Terri Ann Garrett and her granddaughter Sariyah in the bedroom they share at the home at which they are staying in Lowell on Friday, Nov. 22, 2024. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDiggerThis story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.Earlier this year, it seemed like Corey Moquin was beginning to get his feet under him. In March, Moquin, 39, had entered Vermont’s motel voucher program after a stint at a hospital receiving treatment for his mental health. By mid-September, he had locked down a job at a fast food restaurant near his room at the South Burlington Travelodge, and had submitted an application for Social Security disability benefits. But on Sept. 19, Moquin’s motel voucher expired. He has spent the last two months camping, often alone. He decided to leave the Burlington area — he didn’t want to camp in close proximity to strangers, he said Thursday — so he made his way north, pitching tents around St. Albans and Milton, where he grew up, and is now camped out in the woods in Westford. With sparse bus service, he had to give up his job. His long list of health issues –— including Graves’ disease and asthma — has worsened, and his mental health has suffered, he said. “I do try to stay positive, and think of positive things. It just seems like nothing is working out,” Moquin said. “It just seems like all this stuff that they help you out with, the state programs and everything — it just seems like it’s a set up for failure.”Moquin is one of more than 1,500 people — including 378 children — who have exhausted their stays through the motel voucher program this fall, according to Nellie Marvel, the legislative and communications director for the Department for Children and Families.The mass wave of evictions began in mid-September, after a series of new limits intended to cut down the program’s cost went into effect, including an 80-day cap on motel stays during the warmer months of the year. The changes were passed by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Phil Scott as part of this year’s budget.There is no comprehensive accounting of where people who lost their motel rooms have ended up. While state triage workers and local service providers have kept tabs on some individuals, state officials have repeatedly emphasized that people leaving the program do not need to keep the state informed about where they plan to go next. “We don’t have the information as to where they went when they left the program,” Gov. Phil Scott said at an October press conference, when asked specifically about families with kids. Some families had been at a Burlington campground, he noted, but the whereabouts of others who’d left the program were unknown. “So they may be with family members. We don’t believe they are out on the street, but we’ll find out.”The outcomes of people who ran out of time at the motels range considerably. Multiple people told VTDigger/Vermont Public that they have returned to live with ex-partners, or are staying with relatives in parts of the state otherwise unfamiliar to their families and far from their support systems. Some are on track to get into housing, and at least one has entered rehab for substance abuse. Several have, at least for some stretch of time, slept in their cars or in a tent. Service providers across Vermont have noted that some who left the motels have doubled up with friends or family, in “situations they may not wish to be in,” as Paul Dragon, from the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity, put it. Some are spending nearly all their income to stay sheltered in a motel room.Mary Littleton outside her room at the Travelodge motel on Shelburne Road in South Burlington on Sept. 15, 2024. Littleton, who has multiple sclerosis which impedes her movement, lost her room after new caps took effect in the state’s motel housing program. File photo by Glenn Russell/VTDiggerAnd many people have ended up outdoors. In Brattleboro, outreach workers with the Groundworks Collaborative have encountered at least 15 to 20 households living unsheltered who left the motels this fall, according to Libby Bennett, the nonprofit’s executive director. But many more people who left nearby motels over the last few months have not kept in touch with their caseworkers, she added. Washington County service providers recently tallied close to 300 people living outside in encampment or in cars — likely a record, said Julie Bond, the director of Good Samaritan Haven. The group End Homelessness Vermont has attempted to keep in close contact with 124 households over a wide geographic spread who hit their 80 days this fall, said Brenda Siegel, the organization’s executive director. Sixteen of those households have since found housing, and 32 have been sheltered temporarily via donations coordinated by groups like Good Sam. But the majority of those clients have been living outside, at least for some period of time, Siegel said: Around 80 households were confirmed to be outdoors the last time End Homelessness Vermont made contact with them, she said.  READ MORE Family shelters are scarce as hundreds of children and caregivers exit motels by Carly Berlin and Lola Duffort October 1, 2024, 5:00 amOctober 2, 2024, 2:21 pm Three clients who had been living outside have ended up in the hospital, Siegel said: one with an infection, another with hypothermia, and another who was sexually assaulted. Some individuals, like Mary Littleton, have stable housing on the horizon. Littleton, 56, has multiple sclerosis, making basic functions like walking difficult. She said her caseworker from CVOEO recently told her that in the new year, she’ll be able to move into a subsidized apartment at a brand-new building in Hinesburg run by Cathedral Square, an affordable housing provider for older adults and people with disabilities. “It’s gonna be a little scary, just because I don’t know anybody in Hinesburg,” Littleton said on Wednesday. “But it’s a place to live — and I will be on the first floor.” Littleton’s path to her new place has not been smooth. After she exhausted her voucher at the Travelodge in South Burlington earlier this fall, she camped for several days in Winooski, near a friend’s home. When her sister found out about her situation, she took Littleton in at her home in Colchester. After a brief stint there, Littleton went to live with her ex-husband and son in Milton.Littleton grew up in the manufactured home, and sold it to her ex several years ago. It holds bad memories, she said, including those of relatives who’ve died there.