-session goals, beginning with the FY25 Budget Adjustment process. The Governor’s Recommended FY25 Budget Adjustment did not include any additional funding for General Assistance (GA) emergency housing, which would have left many vulnerable households unsheltered as of April 1. The Budget Adjustment Act (BAA) passed by the Legislature did include additional funding to extend the Winter Weather rules through the end of June, providing shelter for the most vulnerable Vermonters. In large part because of this provision, the Governor vetoed the BAA. Without sufficient time to negotiate a new version, no BAA was passed this session. The Governor then issued an Executive Order which waived the 80-day household cap but unfortunately only for households with children and individuals with certain medical needs.

Meanwhile, the House Human Services and Senate Health and Welfare Committees spent considerable time drafting H. 91, a bill to transition the current emergency shelter program to a new structure built on a regional system of care coordinated by Community Action Agencies, starting in FY27. The bill passed by the Legislature would in future years consolidate the existing GA emergency housing benefit, often referred to as the hotel/motel program, and the Housing Opportunity (HOP) grant program, and provide a more consistent and coordinated system for homelessness prevention, emergency shelter, and services to support transitions to permanent housing.

The FY26 Budget as signed by the Governor includes funding and language for the coming year that maintains the emergency housing program at current funding levels with some increases for shelter operations and capacity building funding. It also provides transition funding for H.91.

Unfortunately, the Governor has vetoed H. 91. Advocates and providers are now working to determine how to proceed in terms of both advocacy and service delivery in coming months.