Leaders from the city and town of St. Albans shared some of the first details Monday of their long-discussed plans for a police department that would serve both municipalities.

A draft operating budget shows the joint department could cost just shy of $5 million in the 2025 fiscal year, which starts next July and is when the plan is slated to take effect. That total would be shared evenly between the two communities. It’s about twice the cost of this year’s department budget, which supports policing in the city as well as the northern Franklin County town of Highgate, but not St. Albans Town.

On Monday night, a new public body tasked with advising the department, called the Joint Police Board, discussed the budget during its first meeting. The board is made up of six town and city officials and chaired by Timothy Hawkins, a St. Albans city councilor.

Together, the communities — one of which surrounds the other — have a combined population of about 14,000, though officials said that number approaches 18,000 during the day.

The roughly $2.4 million cost to both St. Albans City and Town next year accounts for what police Chief Maurice Lamothe on Monday called a best-case staffing scenario.

Currently, the police department has 12 uniformed officers, but Lamothe said he wants to bring the total up to 16 uniformed officers before starting to cover the town next July (the agency plans to end its part-time contract with Highgate at that time). As of Monday, the department had two new hires in training toward full-time certification, Lamothe said, as well as several candidates “we’d like to proceed with” after conducting interviews.

The chief said his agency does not need 16 officers on-call at a given time, but rather, that figure would give him flexibility when some officers take time off or go on leave.

“I have to make sure we have enough people to do this safely and effectively,” Lamothe said during Monday’s meeting, speaking about expanding service into the town. “And for me to do that, I need to have the status quo — and then one or two up — all the time.”

The proposed budget also includes funding to stand up what Lamothe called a “street crimes” unit aimed at investigating and curbing illicit drug sales in the area. The unit would require an additional two new officers, on top of the four who would be hired to cover St. Albans Town.

The St. Albans department had a “street crimes” unit as recently as 2021, officials said, but it ran out of funding when the town — which had a contract with the city police at the time — decided to hire the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office for policing services instead. Lamothe said that the Covid-19 pandemic also hindered the “street” unit’s work.

In response to a question Monday, Lamothe said he could not say whether the “street crimes” unit would actually reduce local crime, noting that he did not think the area was seeing more crime today than at the time the unit was disbanded in 2021.

He and other police officials present, though, said the unit could allow the department to conduct deeper investigations into drug-related crimes, which often take a significant amount of time and resources — freeing up other officers to do other police work.

“We’re not going to make it necessarily go away,” St. Albans Police Lt. Jason Wetherby said of illegal drug sales. “But at the same time, we’ll hopefully prevent some major tragedies.”

Members of the police board appeared broadly supportive of the unit, though they asked Lamothe to gather statistics on the unit’s former operations for a future meeting.

“I’m 100% for that,” said Trudy Cioffi, the St. Albans city councilor for Ward 4. “I have drugs pushing out right down the street from me, and I live in the ‘nice’ part of town.”

In all, the department’s personnel costs are set to increase by about $1.1 million in the 2025 police budget over the current budget. The department also proposed allocating $200,000 to purchase and outfit five police cruisers, two of which it would buy used.

Under St. Albans Town’s current contract with the sheriff’s office, officials have said they expect to spend about $1.3 million during the current fiscal year. They’ve said the higher cost of the new police agreement is worth it, in large part because St. Albans City leaders agreed in exchange to stop charging a controversial fee on new hookups to the city water and sewer systems that are located in the town.

Town officials have long said that this fee — which has been the subject of lawsuits between the two communities — has hindered growth in the town. The city is slated to eliminate the fee completely on July 1, 2024, the day town policing services start.

Several town officials also indicated that they think the city police department could provide better and more responsive services than the sheriff’s office, largely because the sheriff’s office has a greater area — much of Franklin County — to patrol.

Town Manager Sean Adkins also said some town residents have complained that the sheriff’s office is not responding to overnight calls in a timely manner. Adkins raised these concerns with Sheriff John Grismore, he said, and the sheriff told him staffing challenges are likely to blame — which the administrator said that he understands.

Town officials have been adamant that their decision to end their contract with the sheriff’s office had nothing to do with the fallout from an incident last August in which Grismore kicked a handcuffed man who was in custody. The sheriff is now facing an assault charge in court and possible impeachment in the Vermont Legislature stemming from the incident, as well as a Vermont State Police investigation into his conduct.

While town residents can expect an increase in police spending next year, the city is set to spend about $92,000 less than it does now once the town takes on its new share.

The Joint Police Board still needs to approve the department’s 2025 budget, after which the city and town governments would incorporate their share of the department’s costs into their respective 2025 municipal budgets. Those municipal budgets will be up for approval from voters in both communities in March on Town Meeting Day.

