One of the rooms at a temporary shelter for unhoused families at the former Vermont State Police barracks in Williston seen on Friday, November 1. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDiggerThis story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.Two temporary state-run shelters for families experiencing homelessness will cost an estimated $3 million for five months of operation, Department for Children and Families Commissioner Chris Winters said in a Monday interview. That price tag is driven, in part, by the last-minute nature of the shelter operations at the former state police barracks in Williston and the former National Guard armory in Waterbury — and the fact that the state could not secure a local shelter provider to run them. When providing the cost estimate, Winters explained that “we still truly don’t know the cost” because “things have moved so quickly.” In October officials received approval from Gov. Phil Scott’s office to move forward with the shelter plans without a local provider, Winters said, with an objective to open the facilities by Nov. 1. “It was a big decision to say, ‘We’re going to do this with state staff and support from a contractor,’” Winters said. “So the moving parts from there were … it was frantic.” The state’s closely-watched decision to open the shelters came after a mass wave of evictions from Vermont’s motel voucher program. The evictions, which began in mid-September, have impacted over 1,000 people and hundreds of kids and left some families sleeping outside in tents, prompting an outcry from service providers, municipal leaders and lawmakers. Legislators passed the new restrictions on the motel program and Scott signed them into law earlier this year, in an effort to rein in the program’s cost. Lawmakers budgeted about $44 million for the motel program this fiscal year. Before new restrictions on the program went into effect earlier this fall, around 1,400 households had motel vouchers. With an $80 rate cap on rooms in place, the program cost roughly $112,000 per night. The Waterbury armory is serving as a temporary shelter for unhoused families. Seen on Friday, November 1. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDiggerOn a per-household, per-night basis, the new state shelters are significantly more costly than the motel program, but are also continually staffed and offer more support services on-site.So far, seven families have utilized the two shelters, which collectively have space for seventeen families, Joshua Marshall, communications and operations manager for DCF, wrote in a Tuesday email. “We have 6 families in Williston and expect 1 more today to put it to full capacity. We have had 1 family so far in Waterbury but expect 4 families to arrive today,” Marshall said, noting that these numbers continue to shift as families come and go. ‘You’re going to have to pay a premium’A portion of the roughly $3 million has gone toward retrofitting the barracks and armory buildings into suitable shelter spaces, along with outfitting them with Wi-Fi and bringing in food, Winters said.But the bulk of that estimated cost is a $2.6 million contract with IEM International, Inc., a North Carolina-based emergency management company, which the state has enlisted to support state employees in operating the two shelters through the winter, until April 1. While the state has put out requests for proposals for shelter operators during previous rounds of motel program changes, this contract came out of “a more recent simplified bidding process,” Marshall said. The lion’s share of the contract, obtained via a public records request by VTDigger/Vermont Public late last week, is dedicated to staffing costs.On the low end, a “shelter team member” will be paid $107.50 per hour, before overtime, according to a payment chart included in the contract. On the high end, a “program manager” will be paid $325.00 an hour. Those rates are considerably higher than what local service providers pay shelter staff. Good Samaritan Haven, which operates a network of shelters in Washington County, pays shelter staff around $20-26 an hour, according to Executive Director Julie Bond. The Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity, which runs several shelters and programs for unhoused people in northwest Vermont, pays shelter workers around $24-$33 an hour, said Paul Dragon, the executive director.“It’s not easy to bring in … the staff and the services needed to run a shelter, and it’s going to be expensive,” Winters said, when asked about the contractor rates. “That’s why, from the very beginning, we wanted to have a local service provider if we could, and we tried all summer long to make that happen.”But with no local option panning out, Winters said rates of this scale were needed to attract workers for a project like this. “On short notice and for a temporary timeframe … you’re going to have to pay a premium for that,” he said.Several local service providers who state officials had asked to run the family shelters said they did not have the ability to do so on the fast timeline the state needed.“We were not able to adjust that quickly to operate the one in Williston, so we really appreciated the state, you know, stepping in and doing that,” said Dragon, from CVOEO. State officials contacted CVOEO about operating the Williston shelter after several unhoused families began camping at a municipal campground in Burlington, he said. Good Samaritan Haven had been asked by state officials to operate a possible additional family shelter in Montpelier, Bond said. State officials had also made clear to Good Sam that they were still looking for a provider to operate the Waterbury shelter.Both Dragon and Bond said their organizations would be interested in operating additional family shelters in the longer term. “In the short term, it’s just … capacity-wise, we just … we don’t have the staffing to ramp up that quickly,” Bond said.Employment and housing help includedAsked about the contractor staffing rates, Rep. Theresa Wood, D-Waterbury called them “an exorbitant amount of money.”Wood chairs the House Human Services Committee and is a key player in debates over homelessness policy. She sees the shelter undertaking as an improvement from the last time the state assembled temporary shelters, following a previous wave of motel program evictions in March. This time, the state is offering supportive services onsite, like employment help and housing navigation, she noted.“It’s the big difference between providing a financial benefit in a motel, where actually none of those things exist or are required, and providing supports in a shelter, where you have direct contact with the individual,” she said. That support system “makes the shelter more expensive, but ultimately, hopefully ends in a better outcome,” she said. State employees will be onsite at the two shelters regularly to help connect shelter guests to benefits, Winters said. Contracted staff with IEM, meanwhile, will help with the day-to-day operations to keep the shelters running.Winters emphasized that the state was in charge. Waterbury officials have contended that the state would need a new zoning permit to operate a shelter at the state-owned armory building unless it’s staffed by state employees. The state has appealed the town’s decision, and the case is now pending in the Environmental Division of the Vermont Superior Court. The funding for the shelters will come out of DCF’s budget, Winters said. The department may draw from a $10 million appropriation meant to bolster shelter beds this winter, particularly if a shelter project in Rutland falls through. If needed, the department may also seek a mid-year budget adjustment “to fill some of the gaps” once the legislative session kicks off in January, he said. Both CVOEO and Good Sam have been awarded a portion of that $10 million pot for shelter expansions this winter. Over the last few months, the organizations have been triaging an uptick in highly vulnerable people living unsheltered. In Washington County, a count late last month tallied 293 people living outside — in encampments or in cars, for example, Bond said. That number includes 36 children, she said, and is likely a record. Meanwhile, CVOEO has recently estimated that 250 adults are living without shelter in Chittenden County, along with five to 10 families, though the number has fluctuated, Dragon said.In September, when the motel evictions began, both Dragon and Bond were among the dozens of service providers calling on the Scott administration to find a way to keep people sheltered in motels. When the administration declined to do so, they started paying for motel rooms through other means. Both groups have undertaken ad-hoc measures to get people who have exhausted their motel vouchers back into motel rooms, at least temporarily. CVOEO received a $47,000 donation from the UVM Health Network to help shelter seven families who had lost their vouchers at Harbor Place, a motel owned and operated by Champlain Housing Trust in Shelburne. With financial support from local faith communities, Good Sam has been able to help pay for motel rooms for 45 people, Bond said.Read the story on VTDigger here: State officials peg shelter cost at $3M, with large share for contract staff .