Motel Program Users Keep Their Rooms, Despite Vermont’s Lower Rate

Jenise Perez and her four sons prepared this week to move out of their two rooms at the Days Inn in Colchester after a nine-month stay. They rented a compact SUV to hold their belongings.

Like others without permanent housing who have been living in rooms paid for by the State of Vermont, the family worried that their hotel might not allow them to stay anymore. On Friday, Vermont lowered the rate it pays motels from $132 per night to $80.

Many hotel owners initially threatened to pull out of the program at that lower rate, prompting fears of people being cast out into the cold.
But on Thursday, Perez learned that she’d gotten a reprieve. At the urging of state officials and housing advocates, those owners changed their minds and said the state guests could stay. The Perez family can rely on sheltering at the Days Inn — at least for the next few weeks.

“I really thought we were going to have to leave,” Perez said on Friday as she smoked a cigarette in the parking lot on a cold and blustery day. Her youngest son, Jordyn, stood silently at her side. Her other boys range in age from 15 to 21.
“The manager was so nice,” Perez said, adding that the hotel staff has befriended her family. “She was crying, and she was like, ‘I don’t want to evict you guys.’”

Uncertainty is nothing new to users of the motel program, which has been housing an estimated 2,200 people for four years now. Created to protect people from exposure to COVID-19 in congregate shelters, it has been the subject of fierce debate.

The $132 per night rate was good money for many of the 70 or so participating motels around the state, some of which are rundown. Critics of the program say it’s a poor use of taxpayer dollars. At $132 per night, keeping 1,600 households in hotel rooms costs $1.5 million per week.

In an effort to curb spending, state officials have been looking for ways to pare down the number of residents. About 800 people were evicted on June 1.

The remaining residents faced uncertainty after the Agency of Human Services announced in January that it would cut the nightly rate to $75. Many hotel owners said they would rent their rooms to higher-paying conventional travelers.

Some put up signs in hotel lobbies warning residents they’d have to move out on Friday because of the rate cut — a message seen as one for state officials, too.

“It’s been described as a game of chicken,” said Michael Redmond, executive director of the Upper Valley Haven, a shelter in White River Junction, earlier this week. Hotel owners were aware, he said, that the people would have nowhere to go. “We don’t know who is going to follow through, but we do know who is in the middle.”

Earlier this week, lawmakers settled on an $80-per-night cap during negotiations over the midyear budget revision known as the Budget Adjustment Act. The Agency of Human Services will be able to pay hotel owners for extra costs such as for damages or security. With the new rate, payment for the estimated 1,600 rooms comes to around $896,000 per week.

Advocates pressured lawmakers to push the date the cap would take effect to April 1 but to no avail. Lawmakers also stripped out $2 million the administration had set aside for setting up and running emergency shelters, including one at the armory building in Waterbury, which had roused local opposition. Lawmakers instead put that money toward expanding the state’s network of permanent shelter beds. 

On Friday, state officials announced that while some lodging owners had dropped out, enough had stayed in to provide rooms for everybody in the program.

Friday’s reprieve doesn’t take much of the pressure off; for some, it just pushes the move-out date down the road a bit. While some guests enrolled in the program under certain categories can stay on until June 30, Perez said she may still have to leave on March 15.

Resident Mary Mojica, who is 70, also expects she’ll have to move out March 15. She moved into the hotel in October after her Waterbury studio apartment was sold and her new landlord doubled the rent, she said. She’s on a waiting list for affordable housing in central Vermont.

“I really like it because I have my own room,” she said of the Days Inn. “I can’t be living on the street.”

Gov. Phil Scott said in a statement on Friday that his administration’s goal is to phase out the motel program and to build or acquire permanent homeless shelters and housing stock. He added that restoring existing homes and creating new ones “is the only way to truly end homelessness in Vermont.”

“This is going to continue to be a difficult transition, but we’re working to do it in a way that protects those with the greatest needs,” he said.

Kevin McCallum contributed reporting.

Correction, March 2, 2024: Jenise Perez’s first name was misspelled in an earlier version of this story.

This article appears in Feb 28 – Mar 5, 2024.

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