The board’s next meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. on Nov. 15.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Plans shaping up for joint police department in St. Albans City and Town.

Hunters on Friday afternoon discovered a body in a remote area in Plainfield, and Vermont State Police say the death “occurred under suspicious circumstances.” It marked the second time this week that hunters found a body in central Vermont.

Since Oct. 5, Vermont State Police have reported seven deaths considered to be suspicious. By comparison, there were only nine reported homicides in the state for all of 2021, although that number spiked to 25 reported homicides in 2022.

No arrests have been made in any of the seven recent cases.

Col. Matthew Birmingham, who leads the Vermont State Police, called the rash of killings in such a short period of time “a little unprecedented” in Vermont.

Until this month, Vermont’s homicide rate had been trending lower for the year, Birmingham said on Saturday. Prior to October, he said, nine homicides had been recorded. If all seven suspicious deaths this month prove to be homicides, the year-to-date total would be 16.

“As far as we can tell, they are all isolated incidents with no corresponding trend that we can identify at this point,” he said.

Some of the recent death investigations are also proving very complex, he said.

“To have so many in such a short period is very unusual — and not just so many, but these are very complicated homicides,” he said. “No one is in custody yet and that is what is making it very upsetting to us and very challenging.”

“I can say with great confidence that none of them are tied together. We don’t have a single person responsible,” he said. The nature of the homicides also differs with each case, so there appears to be no singular pattern or motivation, he added.

In the most recent case, hunters in Plainfield discovered the body in woods along Gore Road around 4:30 p.m. Friday. Gore Road runs along the southern edge of the L.R. Jones State Forest, where the popular Spruce Mountain hiking trail is located.

“Evidence gathered on scene indicates the death occurred under suspicious circumstances,” state police said in a press release issued late Friday night.

Police said an autopsy was planned “to determine the cause and manner of death and help determine the victim’s identity.” State police encouraged the public to contact them with tips related to the crime.

On Wednesday afternoon, hunters discovered the body of a 23-year-old Barre woman in a remote area of the town of Washington. On Friday, police identified the woman as Tanairy “Tanya” Velazquez Estrada, whose mother reported her missing to police in Fitchburg, Massachusetts on the same day her body was discovered. Police said the cause and manner of death was pending but it was also labeled suspicious.

Also on Wednesday, the bodies of two Massachusetts men who were recently reported missing were discovered in a remote area in Eden. Autopsies found that Jahim Solomon and Eric White, both 21, had died of gunshot wounds and their deaths were ruled homicides, state police said.

On Oct. 16, 27-year-old Gunnar Watson was shot and killed at his home in Wheelock. Police have released few details about the death. Watson was a member of the Vermont National Guard since 2020, according to WCAX.

On Oct. 14, a 27-year-old man was shot and killed in Newport Town. Wilmer Rodriguez, 27, of Hartford, Connecticut, died from multiple gunshot wounds and his death was ruled a homicide, state police reported.

On Oct. 5, Honoree Fleming, a highly regarded retired college dean, was shot to death while walking on a rail trail near her home, just a short distance from the Vermont State University campus. Police released a sketch of a “person of interest“ in the case.

Birmingham said the investigations into all seven deaths remain very active, with some expected to be resolved sooner than others. But the demands of so many investigations at once, often requiring detailed forensic work, are testing the limits of his agency, he said.

“We are being challenged on the resource side of the house,” he said. “Without question it is taking a toll on our resources.”

Birmingham said state police are receiving help from federal agencies. The state police Major Crime Unit, which includes detectives, a technology unit, crime scene search teams and victim services, is being augmented by other units within state police to help in the investigations, he said.

“Everybody is assisting. It’s not just the criminal division,” he added. “We are making progress on a few of them. Some are just going slower. But I am confident we will make significant progress towards resolving them.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Hunters find body in Plainfield, 7th suspicious death in Vermont this month.

Leslie Haviland and Derek Temple have been spending nearly every day for the last three weeks getting a new space ready for the reopening of Hugo’s, the Montpelier fine dining restaurant destroyed by the July flood, as early as next week.

The reopening of Hugo’s and several other restaurants is part of the restitching of Montpelier’s lively bar and dining scene, which went quiet after the floodwaters moved in and the debris piled up on the city’s deserted sidewalks.

“It’ll feel like Montpelier is becoming Montpelier again,” said Hugo’s owner, Tom Greene.

Over at Enna, her restaurant on State Street, Shannon Bates was painting when she spoke to VTDigger Monday. She, too, hoped to reopen sometime next week.

