Homeless People in Burlington Prepare for Cold Winter

Read the full article at sevendaysvt.com. 

On one of the warmest days last week, Tracy Martel was still freezing cold.

Sitting in the grass at Burlington’s City Hall Park, Martel was working up the energy to go find her next meal. She said she’s been homeless in Burlington for seven months, after a bad breakup left her without a place to live.

As winter nears, Martel is becoming increasingly desperate. Police are clearing City Hall Park at night, so Martel has holed up in a parking garage on South Winooski Avenue. But she was recently kicked out of there, too.

“There’s nowhere to sleep, and I’m exhausted,” she said through tears. “It’s so cold. I haven’t been able to get warm. It takes a toll.”

Martel has reason to be worried. Apart from the everyday dangers of living outside, wintertime presents potentially life-threatening risks of frostbite and hypothermia. With temperatures already dipping below freezing, and snow already on the ground, the 200-plus people who sleep rough in the Burlington area are having to make plans to survive the cold.

Few will be able to head indoors. Homeless shelters are largely full, and most of the state-funded motel rooms in Chittenden County are already taken. In Burlington, for the first time in 11 years, there will be no drop-in shelter for people who aren’t sober.

Aid groups are providing sleeping bags and other camping gear, recognizing that for some, there’s no alternative to tenting through the harsh Vermont winter. Some nonprofits are planning to open more shelter beds, but there won’t be enough to meet the need. Many people living rough now are likely to do so all winter.

For Martel, who has never spent a full winter outside, the thought is overwhelming.

“I’m so depressed just thinking about it,” she said. “I’m scared, honestly.”

Hazards abound. A tent being warmed by a space heater or open flame can catch fire, and it can be difficult for firefighters to quickly reach some of the remote encampments. Last month, a homeless person camping at the corner of College and Pine streets suffered burns over 25 percent of their body in a tent fire. The cause of that blaze is still under investigation.

Exposure is another threat. Earlier this year, Seven Days and Vermont Public published a joint investigation into the ways homeless people in Vermont died between 2021 and 2024. Hypothermia alone didn’t cause any single death, records showed. However, as much as 95 percent of the state’s homeless population was in motel rooms during that time.

Now that the federal aid for the motel program has dried up, Gov. Phil Scott and state legislators have slowly scaled it back even as the homelessness crisis has worsened. To get a room, people must meet strict eligibility requirements, such as being pregnant or having a physical disability. Families with children 19 or younger are eligible, as are people fleeing domestic violence.

Many people who once stayed in a hotel now have to fend for themselves.

“Every single year, every winter, we’re turning people away,” said Miranda Gray, the deputy commissioner of the Economic Services Division of the Agency of Human Services. “There isn’t enough rooms to meet the need.”

As a result, more people are sleeping rough. The latest Point-in-Time Count, a federally mandated census held on one night in January, reported 270 people were living unsheltered in Chittenden County. Officials have said the actual number was likely much higher, and the census preceded the summertime motel exodus.

Service providers are measuring the shift in other ways. Two years ago, shelter operator COTS counted 515 people using its Daystation in the Old North End, which provides hot meals, showers and other services. The majority of them had a place to sleep at night. This past year, most of the nearly 1,900 people who visited the Daystation were unsheltered, according to Rebekah Mott, COTS’ director of development and communications.

With no place to go, people are sleeping under awnings and pitching tents in greenbelts. But the city has become less tolerant. This summer, the Burlington City Council ordered up more police in City Hall Park to clear out overnight campers.

The crackdown has pushed more people to places such as the waterfront, in the wooded area alongside the bike path. Marc Voeller, 31, arrived there two months ago after a hiker he met on the Appalachian Trail in Virginia suggested Burlington was a good place to hunker down. With tarps and some rope, he built a lean-to just north of the dog park, where he exercises Freyja, his tawny pit bull mix, a few times a day.

Inside the structure is Voeller’s bed, fashioned from a foam pad for a mattress and a box spring that someone tossed in a nearby dumpster. Two sleeping bags, rated for 5 degrees, shield him and Freyja from the wind that can roar off the lake. There’s little room for anything else, not even for Voeller to stand up.

“I’m off the ground. I’m warm,” he said. “I got my blankets, got my pillow. I can’t really complain too much.”

