State officials describe shelter-expansion plan as ERAP-funded navigation services near June end

House Human Services members heard an update from Department for Children and Families officials on homelessness programs, coordinated entry and shelter funding during a committee meeting that included Miranda Graham, Deputy Commissioner of the Economic Services Division, and Lily Sojourner, director of the Office of Economic Opportunity.

Graham and Sojourner reviewed administration proposals in the governor’s recommended budget, explained how coordinated entry and HMIS work in Vermont, and warned that housing-stability services funded through the Emergency Rental Assistance Program will end in June unless replaced. Sojourner said the state has launched a new permanent supportive housing assistance program with contract capacity for 100 participants and noted the state’s effort to connect motel and hotel placements to longer-term housing options.

The administration told the committee it is proposing to carry several shelter-expansion items into the fiscal 2026 base budget and add some one-time funds for further expansion. Committee members asked about the scale of the budget proposals. Representative Wood asked officials to clarify whether the governor’s budget figure for hotel/motel shelter capacity was $38.6 million (the number Sojourner referenced) or another amount; Wood asked, “If we were looking at capacity, how many rooms with $38,600,000 purchase, essentially, let's just assume you had full occupancy for 12 months. How many rooms would that purchase?”

Sojourner and Graham described several tradeoffs. Officials said the administration prioritized maintaining shelter capacity added with one-time funds and proposed adding roughly $3 million to put some previously one-time shelter expansion into base funding, plus about $2 million in one-time funds for additional shelter. Graham said the one-time allocation is intended to preserve openings developed over the past 12–18 months and to honor commitments to community providers.

The committee pressed on services that case managers, housing navigators or service coordinators provide. Sojourner explained that Vermont used a portion of ERAP funding for “housing stability services” (navigation, retention, application assistance) and said that the state is one of few that funded services rather than only direct financial assistance. She said roughly 18–20 providers still offer those services under ERAP but that staffing has declined. She said the rental-assistance portion administered by Vermont State Housing Authority differs from the service funding and that housing navigation staff funded by ERAP face workforce pressures.

Sojourner also described how coordinated entry works and its relationship to HMIS, calling coordinated entry “a process mandated by HUD” and outlining the intended flow: multiple local access points feed a single coordinated entry assessment, assessments generate a community-wide master list and local lead agencies prioritize referrals to housing resources. She cautioned that coordinated entry is a process, not a guarantee of a unit: the assessment “is not, in and of itself a resource that guarantees for instance a unit or services.”

Graham described how the Department’s emergency housing intake and the GA (general assistance) hotel/motel placements are documented in a separate Economic Services Division system built last year and said the two systems (the department system and HMIS) have limited automated integration. Graham said the cost to fully merge the systems had been estimated at more than $1 million and that staff have used temporary data-entry support for point-in-time tasks such as recent shelter counts.

Committee members sought clearer tracking of people placed in hotel/motel shelter. Graham said the department refers households enrolled in GA emergency housing to local coordinated entry lead agencies within three days and seeks confirmation of engagement, but that backlog and workforce limits at lead agencies sometimes delay assessments. Graham told the committee, “You have to be engaging to try to resolve your homelessness,” referring to eligibility expectations in statute and practice.

On timing and next steps, the administration said it will continue to pursue a longer-term plan to increase permanent housing supply and to refine eligibility targeting, while preserving emergency extreme-cold-weather shelters. Officials said they plan to involve municipalities in decisions tied to state funding and logistics and to pursue hotel and motel conversions into permanent units where feasible.

Discussion points: officials reiterated that homelessness is fundamentally a housing supply problem and described three-pronged responses—units, rental assistance, and supportive services—but emphasized the immediate need to preserve shelter capacity and address the ending of ERAP-funded housing navigation services in June.

The committee requested more granular data. Representative McGill has asked the department to provide a spreadsheet listing staffing positions funded through the Housing Opportunity Program, Families for Work Housing, and ERAP housing-stability services so legislators can compare program staffing across sources.

The department said it had obligated roughly $10 million in one-time shelter-expansion funds awarded last fall but did not expect all of that money to be fully spent by June 30; contract and procurement steps remain to implement some awards. Officials also said the governor’s recommended base included roughly $3 million to maintain shelter capacity added in the prior year and an additional $2 million in one-time funds to support further shelter expansion.

The committee deferred further budget work to its next session and asked the department to return with requested data and clarification of budget line items.