Moving Towards Home: Strategies for Ending Homelessness in Ten Years
City of Burlington, Vermont
February 2004

Prepared by Margaret Bozik
Community & Economic Development Office
Burlington, VT  

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Why are we writing a 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness?

• To remind ourselves, our community and those beyond our community that no one in this country should have to go without a place to call home. 
• To acknowledge that homelessness as we see it today is a product of the last quarter of the 20th century, and to join with other cities across the country in looking to see if there could be better approaches to getting and keeping people housed. 
• Because we are a community that's small enough, and willing enough, to truly be a model for ending homelessness.

What we're not doing:

• Working in a vacuum - we're building on the work of the Affordable Housing Task Force, and acknowledging that housing the homeless has to take place in the larger context of a tight housing market that's squeezing all working citizens. 
• Treating homelessness as a purely local issue - to truly end homelessness, action must be taken on a local, regional, state and federal level and there must be changes in state and federal policies and funding priorities.

As we began this planning process, we were reminded that 20 years ago, a group of people were meeting in the basement of City Hall to talk about keeping the homeless from freezing to death on the streets here in Burlington because of lack of shelter, a discussion that lead to the creation of the Burlington Emergency Shelter and the Waystation Shelter.

In many ways, we've made progress since then - the City now has seven overnight shelters (two for single adults, two for families, one for victims of domestic abuse, one for youth and one for those with severe mental illness); a daytime drop-in center; 7-day a week hot meal and free grocery programs; a medical clinic dedicated to serving the homeless; slots set aside in several childcare programs for homeless children; a downtown street outreach program grown to four outreach workers; and a Continuum of Care dedicated to serving the homeless.

But - there are an estimated 2,000 homeless people over the course of a year in the Burlington area. Our shelters are too often full and turning people away. There have been 300% increases in the numbers of homeless families. More and more working people are among the homeless. Rising numbers of youth and of victims of domestic abuse are seeking shelter. At the same time, federal funding for local homeless programs under the Continuum of Care program has fallen from $1.6 million in 1996 to $919,679 this year, and federal assistance for publicly-assisted housing is dropping.

So we asked:

• What would it take to make housing available to everyone, affordable and in a form appropriate to their needs, with services also available to ensure stable tenure? 
• How would that housing tenure ladder serve the chronically homeless: the mentally ill, the alcoholic, the addict? 
• What would need to change so that working one full-time job meant you could afford to be housed? 
• How would we make sure that hitting a patch of bad luck - losing a job, getting sick or injured - didn't mean losing your home? 
• How would that housing tenure ladder serve those leaving the correctional system? Those leaving a residential substance abuse program? Those exiting foster care? 
• What about those who are currently burning their housing bridges with histories of evictions, bad credit records, etc.? 
• What aren't we doing now that we would need to do? What additional resources would we need? What systemic barriers would we need to change? What things are outside our control? 
• How would we define "ending homelessness"? How would we know when we're there?

But first, we began by reexamining why people are homeless:

• People are homeless because there isn't enough affordable housing.
• People are homeless because work doesn't pay enough to cover the cost of housing, food, health care and other necessary living expenses.
• People are homeless because mental illness and/or substance abuse interferes with their ability to obtain and retain housing.
• People are homeless because the "safety net" or other part of the "mainstream system" has failed.
• People are homeless because they are fleeing domestic violence.
• People are homeless because they are resistant to help that could stabilize their housing situation.
• People are homeless because personal behaviors, bad credit or poor landlord references interfere with their ability to obtain and retain housing.

To end homelessness:

• There would be an adequate supply of decent, affordable housing.
• All those able to work would be adequately trained to do so and would be able to find jobs that pay a livable wage.
• Those who cannot work would be supported by a safety net that holds them above the poverty line and guarantees them food, shelter and health care.
• Those who cannot maintain stable permanent housing (because of substance abuse, mental illness or other problems) would nonetheless have housing options other than temporary shelters, the streets or jail.
• People who confront personal problems and crises could readily access help, with a supportive community environment, and would be treated with respect and dignity.

We can't guarantee that all these things will happen in ten years. But there are some actions that would move us in the right direction.

Recommendations for Action:

1. Increase the supply of affordable housing.

1. Federal, state and local government should implement the recommendations of the Mayor's Affordable Housing Task Force and the detailed Action Plan endorsed by City Council in 2002.
2. Congress should pass the federal Bringing Home America Act, sponsored by Vermont Congressman Bernie Sanders (among others) and supported by the November 17, 2003 Resolution of the Burlington City Council.
3. Congress should adequately fund the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher program, including funding for new vouchers.
4. The State should explore using untapped TANF reserve funds, without reducing benefit levels, to provide housing subsidies to families that are (or recently were) on welfare.
5. The City should continue to fund affordable housing through its Housing Trust Fund and with its Community Development Block Grant and HOME funds, with the goal of supporting the development of 375 new units over the next 5 years in Burlington and surrounding municipalities.
6. The City and its housing partners should continue to expand the number of handicap-accessible units in the City.

