Housing and Homelessness Alliance urges lifting General Assistance caps, renews statewide funding asks

Frank Mack, executive director of the Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont, told the General & Housing Committee on Jan. 15 that Vermont’s emergency housing system is overwhelmed and urged legislators to remove recent caps on the General Assistance emergency housing program and maintain funding for homelessness prevention and housing production.

Mack said Vermont recorded a “record number” in the point‑in‑time count released last year — reported during his testimony as 35100 — while the state’s emergency shelter capacity is 585 beds. “We literally had families with children being given tents and saying goodbye,” Mack said, describing how caps introduced last session forced exits from hotel and motel placements.

The Alliance framed its priorities across three “buckets”: emergency shelter and homelessness response; services to keep people housed; and production of permanently affordable housing. Mack said the organization backs continuation of the hotel‑motel backstop — commonly called the General Assistance (GA) emergency housing program — and recommended removing caps enacted last year that limit nights per household and the program’s total rooms.

Mack described the changes enacted last session as twofold: an 80‑night limit for eligible households and a statewide cap on rooms that he said was set at 1,100. He said those caps coincided with large numbers of people the state had previously deemed vulnerable being exited from GA placements in September, worsening visible homelessness in winter months.

Committee members pressed for local context. Representative Emily Prowse of South Burlington told the panel she is “working with the city of South Burlington and our council to try to see if we can replicate what Burlington is doing,” and warned that rigid state temperature triggers for winter emergency shelter have left municipalities to fill gaps with little funding or staffing. Representative Mary Howard, Rutland City District 6, and others asked about county‑level patterns; Mack said the statewide point‑in‑time appendix breaks numbers out by county and offered to provide coordinated‑entry data showing more granular locations.

Beyond emergency shelter, Mack urged continuation of HOP (homeowner and prevention)‑style rental assistance and the federal ERAP funds where they remain active locally, noting these programs keep people from entering homelessness. He supported modest expansions in proven local programs such as site‑based Pathways and place‑based Stash pilots, and requested $3,500,000 to sustain resident services coordinators that housing trusts are now funding out of their operating budgets.

On production, Mack asked the legislature to preserve and expand investments in the state housing pipeline, citing recent additions of roughly 1,000 units but saying “we still need 1,000 more.” He identified two entities he said are central to that work and whose asks the committee would later hear — named in testimony as “BHGB” and “BHFA” — and summarized the Alliance’s funding requests: $80,000,000 for BHGB in addition to its statutory property transfer tax share and $36,000,000 for BHFA, each to be provided with flexibility to maximize pipeline output.

Mack also urged funding for mobile‑home park stabilization and the Land Access and Opportunity Board, and called attention to farmworker housing shortages. He said the Alliance participated in the Emergency Housing Task Force and supports its recommendations to the legislature.

Mack said capacity shortfalls are causing operational problems across systems: voucher programs can go unused when there are no available rental units, and one‑time funding creates staffing instability in service providers. “We don’t have units available to move people into,” he said, noting the risk that vouchers are returned unused if housing is not built.

The presentation closed with offers to share county‑level point‑in‑time and coordinated‑entry data and to follow up with detail on specific program requests. No formal motions or votes were taken during the hearing segment on the Alliance’s testimony.