Cassandra Torres-McCarron talks about the prospect of having to leave the Motel 6 in Colchester on April 1, when the state’s motel housing program’s next deadline occurs. Seen on Wednesday, March 26. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDiggerThis story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.Last summer’s flooding rendered Chris Duprey and his family homeless. When floodwaters ripped through the small town of Plainfield, they claimed the manufactured home Duprey rented with his wife and two young children. For the last five months, the Motel 6 in Colchester has been home to the family of four, with the aid of a state voucher.Finding their way out of the motel has been a challenge. A former construction worker, Duprey, who’s 46, fell off a roof and hurt his back about three years ago, he said, inhibiting his ability to work. A criminal record makes it more difficult to get into stable housing or even a traditional homeless shelter, he said. He and his wife have both suffered from substance use disorder, he said, but they’ve both been clean for a year. “We’re trying our hardest to, you know, do what we’re supposed to do and raise our family,” Duprey said from the motel parking lot on Wednesday morning. But now he is searching for a tent to sleep in when the family’s motel voucher is set to expire next month.“I got a 9-month-old baby up there,” Duprey said. “I can’t bring myself to put him on the street. But I don’t know what to do.”The Legislature and Gov. Phil Scott are currently locked in a heated political battle over the immediate future of the motel program. Without legislative action, next week, on April 1, the program’s winter-weather rules will expire — triggering restrictions on how long unhoused people can stay. A new 80-day time limit enacted last year resulted in the evictions of more than 1,500 people from motels over the course of the fall. That restriction was waived for the winter months but is set to kick back in again on April 1.Democratic leadership in the House and Senate have moved to waive those restrictions for the next three months through a midyear spending bill, allowing everyone currently in the motels to stay put through June. Chris Duprey talks about the prospect of having to leave the Motel 6 in Colchester in April. Seen on Wednesday, March 26. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDiggerRepublicans, meanwhile, want to keep the restrictions enacted last year in place. Scott, who vetoed Democrats’ first attempt to postpone the restrictions, has offered to grant extensions for a narrow group of people — families with kids and people with severe medical needs — a position he said “is still on the table” at a Wednesday press conference. Democrats have yet to budge, and are instead pushing forward another spending bill that would extend motel stays. And if the two sides can’t come to an agreement before the end of this week, the evictions for all people currently receiving motel vouchers will start on Tuesday and continue through the spring.At the Colchester Motel 6, some people still have a portion of their allotted 80 days left to use, including Duprey, who has an additional 13 nights of eligibility. Others exhausted their time in the fall. Some residents said they plan to pay out of pocket to remain in their rooms as long as they can manage. Several said they were searching for places to couch surf, or camp.Rebecca Comeau, 32, has cycled in and out of motels for “some time now,” she said. Precariously housed since the death of her mother and a breakup over a decade ago, Comeau’s income comes from disability checks she started receiving after a car crash in 2007 left her with a traumatic brain injury. When her 80 days ran out last fall, she bounced between friends’ couches and a car.READ MORE “The first freeze we had last year — we were outside overnight for it. Had nothing but hand warmers and a blanket,” said Comeau, who lives with her cat, Little Miss Precious. “I really have no clue what I’m gonna do come April 1 if the governor doesn’t come to an agreement,” she said.In recent weeks, Scott and members of his administration have repeatedly called the motel program a “failure,” emphasizing the program’s high price tag at roughly $45 million a year and its ineffectiveness at moving people into housing or protecting their lives while in shelter. At the governor’s weekly press conference on Wednesday, Jenney Samuelson, Scott’s human services secretary, suggested that long-term motel voucher extensions ultimately lock out other unhoused people in need of shelter.“The harsh reality is that avoiding hard choices is still making a choice,” she said. “When we fail to prioritize eligibility in a system that has limited resources — in this case, a limited number of hotel rooms — we leave children and medically vulnerable individuals out in the cold.”Rebecca Comeau talks about the prospect of having to leave the Motel 6 in Colchester on April 1, when the state’s motel housing program’s next deadline occurs. Seen on Wednesday, March 26. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDiggerFights over the future of the motel voucher program — and last minute extensions — have become something of a hallmark of Vermont politics since the state greatly expanded the program during the Covid-19 pandemic.Since then, the motel program has served as a backstop for thousands of unhoused Vermonters when traditional shelters across the state are full. In turn, the state has routinely turned people away from motels due to lack of capacity. The situation illustrates how Vermont’s overall homeless response system has been unprepared to handle a stark rise in homelessness over the last few years, driven in large part by the state’s acute housing shortage and rising housing costs. Cassandra Torres-McCarron, 33, said she has been in and out of the motel program since an eviction from a Shelburne Road apartment about two years ago. Recently, she received a housing voucher for her and her 3-year old son to find a new place to rent. They have yet to find an apartment where they can use it.When the two reached their 80 days last fall, they slept at a Burlington campground that the city opened up for unsheltered families. She isn’t sure what they’ll do come April 1.Her caseworker, who she meets with twice a week, recently told her how resilient she is. Torres-McCarron chafed at the word. “I was like, ‘I know,’” she said. “I’m just…It’s getting to the point where… I’m about to break.” Read the story on VTDigger here: As standoff over motel program continues, residents grapple with uncertainty. ...read more read less