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Lawmakers hear push for state plan to build service‑supported housing for Vermonters with developmental disabilities
Summary
Advocates and the Vermont Housing & Conservation Board urged creation of a small state planning team and an actionable plan by November to scale service‑supported housing after pilot projects under Act 186; witnesses flagged a regulatory two‑person cap, coordinated‑entry gaps, and uncertainty over federal HUD and Medicaid funding.
Testimony April 10 before the General & Housing committee urged legislators to create a state planning team charged with producing an actionable plan by mid‑November to expand service‑supported housing for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
"Bottom line, Vermont needs 604 units of service supported housing for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities," said Susan Aronoff, senior planner and policy analyst for the Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council, during testimony on Section 5 of S.127 and the state’s Act 186 pilots.
Advocates said the state must pair housing with services and scale beyond one‑off projects to meet demand and comply with federal requirements. Aronoff cited Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) findings that Vermont is out of compliance with community‑based service rules and invoked the U.S. Supreme Court’s Olmstead decision as the legal framework that requires states to provide services in the most integrated setting appropriate.
Aronoff and parent advocates described several pilot projects funded after the 2022 Act 186 directive, including a Champlain Housing Trust project in Burlington intended to create roughly 10 apartments with staff units and a downtown Waterbury development that will reserve a small number of units for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. A rural intentional‑community model (referred to in testimony as Riverflow / Monkton) is also progressing; that project is intended to house individuals who require on‑site, around‑the‑clock staffing.
Gus Seelig, executive director of the Vermont Housing & Conservation Board (VHCB), told the committee VHCB has funded supportive housing projects tied to the Brandon institution closure and credited past investments with producing hundreds of units that can serve people with disabilities. "The board ... has always had a track record of providing a variety of different kinds of supportive housing," Seelig said.
Witnesses and committee members identified several obstacles to scaling service‑supported housing:
- A state regulation (reviewed by the Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules) limits shared‑living adult‑foster‑care placements to two unrelated people under the same program. Witnesses said that rule has forced some developers into far more expensive assisted‑living construction to serve multiple residents and effectively capped group‑living options.
- Coordinated entry and homelessness‑priority rules tend to prioritize people who are literally homeless, leaving many adults with developmental disabilities—often living with aging parents—out of prioritized pathways to housing.
- Funding and operating costs remain uncertain. Witnesses noted federal HUD supports (including an accelerator grant that was expected to bring planners together) were on hold; Aronoff said councils are watching potential HUD cuts. VHCB staff said capital funding alone does not solve operating and staffing costs for buildings that need 24‑hour supports.
Witnesses described the proposed planning team as a small group of mostly state actors plus key stakeholders (a seat for a parent‑led group called the Developmental Disabilities Housing Initiative and representation from the Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council) to produce legislative language and an actionable plan intended to be ready by November so the legislature could act next session. Committee members raised practical questions about membership stipends for family participants and whether the November deadline should be extended to allow the group to function over the summer.
On funding amounts and counts, testimony contained differing figures: Aronoff cited a figure of 604 needed units; testimony and VHCB remarks referenced a broader set of projects totaling roughly 800 units produced in prior funding rounds, with targeted subsets (examples given as 52, 162 and 46 units for specific populations). Witnesses also said Act 186 pilot awards total about $3.8 million; a separate staff reference in testimony identified a Champlain Housing Trust allocation in the low‑millions for the Burlington units but the exact BAA/budget line cited differed in committee recollection. Because the hearing transcript included inconsistent dollar amounts, those figures are described in clarifying details below rather than stated as settled totals.
No formal vote or committee action was recorded at the hearing. Witnesses and members indicated next steps would be drafting the planning‑team language into Section 5 of S.127, resolving stipend/budget details, and identifying county‑level data on need so the team can prioritize where to site projects.
The committee paused the hearing after the housing testimony and prepared to move on to a separate agenda item on brownfields.
