Legal aid funding wraps up as demand for rental assistance and tenant services grows, witnesses say

At the Jan. 22 joint hearing, Vermont Legal Aid and community housing advocates described rising demand for tenant assistance and concerns about the end of current federal grant funding for certain legal-aid housing programs.

Jean Murray, project director of the Housing for Everyone Law Project at Vermont Legal Aid, said federally funded housing-work grants that supported intensive outreach and representation will end June 30, 2025. Murray told the committees that Legal Aid used judiciary case lists to send outreach letters in roughly 92% of eviction filings and opened assistance cases for about half of the people who responded. She said those outreach efforts materially increased the number of tenants seeking help.

Murray described the grant-supported program’s results as follows: Legal Aid and other programs helped roughly half of tenants who called after outreach; that assistance often prevented defaults or led to settlements at rent-escrow hearings. She said the organization’s funding decline will reduce its capacity to provide housing-stability services.

Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunities associate director Jess Hyman said calls to the statewide housing helpline have more than doubled since 2018, with more than 3,000 contacts last year. CVOEO reported rising shares of calls about eviction (from 13% in 2023 to 15% last year) and habitability (from 23% to 30%). Hyman and Murray both emphasized that short-term rental assistance and case outreach can prevent filings and homelessness.

Legislative witnesses also described new or recently funded programs: the Vermont State Housing Authority’s eviction-prevention rent-assistance program (funded with a $2.5 million appropriation) requires landlord participation, a signed one-year lease and dismissal of an eviction filing as program conditions; community-based HOP (Housing Opportunity Program) funds provide short-term rental assistance with sustainability screening and local administration.

Why it matters: Witnesses said that short-term rental assistance and tenant outreach reduce eviction filings and that program design (eligibility, landlord participation requirements, sustainability screens) affects uptake. Murray and others urged lawmakers to consider sustained funding and program design choices if they seek to prevent evictions at scale.

Witnesses also discussed tenant-rights pilot programs. Jean Murray noted a pilot to provide full legal representation to tenants in specific counties had started recently; she estimated a statewide universal counsel program would cost in the tens of millions of dollars annually (Jean Murray referenced a prior estimate of about $35 million a year). No formal funding decision was made at the Jan. 22 hearing.