Vermont ranks at the extreme end of the 50 states in two measures of homelessness. We rank #2 in the nation in per capita homelessness. That’s, need I say, not a good thing. What is a good thing is that we rank #2 in the nation in the lowest percentage of unhoused people who are unsheltered.

In short, we have a lot of unhoused people thanks in large part to our critical housing shortage, but we’ve been doing a pretty good job of keeping roofs over their heads.

Sadly, this is in the process of changing. We have been steadily ratcheting down the General Assistance housing program that’s been keeping thousands of Vermonters in state-paid motel rooms. And we are tightening the screws even more in the fiscal year beginning July 1. The result will almost certainly be a sharp rise in our unsheltered population starting in mid-September.

It’ll be a while before the official statistics reflect this, but it’s a virtual inevitability. As a result of deliberate policy choices by the Scott administration and the Legislature, we will soon be “exiting” (such a nice bureaucratic word) a lot of homeless people to fates unknown.

How many? Several hundred at least. Enough to roughly triple our official count of unsheltered Vermonters. So if you think the homeless are an unpleasant blight on our downtowns today, imagine what it might be like a few months from now. That’s if you conceive of this issue purely in terms of personal inconvenience, leaving out all that ethical and moral stuff.

On Monday, while the Legislature was busy overriding veto after veto, the Housing and Homelessness Alliance of Vermont and other groups released the findings of the 2024 Point-in-Time Count, the standard measure of the issue*. It’s a highly imperfect tool, but it’s about the best we’ve got. Every year on one night in January, officials and advocates try to count all the unhoused and unsheltered people.

*Might seem like a mistake to release the count on Override Day when our press corps were busy at the Stratehouse, but it was in fact done deliberately. One of the bills up for consideration, H.687, included some measures to address homelessness, and advocates wanted to release the PIT count that day in case it would help achieve an override.

The 2024 count showed continued slippage in Vermont. The total homeless count of 3,458 is 5% higher than 2023’s figure, and is an all-time record. The official unsheltered count was 166, a 21% increase over 2023.

That’s almost certainly a gross underestimate. Unsheltered people are extremely difficult to count because, well, they don’t have addresses. The PIT unsheltered count in Chittenden County was 87 — but on that same day, day shelters in the county heard from 182 people who said they didn’t have shelter. The Alliance’s Frank Knaack told me there’s no reason to think the proportion is any different in the rest of Vermont. It’s reasonable to think that Vermont’s real unsheltered total is probably more like 400, and could be even higher than that.

And if the changes in the voucher program play out as expected, close to 500 more people will be “exited” by late September, bringing our total unsheltered population uncomfortably close to 1,000.

Meanwhile, Vermont’s shelters are at full capacity and there is no prospect of significant expansion. Remember last fall, when Chris Winters of the Department of Children and Families was talking about an ambitious shelter buildout by April 1 of this year? He was talking about 1,500 new shelter beds.

That talk delivered virtually nothing. Instead of 1,500 new beds, we got a ridiculous scattering of makeshift shelters in unused state buildings that were only open for one lousy week.

If the administration has any more plans, let’s say they’re keeping awfully quiet about it. We’ve been locked in a dance of diminishing hopes and expectations for a few years now, in which the administration fails to offer solutions, the Legislature tries to patch and fill, it does so inadequately because of the internal dynamics of the House and Senate, our social safety net gets raggedier and raggedier, and more people suffer.

The trend is certain to continue over the next few months. By the next PIT Count, we’re likely to hold the #2 position (or something close to it) in per capita homelessness, but we’re all but certain to fall down the ranks in terms of providing shelter to the unhoused. The one good thing we’ve got going for us, and we’re letting it slip away.