Vermont adds shelter beds, but a count of nearly 3,300 people still outstrips the space
The historic Boston and Maine 494 locomotive at the White River Junction station, where the Upper Valley Haven hopes to open 20 shelter beds by the end of November. Photo: Artaxerxes, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Vermont has added almost a quarter more community shelter space than it had a year ago, but a January count of nearly 3,300 people experiencing homelessness — a figure officials already treat as an undercount — means the state will again lean on cold-weather overflow beds this winter.
Vermont Public reported Nov. 13, citing monthly Department for Children and Families counts, that as of late October the state had room for 721 households in community shelters, up from 583 in the same month of 2025. More beds are expected in the coming weeks. For the first time in recent memory, the station said, Vermont now has more beds in traditional shelters than motel rooms paid for by state vouchers.
New or expanded year-round capacity includes a 40-bed Groundworks Collaborative shelter in Brattleboro, which replaces a facility the organization closed in 2023 after its shelter coordinator was killed there; an expansion at Charter House in Middlebury; and 20 beds the Upper Valley Haven hopes to open by the end of November at a new shelter and resource center in White River Junction, executive director Will Towne told the station. In Montpelier, Capstone Community Action plans an overnight low-barrier shelter at the Unitarian Church beginning Nov. 16. In Newport, the Joshua House Warming Shelter opened at the beginning of November and will run through mid-April with 13 beds for Orleans and Essex counties.
“We just don’t have enough beds for folks to sleep in inside,” Tom Morgan, project operations director for the state’s GetWarmNowVT emergency initiative, told Vermont Public. “Really key to all of this is going to be to try to keep people alive through the winter.”
The state has raised the temperature trigger for extreme cold-weather shelters from zero degrees to 10 degrees this winter and launched GetWarmNowVT.org to show when those sites are open. Morgan said contractors were finalizing operations in Bennington, Burlington, Middlebury, Montpelier, Springfield and St. Johnsbury. Rutland and Brattleboro had not yet submitted applications, the station reported. Burlington will keep a lower threshold of minus 10 degrees windchill, matching the city’s emergency management plan, said Sarah Russell, emergency services director at the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity. CVOEO had hoped to open a year-round 100-bed shelter before winter but has tabled that plan after failing to find a site in time, including one dropped after South Burlington officials pushed back.
Motel voucher rules will loosen from Dec. 1 through March 31, when state law requires the Department for Children and Families to be able to use 1,000 rooms a night, up from 700 in warmer months. Vermont Public noted this is the first winter the state will impose a room cap at all. Nights spent in motels during that window will not count toward the 70-night annual maximum.
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