Conference committee reviews House draft of Vermont homeless assistance bill, keeps transition protections for shelters

A House-Senate conference committee met May 28 to review draft 1.4 of H.91, the Vermont Homeless Emergency Assistance and Responsive Transition to Housing program (vHEART), discussing a House proposal that moves integration of the Housing Opportunity Program into vHEART in fiscal 2027 while keeping transition protections and new accountability and rulemaking provisions.

The draft cites the Vermont Homeless Management Information System as reporting 4,971 people experiencing homelessness in Vermont as of March 2025, including 1,105 children, and references the 2023 annual homeless assessment report's rate of roughly 51 per 10,000 Vermonters, the committee's legislative counsel said.

Committee members said those findings and funding protections drove much of the House's drafting. Breckwood, a committee member, thanked participants and said the House accepted many Senate changes but restored two major items: statewide implementation structures the Senate favored and the House's timeline for incorporating the Housing Opportunity Program (HOP) into vHEART. "We took a great deal of written testimony from shelter providers and took that into serious consideration when we…