Bates said she had expected to reopen within weeks of the flood — before she realized her building would have to be stripped down to studs. She said she is grateful to have a landlord who took care of and paid for reconstruction. She got the keys to go back into her place last week, she said.

All her kitchen equipment was contaminated by the toxic floodwaters and had to be replaced, she said.

After seeing an outpouring of volunteers in the first weeks after the flood, Bates said she began to feel in the dark as time went by because there was no contact from the state or from city officials. Only in the last few weeks, she said, did she receive disaster unemployment assistance and a grant from the state’s $20 million Business Emergency Gap Assistance Program, known as BEGAP.

Bates has been busy organizing an Oct. 28 Oktoberfest event at Farr’s Field in Waterbury, with other Montpelier restaurant owners that will help offset the costs of reconstruction.

Across the street, Julia Watson, the owner of Capitol Grounds, is getting ready to reopen her coffee shop, which at times, especially when the Legislature is in session, can feel like the main gathering spot in Montpelier. She hopes to reopen in the next two weeks.

It has taken three months, Watson said, in part because it was impossible to line up carpenters, plumbers and electricians when everyone else also needed them, but also because she had to figure out with her landlord who was responsible for what part of the rebuilding.

Most of her 26 employees have found other jobs and will not be returning. Joe McHugh, the cook, is one of the few who are coming back.

“It’s like having your life turned upside down indefinitely,” McHugh said of the three months since the flood, during which time securing unemployment compensation proved to be a big hurdle.

“It was a complete failure,” he said, explaining that his claim was lost and then a hold was put on it. It took him about a month before he could start collecting unemployment, he said.

He has been back on payroll for about a week, he said, getting the walls and floors finished and the equipment cleaned and wrapped in plastic until it gets put in place for the reopening.

“I’m just looking forward to being back in a functional kitchen, having some sense of order restored,” he said.

Inside Three Penny

Wes Hamilton, one of the owners of Three Penny Taproom on Main Street, has already opened a small indoor space occupying about one-third the size of the restaurant and bar. The restaurant is serving cans of beer, not its famed list of beers on tap, and a limited selection of sandwiches and soup. He hopes to reopen fully by early November.

Hamilton calls the last three months “one giant nightmare.”

It was not until the end of August that the place was properly dried out, he said. He and a business partner would come in once a day to empty out the dehumidifiers.

“It just really felt like nothing was happening,” Hamilton said.

Once the contractor was satisfied that the humidity level was low enough, the rebuilding began, he said, though all the equipment had been lost.

Hamilton said he is waiting for a second round of BEGAP grants to come in. Flood insurance covered only a fraction of the rebuilding costs, he said. The business had $100,000 in insurance coverage, but the lost inventory alone was $50,000. It cost $60,000 to replace the equipment, not to mention paying contractors. He credits Montpelier Alive for coming through with grants.

Montpelier Alive is the downtown Montpelier business association. Together with the Montpelier Foundation, it has been a major source of fundraising for businesses affected by the July flooding, and helped to organize volunteers to help with cleanup and rebuilding.

Hamilton also applied for a disaster loan from the Small Business Administration. He recommends that the federal government make grants available to businesses in times of disaster, rather than loans.

“This is like my daughter’s future that I rolled the dice on in order to reopen the restaurant,” Hamilton said. “If something happens to me, my daughter’s got 30 years of payments to the feds to make.”

Upstairs at Hugo’s

Haviland, the general manager at Hugo’s, has been loading the new menu into the computer system, working on charts for the layout of tables at the new restaurant, which will fill the second and third floors of the Main Street space once occupied by the old Black Door, across from City Hall.

“It’s definitely outside the floodplain,” Greene said of the upper-floor location of the new space, but he said he had no choice but to move, as his old landlord decided not to rebuild Hugo’s old space as a restaurant.

Greene said the new incarnation of his restaurant will be more affordable, less fine dining and more Asian fusion meets classic bistro.

He said that, for a long time after the flood, he was working alone, as he could not afford to keep people on payroll.

“We would not be reopening without the support of Montpelier Alive and the Montpelier Foundation,” Greene said, along with people who contributed more than $9,000 to the restaurant’s GoFundMe campaign, and the support of the state’s BEGAP. The state will close applications for the $20 million grant program for flood-damaged businesses and nonprofits Oct. 23. As of earlier this week, it had received more than 700 applications.

Haviland has been deep in “the scheduling nightmare” of assigning shifts for new and returning employees, she said.

Temple has been reupholstering the tattered barstools that had not been sat on since 2018, when the last restaurant at that location closed. He has also been buffing the old tables to a new shine. Temple said he has also been working part-time, mostly as a bartender at catering events for Woodbelly Pizza.

