Senate committee reviews H.91 draft, debates emergency-housing definitions and funding

The Senate Health & Welfare Committee on May 13 continued work on H.91, reviewing a new draft that adds a VHART chapter, considers new definitions for homelessness, and identifies one-time funding proposals for community action agencies and Bridges to Health.

Committee members and staff emphasized municipal concerns about the local costs of homelessness and questioned how proposed dollars would be allocated. “I have been receiving a lot of very upset municipal municipalities about how much homelessness is costing municipalities in terms of public safety, and other services,” the Senate Health & Welfare Committee chair said, summarizing local officials’ complaints. The committee did not adopt final budget allocations during the session.

The bill draft retains a legislative-intent section that references housing-first principles and includes language modeled on Vermont’s emergency-housing statutes and policies. The chair said the Department for Children and Families proposed specific definitions as an alternative to rulemaking; the chair read the DCF text into the record, saying the department’s proposed definition of “at risk of homelessness” is “precariously housed without sufficient income resources or support to prevent homelessness,” and that “homeless” would mean “lacking a fixed regular adequate nighttime residence, facing imminent loss of primary nighttime residence, fleeing or attempting to flee domestic violence or other otherwise defined as homeless under federal law.”

Committee members noted that the HOP program transition that appeared in an earlier House draft has been removed from H.91 and will require a separate, broader discussion. The chair said that as the General Assistance (GA) program changes — including a possible decrease in hotel and motel placements — conversations will continue about which shelters serve which households and how organizations coordinate.

On funding, the draft includes one-time amounts the chair described as coming from prior submissions by AHS and community action partners. The committee reviewed line items the chair described as: “5.95 c f” for community action agencies (as shown in the draft), $515,000 for Bridges to Health (identified in the bill as general-fund support), $500,000 for DCF contractual/transformation assistance, and $3,000,000 for DCF (described in the meeting as a DCF request). The chair said staff would post the spreadsheets provided by agencies so committee members could review the allocation details before Friday’s continuation.

Department staff in the room either declined or were unable to answer questions about how the $500,000 or the $3,000,000 would be allocated to specific projects. “I can’t speak to specific projects that we have where that money might be allocated,” a DCF representative (Nellie) said when asked by the chair.

Committee staff discussed highlighting conventions in the draft so the House can see committee changes (previous edits in yellow, new edits in green). Staff confirmed the VHART chapter purpose text did not change; definitions and some purpose/intent language were the primary edits under review.

No motions or votes were recorded in the session. Committee members asked that agency spreadsheets and appropriation reports be shared on the committee team site and said they would reconvene to finalize the bill before the committee’s scheduled end on Friday.

The session also briefly referenced an unrelated PFAS bill (HB 238) and a planned change to the respirator compliance date in that draft; the chair said staff expect a respirator date of 2032 in the PFAS draft, but that was not a subject of detailed discussion in this meeting.

The committee left the bill in discussion status with staff directions to post budget spreadsheets and with plans to return to H.91 later in the week. No formal committee action on H.91 was taken on May 13.