Yesterday evening I did what no member of the press corps has seemingly bothered to do: I visited the the Agency of Natural Resources Annex, d/b/a Winters Hall, one of the Scott administration’s four hastily-assembled temporary shelters.

And this is what’s inside all that steel and concrete: 20 cots, each with its own flimsy plastic-wrapped blanket.

And… well, that’s about all. (There used to be more cots, but some have been removed due to lack of usage.)

Oh, there are three porta-potties just outside the entrance. Because, I was told, the indoor facilities aren’t working. The building was flooded last July, and apparently the facilities have been offline since.

Credit to the Vermont National Guard for doing their best to prepare the space. The shelter was clean and orderly, though it remains disquietingly industrial. There was no sign of flood damage or mold, at least not in the section of the building being used as shelter. The Guard were helpful and polite during my visit. They were carrying out the mission: Responding to situations to the best of their ability with the resources they are given.

But c’mon, this is a disgrace. Don’t blame the Guard; blame the Scott administration. This was their idea.

The shelter space is huge, more like an airplane hangar than a place for people to sleep. (With bigger doors, it’d be a fine hangar.) At the far end of this vast echo chamber are a couple of folding tables and a few chairs, where the Guards and a pair of medical personnel welcome people, get them situated, and tend to their needs within the extremely limited resources available. There are two boxes of miscellaneous snacks and drinks, dropped off by a local social service agency. Twinkie and bottled water for breakfast, anyone?

One small amenity: the Guard can move the cots around and put up partitions so families could sleep together with a tiny bit of privacy.

Each person seeking to use the shelter must sign a form with 13 stated conditions. Intake between 7:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. only. No storage; guests may bring “minimal belongings.” No weapons, drugs, or other illegal substances. Guests can leave the building only for designated smoking breaks; if they leave for any other reason, they will not be readmitted. (Unstated but assumed: They can go outside to use a porta-potty.) There is one designated smoking area, to which “Access and frequency are staff dependent.” Bedding must be “returned to normal daytime condition by 7:00 a.m.” Guests must leave no later than 7:00. If shelter staff decide you need medical attention, you must leave in an ambulance if told to.

“No disruptive behavior, violence or threats will be tolerated.” (Okay, fair enough.) “Quiet hours from 10:30 p.m. until 6:00 a.m. with no talking, no electronic devices or lights.” (Assuming an exception for potty runs.) “No sexual conduct or nudity.” (Again, fair enough.) No visitors. No pets allowed except service or assistance animals. If you “are asked to leave you are expected to do so respectfully… or law enforcement will be called.”

Some of that is fine, but the totality seems more like a prison than a shelter. There’s not much personal dignity on offer. Is it any surprise the place has gone virtually unused? (As of Monday morning, one single person had made use of Winters Hall.)

Would you want to sleep there if you had any other options? Even if it meant sleeping in your car (if you had a car) or on some tolerant person’s couch? Some have apparently preferred to sleep outside, although that equation may have changed since the temperatures dropped below freezing last night and we got a dusting of snow on the ground. Still too warm to trigger the Adverse Weather Conditions policy, though. Sorry about that!

(Checking the forecast… low of 20 on Wednesday night, 13 on Thursday, 23 on Friday with an inch of snow, then 18 on Saturday with three inches of snow and 14 on Sunday. Well, at least that would qualify people for motel rooms under AWC. On a day-to-day basis, with no stability at all.)

This place would be perfectly appropriate in a real emergency when large numbers of people are displaced by a disaster of some sort. It is completely inappropriate in current circumstances. We are, as housing advocates put it last week, in “a manufactured crisis,” planned and executed (poorly and in haste) despite the express intent of the Legislature, which had approved a bill on March 1 that would have kept most of the 500-odd displaced Vermonters in state-paid motel rooms. If the governor had signed the bill before March 13, none of this rush would have been necessary. Of course, if he had signed the bill sooner, he couldn’t have enforced his ridiculous order.

(About 130 of that number were not displaced thanks to the intervention of nonprofits like End Homelessness Vermont, which did its best to shepherd people through the approval process in the two days between the announcement of the unhousing on Wednesday and its implementation on Friday. Now that state offices are open for the week, more people will be approved for motel stays. Which means they should never have been displaced at all, and wouldn’t have been if the process hadn’t been so needlessly rushed.)

The National Guard were, as I said, helpful and polite. I’m sure they would have treated guests the same way, assuming adherence to the rules. I told them I wouldn’t seek any on-the-record comments; that’s not what I was after. They wouldn’t have offered much anyway; they’d been given a “Troop Card” (just a standard sized sheet of paper) in that regard with five points, and I quote:

• Your first priority is to accomplish your mission.
• Don’t guess or speculate outside of your knowledge. If you don’t know, it’s ok to say that.
• You don’t have to speak to media but it is encouraged. It is how we inform the public about what we are doing to help.
• Respect the privacy of those using the shelters, no photos on-site. Be smart with social media. Do not post hateful or discriminatory content.
• Use your troop card to help you — inject messages as frequently as possible.

At the bottom of the page are the contact numbers for Capt. Mikel Arcovitch and Marcus Tracy, the chief and deputy Public Affairs Officers for the Vermont National Guard.

The guys were cool. They let me take pictures since no guests were there. I can’t imagine any of them would even think of posting “hateful or discriminatory content.” That seems like a thing that shouldn’t need to be specified. But Guard leadership know what they’re doing. Must have been some unfortunate experiences in the past.

My visit didn’t take long, maybe 10 minutes or so. There just wasn’t much to see. Which is kind of the point: This is the most basic, perfunctory shelter you can imagine. Again, appropriate in a real emergency — but not here and not now. Not as the result of a voluntary policy decision.