A new low-barrier winter warming shelter operated by the Committee on Temporary Shelter is opening in Burlington. Seen on Monday, January 13, 2025. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDiggerThis story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.BURLINGTON – A winter warming shelter will open in the Queen City later this week. The Committee on Temporary Shelter plans to welcome its first guests at the new 30-bed shelter at 58 Pearl Street on Wednesday night. With officials estimating that roughly 300 people are living unsheltered in Chittenden County during the depths of winter — with tents coated in snow a common sight around town — COTS Executive Director Jonathan Farrell described the new shelter as a “band-aid.”“We’re stepping up to put a dent in the issue,” Farrell said at a Monday press conference. “We’ll make a real difference in a number of lives this winter.” The new shelter will be open in the evenings, from 5 p.m. to 8 a.m., from mid-January through the end of April. It is open to individuals, not families, and is low-barrier, meaning it lacks strict sobriety requirements and “folks can come in as long as they can navigate the space and not be harmful to themselves and others,” Farrell said. The space is “congregate,” meaning it offers minimal privacy for those staying there. Cots are lined up a few feet apart, each with a tote bin for people to store belongings. A separate, smaller room is set up for women entering the shelter.The shelter will have a secure storage area outside for larger objects and weapons, such as knives or axes, that individuals use while camping, said Rebekah Mott, COTS’ director of development and communications. Service animals will be allowed at the shelter, but other pets will not be, Mott said. The new shelter is located steps from Burlington’s downtown bus station and a short walk away from COTS’ Daystation at 95 North Ave, where the organization offers amenities such as showers and laundry, and staff connect unhoused individuals to food benefits, housing search support and other resources. People interested in staying at the new Pearl Street shelter can now undergo an intake process at the North Avenue location, Farrell said.Jonathan Farrell, executive director of the Committee on Temporary Shelter, speaks during a tour of a new low-barrier winter warming shelter in Burlington on Monday, January 13, 2025. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDiggerCOTS acquired the Pearl Street building, formerly a Social Security Administration office, through a program that allows local governments and nonprofits to acquire decommissioned federal buildings at no cost if they’re aiding people experiencing homelessness. A somewhat lengthy acquisition process, however, set back the timeline for getting the shelter up and running, leading COTS to open the shelter with winter well underway. In years’ past, the city’s seasonal shelters have opened in December. COTS received about $1.1 million from a state grant intended to bolster shelter capacity this winter, according to Farrell, which helped cover the cost of converting the office building and pay for staffing. The organization is currently searching for funds for a larger renovation of the space, to turn it into a long-term shelter with more private rooms, Mott added.The Burlington facility’s opening comes as shelters across Vermont are generally full, as is the state’s motel voucher program, which acts as a backstop when traditional homeless shelters are at capacity. When city officials opened an extreme cold-weather shelter for the weekend before Christmas — in part because of the delay in opening the COTS shelter — dozens of people showed up. “The housing crisis is getting worse, not better,” U.S. Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., said at the Monday press conference. Vermont — and the rest of the country — needs to “take an all hands on deck approach” to building more homes at a range of income levels, he added.“But in the meantime, what is so absolutely existential is that folks in the harsh Vermont winter have a place to come in, out of the cold — and at least have a place that’s clean, a place that’s warm, and a place that’s safe,” Welch said. Read the story on VTDigger here: Winter shelter to open in Burlington.