Barre City offered the state of Vermont 90 days of temporary housing for up to 110 Washington County residents who are about to be exited from the state’s motel voucher program.
Times Argus reporter David Delcore, in a May 24 story, explained that Barre has offered the ice arena to the state to shelter Washington County homeless being exited through the summer months. In a May 30 story, Delcore detailed the costs.
City manager Nicolas Storellicastro set a price of $29,025 a day for the 21,500-square-foot arena, or $2.6 million from June 1 to August 31. That price doesn’t include the state providing staffing, security and mitigating impacts on the Barre Civic Center complex, per Delcore’s report. Other costs that the state would need to agree to pay include 15 toilets (port-o-lets) for $8,550, and shower trailers for $68,000.
The state’s calculation of the number of people in the voucher program is complicated. There had been 387 people (302 adults and 85 children) in the voucher program in Washington County, but only an estimated 110 will exit on June 1. Per Delcore’s story that works out to $265 per person for the first 30 days, until the next wave of people are un-housed on July 1.
That $265 a day is more than the state is currently paying for the voucher program. When the next round of exiting happens, the cost per person drops to $75 per day give or take -- depending on how many of those newly-exited people were families sharing a motel room or were singles or couples. That number also doesn’t include the cost of security, cleaning, bathrooms and showers.
Kudos for Barre City for coming forward to try and keep our fellow Washington County residents sheltered. The Legislature allocated $12.5 million for programs such as what Barre is proposing and if other communities are working on similar temporary solutions, that money will be quickly depleted.
But then, what’s next? We enter next fall and winter with far too many Vermonters unsheltered and no concrete, tangible, achievable way to protect them this winter. We have failed to take care of our most vulnerable. We need to do better.
