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 were drafting our bill," Breckwood said.

Legislative counsel Katie, identified as working for the Office of Legislative Counsel, walked the committee through substantive edits in draft 1.4. Major changes the draft would enact include: moving the fuller program and funding transition to fiscal year 2027, creating regional advisory councils convened by each community action agency with specified membership (including people with lived experience of homelessness), and authorizing the Department to adopt rules that address reauthorization and accountability standards. "This is draft 1.4... the base of this document is the senate version of the bill," Katie said, noting the timeline change and a new transition section that would allow some elements to be implemented earlier by mutual agreement.

The draft adds several operational and oversight details. Regional advisory councils must "reflect to the extent possible the growing diversity among Vermonters" and include people with lived experience; the draft also authorizes modest compensation and reimbursement for nonprofessional council members for up to four meetings a year, paid from monies distributed to the relevant community action agency. The bill would create a statutory list of core services community action agencies must provide and require that when hotels or motels are used for emergency housing, the agency or its contractor "shall ensure relevant support services established pursuant to [the statute] are used in conjunction with emergency shelter." Committee members described that provision as intended to prevent voucher-only placements without wraparound services.

On reporting and oversight, the House draft replaces a quarterly statutory reporting requirement to the legislature with a requirement that the Department post the program report on its website and include details tied to statutory core service categories, client income and benefits by source, diversion counts, returns to homelessness and subgrant inventories. The draft preserves two implementation reports from the Department with target dates (October 1, 2025, and January 15, 2026) covering intake/assessment, verification processes and other operational elements.

Appropriations language in the draft includes a $5.6 million line for planning and to be distributed to community action agencies on a mutually agreed schedule and an allocation to Bridges to Health; committee members discussed whether larger, longer-term investments (a $10 million figure was cited in the discussion) remain necessary or should be reduced. One member noted concerns the administration has about committing to a specific ongoing funding level and emphasized that annual budget negotiations still govern future appropriations.

The draft contains a transition section allowing certain elements of vHEART to take effect before the statute's full effective date — provided the Department and a community action agency or the statewide organization serving households experiencing domestic violence mutually agree and give 30 days' notice to affected households, the Joint Fiscal Committee and policy committees, and post notice on the Department website.

Committee members raised implementation and reporting burdens, with several asking whether the number of reports could be condensed while still preserving oversight. The committee scheduled a follow-up working meeting to continue negotiations.

The transcript shows discussion and negotiation but records no motions or formal votes on the draft during the meeting.