No foolin’ this time: April 1 brought yet another mass unsheltering for no good reason whatsoever, and the blame appears to fall on the Scott administration’s failure to communicate with clients of the motel voucher program.

It seems that somebody realized sometime last week that roughly 800 households — which, by the standard calculation of 1.6 persons per household, would be about 1,280 individuals — were eligible to stay in their state-paid motel rooms, but in order to do so they had to apply for reauthorization by April 1. And they hadn’t done so.

According to designated unsheltering pool reporter Carly Berlin, a mad scramble ensued. Well, she used “scramble.” The “mad” part is mine. Berlin:

The [Department of Children and Families]’ pleas were captured in an email sent to service providers on Friday afternoon, in which a DCF official said more than half of the 1,600 households “have an authorization that ends on 4/1/24 that has yet to be renewed.” In the message, Lily Sojourner, interim director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, asked for providers’ help in securing residents’ renewals.

To clarify: Sojourner “asked for providers’ help in doing the job DCF should have done.” Ugh.

The scramble brought the number of evictions down to about 360 households (570 individuals) as of early Monday afternoon. Great!

On top of this comes the cheery news from Seven Days that in Chittenden County, “more than 150 households” (at least 240 individuals) will lose their rooms on Saturday and Sunday nights so motel operators can rent ’em out to eclipse tourists at extortionate rates. It’s unknown how many will lose their shelter outside of Chittenden County. There are eight other counties in the totality zone, so the total unsheltered could be much higher.

The clients will be able to move back after the eclipse, but they’re being told to remove all their belongings from the premises for those two days. Maybe DCF can spring for storage lockers? Nah, they aren’t legally required to. And we know what Governor Nice Guy thinks about doing stuff “we didn’t have to” do. So those folks might have to kiss their possessions goodbye.

Back to the mass unsheltering already upon us. These 800 households had originally been slated to lose their accommodations on April 1, but the Budget Adjustment Act extended the program through the end of June.

However, motel residents have to periodically apply for reauthorization. And all those households failed to apply — probably because they don’t keep up with the jots and tittles of legislative action and just assumed they’d have to bug out on April 1. And nobody at DCF, until someone rang the alarm last week, thought to tell them about the extension.

If you think I’m being harsh about DCF’s issues, I refer you to Judge Helen Toor’s ruling in Vermont Legal Aid’s lawsuit over the voucher program. In it, she laid out a damning timeline of DCF’s failures to communicate around our last mass unsheltering on March 15. And she noted that neither side had argued the facts of the case. One of those sides was the Scott administration, yes indeed. So this latest failure fits an established pattern.

We don’t know how many people were unsheltered on Monday night for no good reason and against the express intent of the Budget Adjustment Act, which the Legislature passed overwhelmingly and the governor signed voluntarily. As of 1:30 Monday afternoon it was 360 households/570 people, but some may have gotten reauthorized after that point. On the other hand, checkout time at motels is usually 11:00 a.m., so maybe they were already out on the street with their worldly belongings in tow.

Whatever number it was, it was that number too many. Every single one of those people should have been able to stay. The Legislature had appropriated the necessary funds and, yep, the governor signed off on it. But DCF didn’t think to do its job until it was too late to do the job well. And you thought Kafka wrote fiction.