‘Disaster response’: The extraordinary efforts to prevent homeless Vermonters from freezing to death (VTDigger)

This recent coverage from VTDigger and Vermont Public places CVOEO’s Emergency Cold Weather Shelter within Vermont’s statewide emergency response to rising homelessness, increased unsheltered counts, and reduced emergency motel capacity. Read it for a glimpse into the effort CVOEO staff invest to connect people with this emergency service.

In the words of CVOEO's own Sarah Russel, Director of Emergency Services at CVOEO, “We can’t continue to rely on a disaster response over a sustained period of time – it’s just not sustainable,” Russell said. “If we had enough shelter capacity, we would never need to open this.” You can learn more about CVOEO's Emergency Cold Weather Shelter at cvoeo.org/ecws

Read the full article at VTDigger.org

‘Disaster response’: The extraordinary efforts to prevent homeless Vermonters from freezing to death

The state has begun funding pop-up shelters in four additional locations this year, a formidable effort that materializes and evaporates based on the weather.

BURLINGTON – Sarah Russell steered the shuttle bus into the grocery store parking lot where, a few minutes before, a stranger had called to alert her that a man lay huddled against the building in a nest of sleeping bags.

Temperatures were quickly sliding and a harsh wind howled. The night of Friday, Jan. 23 was shaping up to be among the coldest yet of the winter. Russell, emergency services director for the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity, was spending the evening hours driving around Burlington and asking unhoused people if they had a place to sleep inside. If they didn’t, she offered them a seat aboard the shuttle and a bed at the city’s extreme cold weather shelter, which Russell and a small army of service providers working overtime hours open up when feels-like temperatures drop to -10 degrees.

About 60 people had already arrived at the shelter, and Russell expected the numbers to keep climbing. People had come from as far away as Middlebury and St. Johnsbury for a cot inside the community center gym, she said.

As high rates of homelessness in Vermont have persisted since the pandemic years – and state leaders have scaled back the state’s primary mode of cold-weather aid, the motel voucher program – extreme cold shelters like this one have become an increasingly crucial piece of Vermont’s response.