“It’s been rough,” Haviland said of the three months since the flood. “We’re used to making a lot more than unemployment.”

Still, she said, staff members have held on to their friendships.

A food truck in the meantime

If some restaurants are rushing toward reopening, for others, that goal remains months away.

Melissa Whittaker and Carlo Rovetto, the manager and the owner, respectively, of Positive Pie on State Street, were driving to Atlanta to pick up a food truck when VTDigger reached them Monday.

Whittaker said they had little savings when the flood hit, and it took months for much of their funding to come in. A $4,000 grant from Montpelier Alive arrived within two weeks of the flood, but no other funding came in until three weeks ago, she said.

“We had all our volunteers clean it out, and then the restaurant basically just sat there,” she said.

Positive Pie received an initial $20,000 grant from BEGAP and is expecting a second grant, but Whittaker said she does not know the size of that grant. The business also received a second grant for $20,000 from Montpelier Alive.

Positive Pie owns its building and received an insurance settlement of $100,000, she said. All told, including more than $6,000 from a GoFundMe campaign, the business has received $170,000, but she estimates $600,000 will be needed to rebuild. She said the business has been approved for a $500,000 loan from the Small Business Administration, but that money has yet to arrive.

“I feel like I’m ice climbing with no ice picks,” said Rovetto.

Whittaker said she’s mindful that her 65 employees can only be on unemployment for so long before accepting other jobs. A food truck would enable her to rehire most of the kitchen staff, she said, and Montpelier’s city government has agreed to allow the truck to be parked in front of Positive Pie, on State Street.

Whittaker said the goal is to open the food truck in the next two weeks. But they are months away from being able to reopen the restaurant.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Montpelier restaurants are reopening, but at a cost..

Vermont State University should end 10 degree programs, including agriculture, music and school psychology, and lose around 20-33 faculty positions, Interim President Mike Smith said in a draft report issued Oct. 2.

Smith’s report also recommends consolidating another 13 degree programs and moving 11 among the university’s multiple campuses. None of the recommendations, if implemented, would affect current students in those programs, according to VTSU leadership. The changes would begin in the fall of 2024.

The school administration is soliciting feedback on the recommendations until Oct. 27, according to the preliminary report, a copy of which was obtained by VTDigger. University leadership will make final decisions by Oct. 31.

“None of this is easy, and I recognize that impacted faculty will have a period of transition ahead of them,” Smith wrote in the report, adding, “What we are doing with these recommendations is confronting our pressures head on — not running from them — and forging a path to address each and every one of them either through steps to obtain fiscal sustainability, strategic plan for admissions, or a student success model to keep students engaged in academic life.”

Smith did not immediately respond to calls and texts Monday night. The report is expected to be made public Tuesday morning.

In the document, Smith recommends discontinuing degrees in agriculture; forestry; landscape contracting; an applied business degree completion program; computer engineering technology; music; photography; performance, arts, and technology; climate change science; and school psychology.

Ending those programs would not necessarily mean that instruction in those subjects would cease entirely. For example, the report notes that VTSU’s recently created Center for Agriculture and Food Entrepreneurship is working to “identify opportunities for a newly designed Agriculture program that is sustainable and meets the needs of Vermont’s workforce.”

And while the report recommends ending the degree in climate change science, it also suggests promoting a climate change concentration within an atmospheric sciences degree.

The programs that Smith recommended cutting currently enroll 77 students, he said, roughly 2% of the university’s student body. All told, the cuts and consolidations proposed in the report would eliminate between 20 to 33 full-time faculty positions — between 10% and 15% of the university’s total of 207.

Vermont State University is planning to release details about a buyout program for faculty “in the coming days,” the report states. “If there is sufficient uptake in the buyout program, layoffs may not be necessary.”

The university was formed this summer through the merger of three public institutions: Castleton University, Northern Vermont University and Vermont Technical College. The merger was intended to put the three on a pathway to financial stability.

Monday’s report — an initiative that administrators dubbed “Optimization 2.0” — appears to be the next phase of that consolidation. According to Smith, VTSU offers too many academic programs — 99 in total — while some have too few students enrolled.

That situation, he said, is financially untenable. VTSU ended the most recent fiscal year with a $22 million deficit, and the university “must realize efficiencies now that we are unified,” the report reads.

Smith’s term ends Nov. 1, at which point he will be succeeded by the recently hired interim president David Bergh, who is expected to run the university for roughly 18 months.

Monday’s report identifies 13 programs that should be consolidated with others, many of which appear to be already similar.

It proposes merging a program in architectural & building engineering technology with a program in architectural engineering technology, for example.

