With a statewide motel voucher program for homeless individuals ending in June, a resolution to update Burlington, Vermont’s camping policy on public land dominated the most recent city council meeting.
The federal government had originally funded a pandemic program to house homeless individuals in hotels and motels. When the federal funding ended in 2021, the state of Vermont continued the program. The state will end it on June 1st. Advocates are predicting a surge in homelessness.
A resolution before the Burlington City Council asks the Community and Economic Development Office to provide a council committee with information on current sheltering policy on public lands, what camping options are available when shelter capacity has been reached and other data.
Burlington resident Aspen Overy summarized most of the public comment on the proposed resolution.
“This is an impending crisis and I am aware this is not the fault of this council,” Overy said. “Our neighbors will be kicked out without housing in just over two weeks and it seems increasingly unlikely that any solution from Montpelier is coming. So this city must act. We should have had a plan earlier. We should have had better plans than camping. This is the barest minimum. People are going to camp inevitably and this bill only encourages us to start to think about haw we can take care of them, which is not enough.”
Ward 1 Progressive Zoraya Hightower said she did not expect the resolution to be a contentious issue because it has been under committee review for a year and a half.
“We’re not talking about any of the parks,” Hightower said. “We’re talking about specifically other public land but not our typical what we think of are recreational parks. The reason I thought this would be a simple resolution to pass is all that it’s asking us to do research on what best practices would be to help us make a better decision down the road. I understand that we can’t tackle this as a city alone. I understand that we need the help of other cities. We need the help of the state. But we also need a plan and right now we have no plan. And all I’m asking us to do is to get the information that we need to start making a plan and that is all this resolution is doing.”
A motion to postpone consideration of the resolution was debated and eventually withdrawn. An amendment was then proposed by Ward 5 Democrat Ben Traverse.
“Our state legislature failed to take action to preserve the vital hotel-motel voucher program,” Traverse said. “ And so the concerns that I had about the underlying resolution were twofold. One, the apparent forthcoming crisis is not just a Burlington problem. It’s a regional problem. The other issue that I had with it is that the resolution was very targeted towards the question of camping and whether or not, to use the term that’s in the resolution, we should be exploring sanctioned camping. Yes there’s a certain reality that camping as it is today and as it’s been over the last few years is a part of the short-term answers unfortunately that we have right now. But we need to be looking at this in a much broader way.”
The amended resolution passed unanimously.
In other business, Traverse offered a resolution urging the council to work with the city in preparation for the April 8, 2024 Solar Eclipse.
“Burlington is in the direct path of totality,” Traverse said. “The last time this happened in the state of Vermont was 1932. It was cloudy in 1932 so the last time anyone in Vermont actually saw a total solar eclipse was 1806. I know that Vermont hotels are already booking up for this event. I truly think it may turn out to be one of, if not the, biggest events in the city of Burlington’s history drawing perhaps more people to our city than any event in the past. I’m hoping to get the council’s support such that we can coordinate with city staff as Burlington continues to prepare for this unique, once-in-a-lifetime event.”
The resolution passed unanimously.
