From the desk of Paul Dragon: Homelessness Crisis in Vermont

These reflections were shared at a press conference held on July 30, 2025 concerning the 2025 Point in Time Count Report and the most recent Coordinated Entry data. CVOEO's Executive Director, Paul Dragon, was among those who spoke. 

Let’s talk about the people behind the number, as the numbers in this report speak for themselves. Let’s talk about our neighbors – those precious lives behind the numbers.

The family with children sleeping in their car driving around trying to find a safe place to park. The older woman in a wheelchair sleeping outside hoping to survive another day, and the teenager couch-hopping because they are alone and there’s nowhere else to go.

What are we doing? There are 3,458 Vermonters experiencing homelessness on one frigid night in January. That’s not just a number, it’s a wake-up call.

Vermont is a place of community, of care for each other. Yet somehow, we’ve reached a point where hundreds of our neighbors are growing up or living without a home.

Older Vermonters, children, veterans, people of color, and people with disabilities are all affected and suffering. This is both tragic and unjust.

Despite the current narrative in this country - homelessness isn’t a personal failure, even as we acknowledge the important role of personal responsibility. Homelessness is the consequence of systems that aren’t meeting people’s basic needs.

We must have systems in place like housing, services, and treatment to help people succeed. And that’s something we can change.

- We need a call to courage, compassion and action and our response needs to be as bold and compassionate as the crisis is urgent and deadly.
- We should expand permanent supportive housing and remove barriers to affordable housing development and hold fast to the belief that everyone deserves a place to feel safe, to be seen and to belong.
- Let’s extend and expand the HOME Program – a Rapid Rehousing Voucher Program for families with children experiencing homelessness.
- Let’s make sure that people who are unsheltered, many of them, older Vermonters and many with serious health conditions, have a place to go for food, services and housing support.
- Let’s simplify the rules and strengthen the outreach and support for the emergency hotel program using it as an opportunity to engage people and move them forward into housing
- Let’s strengthen community partnerships so that all organizations in the nonprofit, faith and for-profit sphere are part of the solution to this public health crisis.

Let’s ensure, as a state, that no one is invisible, and everyone has a place in our community. We can, we must, and if we work together, we will.

- Paul Dragon, Executive Director, CVOEO