Annual count finds slight decline in homelessness in Vermont

Read the full article at vermontpublic.org. Below is an excerpt.

For the second year running, an annual tally found a modest decrease in the number of people experiencing homelessness in Vermont.

“On its face, this is an encouraging finding. We certainly want to see fewer people experiencing homelessness in Vermont, and any movement in that direction is worth acknowledging,” said Kim Anetsberger, director of the Lamoille Community House and co-chair of the Balance of State Continuum of Care, at a press conference revealing the January count’s results on Tuesday.

But the tally, designed to be a yearly snapshot rather than a comprehensive census of everyone experiencing homelessness throughout a given year, gives limited insight, she added.

“We think it’s important to exercise caution before interpreting this decrease as evidence that Vermont is making meaningful progress towards ending homelessness,” Anetsberger said.

The yearly point-in-time count is a federally mandated effort to tally each person experiencing homelessness nationwide on a single night each winter. The Vermont count registered 3,286 people in January of 2026, a nearly 3% decline from the 2025 tally, according to a report released Tuesday.

The drop mirrors a national trend: The 2026 count found a more than 6% decrease in homelessness across the country, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said last week.

In the years following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Vermont saw a rapid rise in homelessness. That happened as the state experienced skyrocketing housing prices and razor-thin rental vacancies. But that white-hot housing market has now cooled off somewhat, and the state has added more subsidized housing thanks to COVID-era federal aid.

Travis Poulin, the community action network director for the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity and co-chair of the Chittenden County Homeless Alliance, said service providers have made some progress in moving unhoused people into homes.

“Our efforts at trying to help people secure stable housing are working — albeit, more slowly than we would like,” Poulin said.

Even as the Vermont count found fewer people experiencing homelessness overall in January, it registered an uptick in the number of people living without shelter — meaning they were sleeping in a vehicle or outdoors.

The count tallied 284 people experiencing unsheltered homelessness last January, a 5% jump from the year prior, with Chittenden County seeing the largest increase.