Among other consolidations, the report recommends combining musical theater and theater arts programs, as well as merging a degree in creative writing with one in literature and writing. And it proposes folding a degree in “Health Promotion” into a health science degree or discontinuing it.

Another 11 programs should shift their location from one of the university’s campuses to another, according to the report.

Last month, in response to complaints from faculty and staff that VTSU employs too many administrators, Smith vowed to examine the institution’s administrative positions and their effect on the budget. In Monday’s report, he reiterated that promise.

“Please know that I strongly agree that administrative costs of the university must be optimized and reduced as well,” Smith wrote. “With this first set of recommendations out the door I will now turn my attention to administrative costs, releasing a recommendation before my departure at the end of the month.”

Linda Olson, a sociology professor who represents VTSU faculty for the American Federation of Teachers, said that there were still many unanswered questions about the report.

“I think that there needs to be a lot of explanation still about why the proposal is making the recommendations that it is,” she said. “And also, more importantly, what data they’re basing it on.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont State University president recommends cutting 10 degree programs and up to 33 faculty positions.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is ready to erect temporary manufactured housing units for Vermonters whose homes are uninhabitable due to this summer’s floods — as soon as the agency finds a location for the shelters.

In addition to a sample unit in Berlin, FEMA has six staged in Hartford and more available, ready to be hooked up to utility lines and moved into.

Finding locations in Vermont to site the units has proven to be a challenge for the agency. One option, according to FEMA coordinating officer Will Roy, could be the former Montpelier Elks Country Club, which is now owned by the city. The Montpelier City Council preliminarily approved the proposition earlier this month. Another potential location is in Springfield, Roy said.

Roy told reporters at a Wednesday press conference that of the roughly 240 Vermont households initially contacted by FEMA whose homes were substantially damaged or destroyed, 43 are actively requesting FEMA accommodations. Other families, Roy said, have found temporary shelter elsewhere, whether in a rental, with friends or family, or out of state.

Displaced families occupying FEMA temporary housing units do not have to pay rent or utilities, Roy said. But there is a limit on how long they can stay: 18 months from the date of a disaster declaration. With Vermont’s disaster declaration dated July 2023, displaced families can stay in the units until January 2025, unless the state is granted an extension, according to FEMA individual assistance support contact Sam Harvey.

None of the seven units already in Vermont are spoken for, Harvey said. The goal is to move in displaced families as soon as possible.

“We are not trying to make anybody wait,” Harvey said. “If we had a private site that was available tomorrow, we would start that ball rolling.”

On Wednesday, FEMA officials offered members of the media a tour of the sample housing unit in Berlin. The age of each unit varies, but they are generally less than 10 years old and have been previously occupied elsewhere in the country. The units being sent to Vermont are cold-weather graded for winters as frigid and snowy as Alaska’s, according to Harvey.

Harvey said each unit is furnished with kitchen appliances, a dining table, a couch, beds and basic linens to ease occupants’ move-in process — especially if they lost most of their belongings in the flood. The units include washer and dryer hookups, but tenants have to bring their own machines and take them when they leave. Units compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act are available and include an entrance ramp, shower bench, bathroom supports, and wider door frames and halls.

“We want it to be move-in ready, A., so that survivors don’t have to pay any of their own money for something that is going to be temporary, but B., so it just goes a little bit faster,” Harvey said.

One-, two- and three-bedroom units are available depending on household size, Harvey said. If a large family requires more than three bedrooms, they could potentially occupy two units placed next to each other.

FEMA aims to relocate disaster-affected households within a half-hour of their homes, so they remain in close proximity to their workplaces, schools, doctors and community. For school-aged children moved into units located outside of their home school district, Harvey said, FEMA works with municipalities to help arrange bus transportation.

A sample, two-bedroom unit staged at a state government building in Berlin this week was adorned with tan walls, a tan linoleum floor, a tan couch, bedroom dressers affixed to the walls and a wooden dining table and chairs. To make themselves feel at home, occupants are free to move around whatever furniture isn’t bolted to the walls or floor, Harvey said. They can add area rugs and hang pictures or decorations from the walls with removable adhesive, but no nails.

One of the sample units’ two beds featured dolphin-patterned pillowcases.

“We try to make it a little homey,” Harvey said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: FEMA has temporary housing units for flood-displaced Vermonters — if only it could find staging locations.

A former Massachusetts pizzeria owner has been sentenced to two years in federal prison for fraudulently using more than $600,000 in pandemic relief loans for personal expenditures, including founding an alpaca farm in Vermont.

Dana L. McIntyre, 59, now living in Grafton, Vermont, and previously of Beverly and Essex, Massachusetts, was sentenced Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Boston.