“Being back here remembering all that stuff again…my depression is getting up there a little bit more,” she said.Terri Ann Garrett and her granddaughter Sariyah at the home at which they are staying in Lowell on Friday, Nov. 22, 2024. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDiggerLittleton isn’t the only one who has returned to a former life. After their 80 days ran out at the Quality Inn in Barre, Terri Ann Garrett, 49, and her granddaughter, Sariyah, 7, remained sheltered at the motel with help from a donation via Good Sam. She decided to leave after “irreconcilable differences” arose with her husband, who was also staying there. Garrett got in touch with her ex-husband, whom she’d split from nearly 30 years ago. The two had stayed in touch because of Sariyah, and he agreed to take them in at his home in Lowell. The move prompted Sariyah to change schools. Garrett explored getting transportation help, which the federal government requires be offered to unhoused students who have to move out of district when seeking shelter, but the drive was over an hour each way, making it just too far. On her first day going to school in Lowell, Sariyah turned to her grandmother and noted this would be the fourth school she’d attended since January.“That just about took me off my feet,” Garrett said. Later, a friend from Sariyah’s old school in Barre got in touch via their former teacher, because she had missed Sariyah. The friend had been staying at the motel in Barre, too, and ended up coming up for Sariyah’s birthday party last weekend.“They’d been sleeping out of their truck,” Garrett said, about the friend’s family. Others who exhausted their 80 days have found some stability in recovery programs. During his waning days at the Travelodge, William Adams, 58, decided to check himself into an alcohol detoxification program in Rutland. “I had certainly hit the rock bottom that I needed to hit,” Adams said. After a two-week detox intensive, Adams began a three-month rehabilitation program, he said Wednesday. He has been in and out of rehab for alcoholism for years, he said, but this is the first time he went out of his own volition, instead of a spouse or relative posing an ultimatum. The Essex Junction native doesn’t know what he’ll do when the rehab program ends, but said he’d like to save up and purchase a camper van to drive back and forth to Florida.Some families have found few moments of security since they left the motels this fall. After the Ouimettes ran out their stay at the Harbor Place hotel in Shelburne in September, the family of four spent nearly a month camping at a Burlington municipal campground. With family shelters already full, city officials had set aside the campground for unhoused families leaving the voucher program. “When I was at that campground, I was literally getting the girls up for school and getting on the phone, making phone calls all day long,” to local landlords in search of an apartment, James Ouimette said.Teala Ouimette and her daughters prepared to leave the Harbor Place hotel in Shelburne as their emergency housing voucher expired on Sept. 19, 2024. File photo by Carly Berlin/VTDigger and Vermont PublicWhen the city closed the campground for the season in mid-October, the family was displaced, again. James stayed in Burlington, sleeping in the family’s car, as he attempted to get it repaired. His wife, Teala, brought their two young daughters to live in a camper owned by her mother in Jay. Soon after, the family was able to return to the hotel that had been their home for close to a year, thanks to a grant from the University of Vermont Health Network aimed at sheltering families.Their stay there ended up lasting only a couple of days. By James’ account, he and Teala were leaving the hotel one evening to go buy milk, and nearly got hit by a drunk driver. The situation got heated, and ultimately, both the Ouimettes and the other individuals involved were asked to leave the hotel for 30 days. Chris Donnelly, a spokesperson for Champlain Housing Trust — which runs Harbor Place — said Thursday that the Ouimette family “escalated the conflict unnecessarily” and that the housing trust has “a zero tolerance policy with physical violence.” After leaving Harbor Place for the second time in two months, the family attempted to get into one of two state-run family shelters that officials opened on Nov. 1. But after a shelter worker conducted a background check on James, he said, he was told he could not stay at one of the shelters, though the rest of the family would be let in. Marvel, from the Department for Children and Families, said shelter guests cannot have been charged with a crime of violence within the last five years. James was convicted for criminal threatening earlier this year, following an incident during which he verbally threatened a former neighbor, according to a Vermont Supreme Court decision released in October. The family has now gone to stay at Teala’s mother’s home in Jay. The expectation is that they can remain there until the motel program’s rules loosen for the winter, on Dec. 1, James said on Wednesday. But he’s unsure if they will be able to get back into a room closer to Burlington, particularly after the Harbor Place incident. He’s also worried the call volume leading up to the 1st will be high, as people try to get back into the motel program.The family might try to stay in the Northeast Kingdom, James said. Teala is considering trying to get a job at nearby Jay Peak, which could have housing included. But their two daughters — both of whom have autism — are now disconnected from the schooling and services they had in Burlington. James is worried they may not be able to get the same quality of care in a more remote corner of the state.The constant moves have made all of the little things harder. They have no consistent mailing address, have had to switch pharmacies to keep up with medications, and have many of their things — like the girls’ toys, and Teala’s art supplies — in storage. All the while, James has tried to find the family an apartment they can afford with their rental voucher, to little avail.“I’m just trying the best I can, I guess…and just getting nowhere, at the end of the day,” he said.Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont pushed hundreds of people out of motels this fall. Here’s where some ended up..