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Study: Vermont nightly homeless figure estimated at nearly 1,000
by Sam Hemingway
Free Press Staff Writer

A new national study released today put Vermont's daily homeless population at 927 in January 2005, a figure the Douglas administration says it is aggressively working to reduce.

The study, by the National Alliance to End Homelessness, determined that 744,313 people nationwide were homeless at the same time in early 2005, and that 44 percent of them were living in unsheltered situations. In Vermont, 24 percent were not living in shelters, the study found.

"That number of 927 for Vermont sounds about right," said Rita Markley, executive director of the Committee on Temporary Shelter — COTS — in Burlington, the largest shelter operator in the state. "It's a small number, but when you think about it, it's more than the entire population of St. George or North Hero."

Steve Gold, deputy secretary at the state Agency of Human Services, said he hadn't seen the report but expects it will help in the state's effort to confront homelessness more aggressively.

"What we're working on is how to improve services by seeing where we can intervene before a family becomes agency clients, so people don't end up homeless in the first place," Gold said.

To that end, Gold said the state will conduct its own first homeless census this month. The Governor's Inter-agency Council on Homelessness also has been reconstituted and will meet Feb. 12.

" It had gotten to the point that it was at a standstill," Cathy Voyer, chairwoman of the reformed council, said of its predecessor. "The governor decided it had not been utilized as well as it could have been."

The issues that cause people to become homeless have grown more complex in recent years, and the number of people affected continues to grow, Markley said.

"We're seeing more kids who have aged out of foster care, people who are 18 and 19," she said. "But the biggest increase is in families with children and in individuals with disabilities not severe enough to warrant help from Howard Center for Human Services."

Travis Poulin, a staff worker for Community Action in Franklin County, said more young homeless people are turning up in St. Albans, and many of those who are homeless have jobs but don't make enough money to be able to pay their rent.

"It's getting more and more difficult to be poor in Vermont," he said. "It's not cheap being poor in Vermont, as strange as that may sound."

According to the national study, Vermont proportionally has fewer homeless people than most of the other 49 states. The study found that 0.15 percent of the state's population was homeless in January 2005, good for 21st place on the state-by-state list. The national average percentage of homeless people per state was 0.3 percent.