A Minnesota native, Voeller knows cold weather, but it’s been a while since he’s truly roughed it, having spent recent years in Florida. When temperatures dropped to 37 degrees there one night last winter, Voeller’s parents let him and Freyja come home.

Voeller has no friends or family in Burlington, where winter gets much colder. He was accepted to stay in a room at the Waystation, COTS’ newly expanded shelter on Pearl Street, but he couldn’t bring his dog, and a humane society program that provides temporary foster care was at capacity. He’s now hoping a bed opens at Champlain Place, a 42-bed shelter operated by the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity on Shelburne Road. Failing that, he said, he’ll apply to work at a local ski area, where he might get provided housing.

“I’m hoping,” he said, then paused. “It’s hard to keep your hope up.”

Local nonprofits are trying to bring more shelter beds online. CVOEO plans to add 26 more beds at Champlain Place this winter, and the first four were slated to open this week. People will be assigned a bed that they can keep until a year-round one becomes available, said Sarah Russell, CVOEO’s emergency services director.

The nonprofit also plans to close a family shelter in Williston and reopen it in Burlington in late January, with room for as many as 10 families, up from seven now. By February 1, the former ACT 1 detox facility on Pearl Street will become a 12-bed shelter for people in recovery, one of the first of its kind in the state.

On the coldest nights, CVOEO will operate a pop-up shelter at the Robert Miller Community & Recreation Center in Burlington’s New North End, as it did last winter with the city. Over nine especially frigid nights, the shelter served 214 people regardless of their sobriety. Russell, who previously worked as the city’s special assistant to end homelessness, shuttled people to the shelter on what came to be nicknamed the “Magic School Bus.”

This year’s effort is part of a new $1.1 million state program that will open six “extreme cold weather shelters” when temps hit minus 10 degrees, including wind chill. Last winter, the state used minus 20 as the threshold.

When that shelter isn’t available, Burlington won’t have a drop-in low-barrier shelter for the first time since 2014. The city itself ran the warming shelter two years ago at the former Veterans of Foreign Wars building downtown, and COTS did so this past year at the Pearl Street building that’s now the Waystation.

Jen Monroe Zakaras, deputy chief of staff for Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak, said the city isn’t equipped to run a shelter. But, she added, the mayor continues to advocate for more shelter beds, of all kinds, across the state.

The dearth of drop-in beds worries André Clark, who runs the aid group Street CATs, which helps clothe and feed homeless people. Clark, who previously worked at four low-barrier shelters in Burlington, said he knows of several people who ended up dying of various causes when they lived outside in the winter.

Last year, the People’s Kitchen, which prepares free community meals, gave away 43 ice shanties, which are sturdier and retain heat better than tents. Some will be used again this coming winter, and the group has 10 more to distribute, organizer FaRied Munarsyah said.

Meantime, Clark said the winter gear being collected by Street CATs, which is distributed at City Hall Park, is in high demand.

“The second a blanket or a sleeping bag or a pair of socks is put down, they are gone pretty immediately,” he said.

Nonprofits are also stocking up on supplies. COTS received 100 pairs of new winter boots in a recent drive, along with nearly $7,500 to buy more. CVOEO got a massive donation last week from a woman who used her employee discount at Costco to purchase a carload of coats, shoes and other essentials. She contributed the items to honor Sean Hayes, a homeless man who was walking with his bike on Shelburne Road when a police officer hit and killed him last November.

The people who live outside are preparing for a long winter. Friends Andrew and Lisa, who were at City Hall Park last week and didn’t provide their last names, said they’ve tried various ways to survive the cold. Andrew recounted tenting at the waterfront one year until a man stole his stuff and set fire to what he left behind. Lisa recalled burning a metal can of hand sanitizer as a source of heat in winters past. Using a generator is an option, Andrew added, but that requires buying fuel.

This year, they’ll set up a tent. Andrew said he found a secluded spot near the Chittenden Clinic in South Burlington, where Lisa receives methadone treatment. He has a cushioned sleeping mat, which he’ll place atop wooden pallets, and plans to insulate the tent’s exterior with a layer of snow. Collecting blankets helps, too.

The tent will stay warm, Lisa said, “if you know what you’re doing.”

Some time later, Martel, the other park denizen, approached. She asked Lisa for something to drink, but Lisa wanted to make a trade. Martel, who still hadn’t eaten lunch, had nothing to offer. Her only belongings were the clothes she was already wearing: a tank top, boots that were too big and someone else’s dirty jacket.