2. Increase the supply of permanent supportive housing.

1. Congress should fund all renewals for permanent supportive housing, Shelter Plus Care and SHP-Permanent Housing through a separate, permanent account so that formerly homeless people don't become homeless again and to ensure that enough funding is available to develop new units.
2. The Continuum and its housing partners should develop 36 to 48 additional units of permanent supportive housing, in the form of 6 small congregate living situations (6-8 apartments with common space and a resident manager) and/or scattered site units, located along a bus line - including units for youth age 18 to 22.
3. The Continuum and its housing partners should develop two additional community care homes, each with room to house 15 to 16 residents, for those who can't live independently and need a higher level of support (24-hour staff, on-site meals, etc.). One facility would also include on-site nursing care.

3. Increase transitional housing opportunities, with associated services, for those who need temporary supports before moving into independent permanent housing arrangements.

1. The State should create a demonstration project to encourage the development of more transitional housing for formerly homeless families.
2. The State should develop 30 units of transitional housing specifically for families with substance abuse and/or mental health treatment needs, with on-site staff and case management support.
3. The Continuum and its housing partners should develop 6 to 12 new units of project-based transitional housing for victims of domestic violence who have greater service needs and/or a need to establish a rental history, and who can afford the lessened confidentiality that may result because they are at less risk from their abusers.
4. The Continuum and its housing partners should develop 8 to 10 units of new transitional housing for women exiting correctional facilities.
5. The City, the Continuum and their housing partners should collaborate to provide 4 transitional housing units for youthful offenders exiting correctional facilities.
6. The City, the Continuum and their housing partners should explore the need for additional transitional housing units for adult men exiting correctional facilities.
7. The Continuum should explore the need for development of transitional housing specifically for veterans, such as exists elsewhere in the State.
8. The Continuum, the City and surrounding municipalities should reduce zoning barriers to development of new transitional housing units and/or work to find existing zoning compliant properties that programs could expand into.
9. The Continuum and the City should seek a solution, legislative if necessary, to recent rulings mandating Act 250 review for separate/noncontiguous community care facilities and other housing projects because those projects are located within 5 miles of each other.

4. Develop additional capacity to serve those who need permanent housing, but are resistant to traditional service models, including low demand / low engagement shelter/housing and harm reduction programs.

1. The State should add 7 detox beds (using the Act 1 model) and 10 substance abuse crisis stability beds (using the Bridge model) in Chittenden County.
2. The Continuum and its housing partners should develop 7 additional Safe Havens units.
3. The Continuum should work with Fletcher Allen Health Care to develop outpatient medical respite options for the homeless.
4. The Continuum should work with the police department and the business community to explore new/alternative strategies for housing the "hardest to serve."
1. One possibility, as a start, may be a 24-hour drop-in center (at least during the winter months), with skilled staffing, where people could be warm and access medical help.

5. Provide the resources necessary to help people maintain a stable housing situation and to prevent homelessness.

1. Federal, state and local government should implement the recommendations of the Mayor's Affordable Housing Task Force and the detailed Action Plan endorsed by City Council in 2002, including no cause eviction controls.
2. Congress should pass the federal Bringing Home America Act, as supported by the November 17, 2003 Resolution of the Burlington City Council.
3. Congress should increase funding for McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance program to adequately fund the resources necessary to help people move from shelter to housing.
4. Congress should authorize and fund a new program within the Department of Health and Human Services to fund ongoing services in supportive housing for people who experience long-term homelessness.
5. The State should at a minimum maintain current funding levels for Homeless Shelters and Services funded through the State Office of Economic Opportunity, as well as the "Back Rent" Program, Temporary Housing Assistance and Assistive Community Care Services funded through PATH, and should increase funding levels wherever possible.
6. The Vermont Agency of Human Services should redirect resources to support housing retention/eviction prevention programs that are more cost-effective than emergency housing, and should adopt outcome measures that include housing stability for all mainstream programs.
7. The State should support the creation of a daytime drop-in program that would provide support, treatment, education, housing retention services and life skills training for residents with substance abuse and/or mental health issues.
8. The Continuum of Care should continue to operate - and the City should continue to fund - the Rental Opportunity Center, recruiting landlords to provide housing opportunities and providing housing retention services.
9. The Continuum should develop new strategies for effective housing retention services and seek funding for those services.

