This commentary is by Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak, of Burlington.
For years, the city of Burlington has worked hard to adapt our responses to public health challenges, including homelessness, substance use disorders and mental health crises.
Camping and rough sleeping have been prevalent in city spaces for decades. However, since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, Vermont has seen an alarming increase in the number of people experiencing homelessness.
Over the past three years, uncertainty around the State Emergency Housing Program, also known as the motel program, has left the city and partner organizations in a near constant state of crisis-response.
Vermont’s municipalities do not have the staff or resources to adequately respond to these overlapping challenges. The most recent round of motel exits on July 1 saw hundreds of people pushed out of the motel program statewide, including families with children, older adults and medically vulnerable individuals.
Many who exited had nowhere to go.
Based on local data, while Chittenden County accounts for 26% of Vermont’s population, we hold 34% of the state’s residents sleeping unsheltered. This is a policy failure that has left vulnerable people and those trying to serve them in crisis. We need more residential treatment beds, more shelter capacity, stronger renter protections and more affordable housing — real solutions that we have collectively failed to achieve.
On July 24, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order: Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets. This executive order promotes forced institutionalization, prioritizes the criminalization of homelessness and deprioritizes funding for evidence-based public health responses. This executive order is not a mandate, and we will not treat it as such in Burlington.
As Burlington’s mayor, let me be clear: We will continue to move forward with compassion, using evidence-based practices like housing first and harm reduction while also prioritizing public health and safety, and maintaining our public spaces for all to enjoy.
In Burlington, we have made progress in evolving our responses to public health challenges, including increased funding for embedded social support providers and clinicians within our police department, creation of the fire department’s community response team, continued support for the urban park ranger program, and an increased investment in Howard Center’s Street Outreach Team.
Key staff across multiple departments meet weekly to identify encampments, remove them from city parks, and assess campsites on other city land for health and safety.
We also recently launched the Situation Table, an international model for intensive case coordination with the goal of reducing relevant risk factors for individuals at a heightened risk of harm to themselves or others. Anonymized risk factor data is then recorded so that we can track interventions, measure the effectiveness of the Situation Table, and assess if services are successfully mitigating risks.
This data helps inform the development of local policies and initiatives to address safety and can be used to advocate for additional resources. We are also preparing to launch the City Circle initiative, which will offer an immediate accountability process for individuals who violate local ordinances and employs a restorative justice approach.
I am proud of these innovative initiatives, however, they are at best triage and harm reduction responses necessitated by our maxed-out and chronically underfunded system of care.
As mayor, I and other municipal officials have pleaded with state leaders, hoping to impress upon them the impossible burden municipalities face when the state fails to take action. My office has coordinated with city councilors and department heads to send several letters to Gov. Phil Scott on this issue.
I have personally met with Scott and Agency of Human Services leaders to request a truly collaborative statewide response. Homelessness, substance use disorders and mental health crises touch every Vermont community in some fashion. If we are serious about supporting Vermonters, then we cannot ignore the public suffering that is affecting so many communities across our state.
Municipal officials have advocated repeatedly for a coordinated response by the Agency of Human Services, including expanded shelter capacity and treatment beds. These pleas have largely been met with inaction. Burlington remains a willing partner to Scott, other state leaders and service providers to identify and implement real solutions to homelessness and our housing crisis.
The conversation around H.91 was a good start, but Scott vetoed that bill to the surprise of many legislators and without offering alternatives. H.91 would have allowed for a more regional approach to shelter and service provision, offering a bridge to more community based shelter capacity and away from motels.
Our city team will continue to adapt within our capacity to respond to the unprecedented scale of unsheltered homelessness in our community. However, we cannot do this work alone. When we expend resources to fill gaps left by the state, we have less for other local services and have to make difficult decisions, as we did in the previous two municipal budget cycles.
Finally, I ask people to combat the narrative that just because people do not have permanent housing, they pose an inherent risk to others. Now more than ever, it is imperative to maintain our collective empathy.
I encourage Vermonters to reach out to Scott. We need help from his administration. The level of human suffering in our communities is unacceptable, and the financial costs are untenable.
