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Advocates say GA process failures and notice confusion harmed vulnerable clients; two recent clients died during appeals
Summary
End Homelessness Vermont and other advocates told the House Human Services Committee that repeated requests for reasonable accommodations, delayed fair hearings and unclear renewal notices left medically vulnerable clients at risk and contributed to recent deaths.
Brenda Siegel, executive director of End Homelessness Vermont, told the House Human Services Committee that clients who needed reasonable accommodations and continued shelter faced repeated administrative barriers during recent program renewals.
Siegel described multiple clients who had to pursue fair hearings to keep emergency shelter and said one client who had been supported through multiple accommodations later died. “We'd worked with him for many years… a little over a week ago, he died,” Siegel said, describing a client who had been in organ failure and on oxygen and who was sheltered after an overturned decision but later died.
Siegel said her organization and partners requested many fair hearings in recent weeks; she reported 14 fair hearings requested in the prior week and a half, and said preliminary hearings had so far favored clients. She told legislators that reasonable accommodations for communication and medical needs had been “obstructed in the last month,” complicating access for clients with disabilities.
Committee members asked about a recent court action. Siegel said a judge had ordered a temporary stay on evictions tied to insufficient notice; she said auto-renewals began but notices were inconsistent and some clients remained unclear whether they had the required individualized notice. “We asked the temporary restraining order, our clients that are being exited today should not be exited,” she said, describing confusion over who received renewal notices and whether notices met the court order’s requirements.
Siegel also previewed analysis from an ongoing End Homelessness Vermont report based on interviews with 200 people. Key findings she cited included: 74.6 percent reporting physical health conditions, 92.5 percent reporting mental health challenges, 37 percent reporting learning disabilities, and 9 percent of the total interviewees unable to read or write. She said 39 percent of interviewees first experienced housing insecurity as a child, and 27 percent of that group had been in foster care.
Siegel said the administrative challenges were causing stress for clients and staff on the ground, and that legal aid and the Human Services Board were engaged in some cases. She told the committee that preliminary hearings had “won every one” so far but that the volume of hearings and denials indicated systemic problems with how GA qualifications, accommodations and renewals were being administered.
The committee did not issue decisions during the testimony; members thanked advocates for the data and accounts and asked for written copies of the ongoing report when available.