6. Stably rehouse victims of domestic violence as soon as possible.

1. Congress should increase federal Violence Against Women Act funding and shift funding priorities so that the same amount of money flows into housing and services as into criminal justice.
2. The Burlington Housing Authority and the Vermont State Housing Authority should continue to give a priority to victims of domestic abuse.
3. All other housing authorities in the state should give a priority to victims of domestic abuse.

7. Reduce discriminatory/cultural barriers to obtaining and keeping housing and services.

1. The City and its partners should continue and increase efforts on Fair Housing, including increased enforcement and increased education.
2. The Continuum should make sure that staff at all agencies participate in cultural competencies and diversity training.

8. Help people move into and keep employment, either at a livable wage or with sufficient additional supports to yield a livable wage equivalent.

1. Congress should pass the federal Bringing Home America Act, as supported by the November 17, 2003 Resolution of the Burlington City Council - including the provisions for changes to the SSI program and increased access to WIA services for the homeless.
2. Federal and state government should adjust outcome measurements that serve as a disincentive to enrolling the hardest to serve - including many of the homeless - in job training programs.
   1. Outcome measurements must be benchmarked relative to the skill level of the trainee.
   2. Trainees with lower skills and higher barriers to employment should be given more opportunities to be successful.
3. Federal and state government should increase funding for job training so that the Department of Employment & Training and others are not forced to make a choice between funding training for a homeless individual with a poor job history and a laid off IBM worker.
4. The State, working with the business and nonprofit communities, should improve the job training system to make it more easily accessible and navigable.
5. The State, working with the business and nonprofit communities, should improve and expand the system for providing basic skills as well as the skills necessary for livable wage jobs - perhaps including new and improved apprenticeships for white collar jobs.
6. The State should increase funding for the Vermont Student Assistance Corporation.
7. The federal and state governments should promote global trade but work to ensure a level playing field in terms of a basic level of worker rights and safety and environmental safeguards and standards, to ensure that jobs are not lost overseas/out of state because an employer moves to a location where it can pollute and abuse its workers.
8. The State should explore tax shifting options - such as reducing sales and, for lower income workers, personal income and payroll taxes, giving businesses a state tax credit for payroll taxes, and increasing or creating taxes on motor fuels, fossil fuels, pesticides and fertilizers, solid waste, beverage containers - that would encourage work, discourage pollution, sprawl, garbage, depletion of natural resources, and other welfare-reducing activities, and make the tax system more fair for lower-income workers.
9. The City should continue to support livable wage efforts, including continued enforcement of its livable wage ordinance and continued promotion of the Livable Jobs Toolkit (published by Vermont Businesses for a Social Responsibility Research & Education Foundation in collaboration with the Peace & Justice Center) in its economic development activities.

9. Develop a comprehensive housing and supportive services approach to ease the re-entry process of ex-offenders and to improve the likelihood for successful outcomes.

1. The City and the Department of Corrections should implement an Offender Re-entry Program, currently in the planning stages, in Burlington.
2. The Department of Corrections should provide funding for both bricks and mortar and supportive services to serve re-entering offenders.
3. The Department of Corrections should specifically develop strategies for housing sex offenders upon release.
1.  SRO housing may be appropriate for this population.

10. Develop new strategies to improve the likelihood for successful transitions to independence for youth in foster care.

1. The State should explore re-extending foster care through age 21.
2. The State should improve transition planning to ensure that all youth exiting foster care have access to stable housing and employment options.

11. Make sure that treatment for drug and alcohol abuse and for mental illness is readily and promptly available to those willing to accept it.

1. Federal and state government should increase funding for mainstream mental health and substance abuse treatment services, including increased case management staff for residents needing to address substance abuse issues.
2. Federal and state government should eliminate definitional barriers that restrict treatment options.
3. The State should add 100 more methadone treatment slots throughout the state, easily accessible to residents who need treatment.
4. The State should develop a long-term residential treatment facility in Vermont.
5. The City should support implementation of the recommendations growing out of the current Study Circle community discussions on substance abuse.
6. The City and the Continuum should support the recommendations growing out of the current Agency of Human Services reorganization discussions for better integration of physical / mental health and substance abuse treatment services.
7. The City should continue to support the implementation of a Mental Health Court, through which people arrested for nonviolent offenses who are suffering from mental illness can have the option of being placed in treatment rather than being incarcerated.

12. Improve access to delivery of services.

1. The State should develop better transportation services so that people living outside Burlington could access the array of centrally-located services in the City without having to relocate to the City.
2. Alternatively, there should be services available locally in other areas of the county.
3. The State should improve transportation services for the wheel-chair bound and others with mobility impairments - services which are currently available but which often require significant advance planning to tap into.