Judge Denise J. Casper ordered McIntyre to serve two years in prison and three years of supervised release, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts. The judge also ordered McIntyre to pay $679,156 in restitution.

McIntyre’s attorney argued for a lesser sentence of one year, court records show. He had earlier pleaded guilty in April to four counts of wire fraud and three counts of money laundering.

According to federal prosecutors, in March 2020, at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, McIntyre used the names of two of his adult children to file false applications to the U.S. Small Business Administration for loans for businesses that did not exist.

Prosecutors also charged McIntyre with misrepresenting information about a pizza shop he owned in Beverly, Massachusetts, in a federal Paycheck Protection Program loan application in April 2020, claiming to have almost 50 employees when there were actually fewer than 10.

The Paycheck Protection Program was created by Congress to help businesses retain employees during the pandemic.

Charging documents stated that McIntyre sold the Rasta Pasta Pizzeria after receiving the $660,000 loan. He then used the money to buy the farm in Vermont and eight alpacas, the court records show.

McIntyre also used the funds for other personal expenses, including buying two vehicles and airtime for a radio show focused on cryptocurrency, according to court documents.

Attempts to contact McIntyre by phone and email on Thursday were not successful.

The New York Times, in a story published Wednesday, reported that McIntyre opened the Houghtonville Farm in 2021, with its website stating that it offered people the chance to hand-feed and stroll with the animals at the property.

McIntyre told the New York Times that when he first bought the property he did not intend to turn it into a farm, saying he bought two alpacas as “lawn ornaments” but decided after the animals attracted attention to start up a business.

“It wasn’t this mastermind program to steal money from the government and go up and start this alpaca farm,” he told the New York Times. “No, it unfolded and it took on its own life form.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Man gets two years in prison for using Covid-19 relief funds to start alpaca farm in Vermont.

On Tuesday, dozens of Montpelier residents gathered to discuss ideas for improving the city’s relationship with the three rivers that run inside its borders.

The stakes were high. Just over a month earlier, Montpelier had been inundated with 4 to 6 feet of floodwaters, destroying or damaging large portions of the downtown area and residential neighborhoods.

Amid discussion of building up water infrastructure and restoring upstream floodplains, one key question circled: How far and how high did the flood go, exactly?

One resident, who did not give his full name, made a request for “accessible and easy-to-understand maps” that could tell Montpelierites “where did the rain come from that comes into the city?”

Those maps, to an extent, already exist. The Federal Emergency Management Agency maintains the largest database of estimated flood hazards in the nation, including for Montpelier and many other Vermont communities.

The data that powers these maps — the data that determines federal regulations on flood insurance and community participation in flood programs — is collected through a painfully in-depth and yearslong process of studying the hydrology and geology of every section of river in Vermont.

Which is why, according to FEMA, many of these maps are years or even decades out of date.

One of the latest flood studies in Vermont, for Washington County, was completed in 2013, according to FEMA’s flood study website. But because the study took years to complete, it doesn’t even include data on what happened during Tropical Storm Irene 12 years ago, or during a May 2011 rainstorm that flooded Montpelier with several inches of water.

In other locations in Vermont, far older studies power their flood maps. Windham County, with communities hit hard in Tropical Storm Irene, hasn’t had an update since 2007. Some flood studies date all the way back to 1977, during the decade when the maps were first created by regulatory mandate.

FEMA redoes its flood studies on a rolling basis for different communities, said Kerry Bogdan, a spokesperson for the agency. She cited budget constraints as one reason for the delays.

“Congress does not give the agency enough money to, every time they do a study, to update the engineering on every single flooding source within that geography,” she said.

At least 13 Vermont watersheds are in the process of having flood studies right now, said Chris Hutchins, a senior program specialist who works on flood maps for FEMA. The furthest along is the Deerfield River watershed study in Bennington County, where FEMA recently released preliminary maps for communities to review.

But the 2023 floods are not yet included in those studies, and it’s unclear at this point if and how they will be. Bogdan said FEMA has commissioned a separate study to review the data from the 2023 floods, and evaluate if they would invalidate or complicate the other ongoing flood studies.

Either way, new maps are still years away from the finish line. Hutchins said the earliest Vermont can expect finalized maps would be 2025 or 2026, “barring no hiccups.”

Bogdan pointed out that data from historic floods is only one component of flood studies. Changes in the topology of the area, or in water-related infrastructure like culverts and dams, also determine when and how flood studies are conducted.

FEMA develops a “prioritization” schedule based on engineering and conversations with local officials about what’s been observed on the ground, she said.

