Burlington, Vermont announced today the Champlain Housing Trust will manage the city’s new emergency shelter community.
Construction has begun on the Elmwood Emergency Shelter Community, which will include 30 pre-fabricated modular shelters, often called pods, with an adjacent bathhouse, laundry and offices.
Democratic Mayor Miro Weinberger noted that the project is part of a 10-point plan to lower chronic homelessness in the city.
“We are on track to open this facility and begin to house people in this facility before the winter. And when we open, our other major announcement today," Mayor Weinberger said, "is that when we open we will be doing so in partnership with the Champlain Housing Trust which we have reached an agreement with to serve as the property manager for this critical new facility.”
The $3 million project includes 25 shelters for individuals and five that will house two people on a city-owned parking lot on Elmwood Avenue. The pods are 60 to 120 square feet in size. Weinberger says the city is intentionally trying to create a new kind of shelter for the homeless.
“The belief is that what we will be bringing into being here will address a part of the homelessness challenge, the unhoused challenge, that we have not had the resources to fully address before. It will be a low barrier shelter," said Weinberger. "It will be a shelter that we hope and believe will allow us to reach a group of people who the existing shelter system and permanent housing system have not been able to effectively support. And it is a facility that is going to have a very high level of supportive services available on the site.”
Those services include drug and mental health treatment, help to transition to permanent housing, and employment aid. Community and Economic Development Office Director Brian Pine noted that the need for shelter for the unhoused has grown significantly.
“We have essentially brought together the supports that this community has available and can offer to people to go from living outside, living perhaps in a tent or somewhere else perhaps in a doorway, to someplace that offers safety and security and stability," Pine said, "in addition to being paired with services that will provide hopefully a path forward and a bridge from being unhoused to stabilizing their lives and moving into permanent housing is certainly the goal. It’s 30 climate controlled modular shelters, individual units. They’re very small but they will provide what people need.”
Officials plan to open the shelter pod community in November and operate the community for approximately three years.