13. Improve the local delivery of services.

1. The Continuum and its partner agencies should provide better cross-training of staff (who too often work in separated fields of expertise) to increase awareness of common co-occurring issues (domestic violence, substance abuse, mental health issues) and to better integrate services.
1. That includes training people who work with children about domestic violence, to screen and respond, and to have services available. An example is a current project between Women Helping Battered Women staff and the school-based social workers at some local schools to co-facilitate school-based playgroups. Another possibility is to integrate training on domestic violence into school curriculum. 
2. The Continuum should work with Child Care Resource to identify and advocate for a stable funding source for services for homeless children and for set-aside slots in local early education programs.
3. The City and the Continuum should continue to participate in the Agency of Human Services reorganization efforts for better integration of mainstream services.
4. The Continuum should continue to seek input from the homeless to improve the design and range of services available.

14. Develop educational strategies to reduce homelessness.

1. State and nonprofit agencies should include teaching about healthy relationships in interventions with child victims or child witnesses of abuse.
2. The public school curriculum should include financial education/budgeting training.
3. The sustainability curriculum should incorporate education about homelessness.

15. Develop better ways of measuring who, and how many, are homeless and what their individual needs are.

1. The Continuum should develop better ways of collecting data at the local level - while not allowing numbers to distract from the individual face of homelessness and while respecting and protecting the confidentiality of clients.

"Numbers do not tell the stories of families who hold on to their homes by their fingertips, keeping the rent paid only by relying on food pantries and soup kitchens to eat at the end of the month and counting on informal and haphazard arrangements for child care so parents can work. Numbers do not describe what it means for a child to bounce from school to school because his or her family must keep searching for cheaper places to live, never catching up on lessons or forming lasting friendships. . . ."

National Low Income Housing Coalition, Out of Reach 2003.

Acknowledgments

This Plan draws heavily on the work of the National Alliance to End Homelessness and its Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness.

Many people and organizations participated in the process of preparing this Plan. The following people attended a meeting hosted by the Mayor on October 1, 2003, to begin the discussion: 

Martha Maksym, United Way
Bob Purvee, Burlington Emergency Shelter
Debbie Mann, Burlington Emergency Shelter
Becky Cassidy, Church Street Marketplace
Gary Kowalski, First Unitarian Universalist Society
Susan Ainsworth-Daniels, Lake Champlain Housing Ventures
Tammy Bardah, Howard Human Services (Community Outreach)
Heidi St. Peter, Joseph's House (St. Joseph's Church)
Tom Longstreth, ReCycle North
Al Martner, Vt. Ecumenical Council
Fred Roane, U.S. Dept. of HUD
Rita Markley, Committee on Temporary Shelter
Tony Morgan, Vt. Office of Economic Opportunity
Sr. Lucille Bonvouloir, Sisters of Mercy
Brian Pine, Assistant Director of Housing, Community & Economic Development Office
Peggy Treanor, Chittenden Community Action/CVOEO
Jackie Smith, Senator Leahy's Office
Mary McNamara, Vt. Catholic Charities
Michael Coughlin, Salvation Army
John Goss, YouthBuild Burlington
Jeremy Brown, YouthBuild Burlington
John O'Brien, Interagency Council on Homelessness
Jim Rader, Congressman Sanders' Office
Lindora Cabral, RSM, Mercy Connections, Inc.
David K. Promnitz, Community Health Center
Nicole Valcour, Safe Harbor (Community Health Center)
Larry Martineau, Vt. Dept. of SRS
Sherry Edelstein, Vt. Dept. of SRS
John Tucker, Peace & Justice Center, Racial Justice & Equity Project
Steve Norman, Vt. Legal Aid
Robert Rummel, Veterans Administration
Margaret Bozik, Assistant Director for Management, Planning & Communications, CEDO

John Tucker gave generously of his time and expertise drawn from his experience with the New York City homeless system. David Promnitz, Nicole Valcour and John Goss volunteered to provide additional input from their perspective as direct service providers. Fred Roane, Robert Rummel and Martha Maksym also volunteered to provide further input and assistance.

Discussions continued throughout November and December with the Chittenden County Continuum of Care (whose members include the Committee on Temporary Shelter, Vermont Legal Aid, the Salvation Army, the Vermont Department of PATH, ReCycle North, the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity, the Burlington Housing Authority, the Howard Center for Human Services, Spectrum Family and Youth Services, Vermont CARES, Women Helping Battered Women, the Community Health Center, the Lund Family Center and the City of Burlington) and with the "Housing Gang" (whose members include the Burlington Community Land Trust, the Lake Champlain Housing Development Corporation, Cathedral Square Corporation, Housing Vermont, the Burlington Housing Authority, the Committee on Temporary Shelter, and Vermont Tenants, Inc.).  A draft Plan was published online for public comment in December 2003.  The Plan was finalized in February 2004.

Mayor Peter Clavelle wishes to acknowledge the contributions of all who have participated.

Appendix

Page last updated March 26, 2004