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Shelburne town manager praises H.594 intent, warns motel-program timeline, staffing and funding may be insufficient
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Summary
Shelburne town manager Matt Wallace told the House Housing and Human Services committee he supports H.594’s intent to improve motel-based responses to homelessness but cautioned the bill’s staffing ratios, two-year sunset and modest conversion funds risk setting the program up to fail without additional resources or a slower transition.
Matt Wallace, town manager for Shelburne, told the House Housing and Human Services committee on Jan. 29 that he supports the intent of H.594 to improve accountability and case management for motel-based responses to homelessness but urged changes to the timetable, staffing assumptions and funding levels.
"I commend the overall intent of your H.594, but I caution that it might move too fast with too few resources to succeed as written," Wallace said in his testimony. He described recent housing wins in Shelburne — Champlain Housing Trust's Bay Ridge project of 94 homes, a 12-unit supportive building run by Howard Center, a 12-unit market-rate building, a settled 63-home development and sewer work that enabled capacity for roughly 350 homes — as evidence the town is trying to expand supply while also managing acute needs.
Wallace raised several implementation concerns. He said motel residents who rely on General Assistance placements are, on average, more medically and psychiatrically complex than in the past and that the town’s rescue service logs a disproportionate share of calls related to motels: "The 5 motels in Shelburne comprise 13% of our ambulance call logging," he said. He urged that staffing for any converted shelters include medical and security resources to address concentrated needs.
He questioned the bill’s case-management assumptions, which the committee materials list as roughly 25–35 participants per case manager. Citing a point-in-time count he referenced as 3,386, Wallace said that ratio implies a need for far more caseworkers than the program’s current budget would support: "Our public agencies are already chronically understaffed, so I worry that the needed social workers just can't be hired and trained quickly enough. The program shouldn't be set up to fail."
Wallace also urged a slower timeline for shrinking motel capacity. He said a two-year sunset that reduces capacity from about 1,000 to 400 would be difficult to achieve given construction timelines, permitting and the need to repurpose motel properties: "Two years is not much time to increase the housing supply, expand shelters, and repurpose the motels."
On budgetary questions, Wallace said the biennial $10 million proposed for case-management and the $7 million for motel conversion appear modest for the scale of work he described, noting renovation of aging motels can be complex and expensive and often requires owner consent and multiple regulatory approvals.
Wallace offered several practical recommendations: include provisions that let towns contract or be accounted for when wraparound medical services are needed; build in funding for medical and security staffing in conversions; and consider a more gradual transition timeline so communities can expand shelter capacity or build permanent homes without destabilizing services.
The committee thanked Wallace for his testimony and said staff would follow up on specific data, including the shelter-conversion estimates and counts he cited. The hearing then moved to the next agenda item, H.660.