Researchers across the country are looking at ways to make the process for determining flood risk go faster. In a 2021 paper on alternative flood models, University of Vermont researcher Rebecca Diehl called the traditional process “insufficient” and “data- and resource-intensive.”

In an email to VTDigger, she said there are numerous challenges with the current system — including the amount of data collection needed to detail the risk faced by specific properties.

“We make decisions (and) tradeoffs between getting these details right, and capturing the general inundation patterns that are likely to occur,” she said via email.

What does a flood map mean?

Under the National Flood Insurance Act of 1968, FEMA was given a specific goal when creating flood maps: To determine whether specific property owners were required to purchase flood insurance because they were in a high-risk flood zone.

These Special Flood Hazard Areas, sometimes referred to as 100-year flood zones, also determine how communities in the National Flood Insurance Program regulate development in floodplains.

But the “100-year flood” term is a bit of a misnomer. Bogdan said the agency has moved away from using that term in favor of calling those areas “1% annual chance events.” In other words, that flood has a 1% annual chance of occurring.

“People think it’s only going to happen in every 100 years, right like it happened in 1927. So we shouldn’t be dealing with it again until 2027, right?” she said. But in actuality, “unfortunately, you could have 100-year, or a 1% chance, flood three times in a month, three times in a year. (Or) you could have 100 years go by and never experience that.”

Another way FEMA describes it: If a homeowner has a 30-year mortgage, there’s a one-in-three chance that a flood will reach the ground floor before the mortgage is paid off.

Those chances are further complicated by the fact that up to 40% of flood insurance claims come from outside of flood zones, according to FEMA. Vermonters in the recent floods have reported that they were affected, even though their homes were outside the FEMA flood zones.

Conversely, some Vermont communities have a greater than 1% annual chance of flooding, although it’s not marked on the FEMA flood maps. A review of flood studies for Washington County, for example, reveals that some roads and bridges have a 2% chance or even a 10% chance of flooding each year.

In recent years, the biggest challenge to how FEMA flood maps are created has come from climate research groups, which claim the agency underestimates flood risk by not taking into account how climate change could increase the chances of extreme weather.

First Street Foundation, a nonprofit that publishes and sells risk factor data, estimates that 15% of Vermont properties are located in a 1% annual chance flood zone, compared to FEMA’s 1.6% to 8% of properties, depending on the county.

“In the absence of a property-specific risk model, (FEMA maps) have been used as a default tool for understanding property-specific flood risk. And because of that, you know, they’re really being used for something they’re not designed for,” said Jeremy Porter, head of climate implications at First Street Foundation.

The nonprofit organization incorporates real-world data on river heights, elevation and property zones, but makes different assumptions than FEMA does about the likelihood of extreme weather events, Porter said. It provides free data on its website and sells more in-depth, premium data at an additional cost.

Diehl, the UVM researcher, said via email that climate change means “catastrophic storms” will become more common, shifting the meaning of the 1% flood zone and expanding areas that are regularly flooded.

While flood maps are based on river flooding, she said, the traditional models do not account for flooding that comes directly from hard, fast rain, which is more likely during intense storms. One example would be the flash flooding that occurred in Addison County during heavy rainstorms in early August.

Porter said that, by calculating the chance of extreme weather in a particular area based on historical events, “you’re inherently taking the average of a period that’s already passed.”

“If you don’t incorporate climate metrics that allow you to understand the trending in that data over time, and integrate that into the future, then you end up missing both what the current risk is and what the future risk is,” he said.

Diehl has worked to develop new methods of calculating flood risk that could be performed more quickly and with less detailed data. Her model is a low-complexity system that doesn’t produce enough accuracy for the flood insurance program, but could provide a better overview for communities to prioritize flood hazard areas and test mitigation systems, according to the study detailing the model.

The biggest challenge for First Street Foundation is getting more high-quality data to adopt into its modeling in the first place, Porter said. “The flood model is only going to be as good as the data that you put into the model,” he said, and the organization is continually updating it with factors such as new developments and new elevation levels.

FEMA officials said their hands are tied by that flood insurance law.

“These products are regulatory because of insurance requirements,” Bogdan said. “So we are not … allowed to include future forecasted conditions into these particular products.”

In an email statement, FEMA said “the accuracy of the flood data necessary to service the nation’s largest flood insurance program and the nation’s largest regulatory land use program is fundamentally different than the level of accuracy necessary to support First Street Foundation.”

So with all those factors in mind, should communities and homeowners trust the flood maps?

As Porter sees it, “all climate is local,” so communities need to understand their specific environment and climate conditions in order to take action. Different regions have taken very different approaches to adapting for flooding hazards — from wetlands management in Maine to a massive underground water-detention system near Chicago.

He suggested incorporating “as many data sources as you can” in order to understand your risks.

Diehl wrote that, short of “specific projections” of flood characteristics under a changing climate, communities should consider “taking a conservative approach” — for example, making 500-year or 0.2% chance floods the target to plan for.

“It is likely that the frequency of these larger-magnitude flood events, the ones that cause widespread damage, is likely to increase,” she said via email. “The relatively close spacing in time of Irene and this more recent storm highlights this reality.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: It may be years before FEMA maps show the full flood risk to Vermont communities .

This article by Aaron Calvin was first published Aug. 17 in the News & Citizen.

A month following the flood that devastated towns along the Lamoille River — and that hit the village of Johnson particularly hard — a white sheet still hangs from a Lower Main Street home that reads “We Need FEMA” along with a phone number.

The occupant of the visibly gutted and severely damaged home could not be reached at that number, but Johnson Selectboard chair Beth Foy characterized her as a “known member of the community” who left town about a week after the flood.

This week a new sheet appeared, and in the same red letters, read: “Buy Me Out Gov. Danger Zone!”

Both messages seem directed at the state and Federal Emergency Management Agency, both of which could play a role in offering funding for renovation or, in extreme cases, a buyout of flood-damaged properties at fair market value.

In July, Gov. Phil Scott indicated that buyouts would likely take place in the hardest-hit areas. The state already used American Rescue Plan Act funds to establish a Flood Resilient Communities Fund last year.

The actual process for getting help from the state or federal government is complicated, drawn out and taxing, requiring far more than a white sheet hung across a doorway. Many of those most in need of assistance are no longer living at their former residences or are overwhelmed by the stress of the disaster.

Now, they also face a stiflingly bureaucratic process.

Lamoille County suffered the greatest amount of damage per capita in the Flood of 2023, as it has come to be called, though by the numbers, the more populous Washington County saw more widespread damage.

Damage reports revealed that 392 homes in Washington County and 181 in Lamoille were deemed uninhabitable, according to data from VTDigger, while 76 Lamoille residents reported needing shelter in the flood’s aftermath.

Volunteer coordinators with United Way of Lamoille County, which has managed 300 volunteers to provide nearly 3,000 hours of volunteer assistance for flood repair at 70 homes in Johnson and 65 homes in Cambridge, have seen a gap between damage and help provided by FEMA. United Way said 421 homes are registered for assistance in Lamoille County, with 165 of those located in Johnson.

“While we appreciate FEMA working with our state representatives and communities, the processes are complicated,” volunteer coordinator Sarah Henshaw said. “People are frustrated and overwhelmed with trauma, mounting costs and lack of housing. We are working to get training by FEMA representatives in our communities and training volunteers to go house to house to support our community members with the paperwork, something that is becoming more acute as we get closer to the (Sept. 12) deadline to register with FEMA.”

The federal agency has set itself up for the long haul in Johnson. The FEMA disaster recovery center is now at Vermont State University’s McClelland Hall on College Hill for residents who need questions answered, assistance with forms and filings, and other information about the recovery process.

While $11.4 million in housing assistance has already been distributed by FEMA throughout Vermont, just $2.4 million has gone to renters, many of whom were among the most displaced by flooding in Johnson and Cambridge.

“In a state and county with a low vacancy rate and not enough affordable housing, those that can’t (or shouldn’t) return to their homes don’t have a place to stay while homes are being repaired or housing buyouts take place,” Henshaw said. “Even with funds for rental assistance, which don’t meet the needs, there aren’t enough spaces available. People are getting worried about what will happen as we get closer to the winter months, and they still don’t have repaired homes or a new place to stay.”

Renters displaced

Eddie Bressel once rented an apartment on Railroad Street in Johnson and had to be saved by his family as floodwaters rose to his chest. Bressel told a television station at the end of March that he was now living with his family.

The building on Railroad Street where Bressel lived is owned by Rene and Christina Cotnoir. The landlords were on the scene assessing their properties in the flood’s immediate aftermath.

They’re still at it. A handful of the couple’s units sustained repairable damage and eight units need to be completely rebuilt.

“We won’t be back in business for months,” Rene said.

Brian Duda, another former Railroad Street resident, is also unable to live in his former apartment as it undergoes renovation. He’s lucky enough to have landlords willing to be flexible, allowing him to break the lease if he’d like to seek housing elsewhere.

Like Bressel, he’s living with family and hasn’t found much within his price range in the Lamoille region. With few viable alternatives, he’s considering returning to Railroad Street but has some concerns.

“I definitely have concerns about whether there is hidden mold or anything like that. It could affect my health, and the risk of it flooding again and just not wanting to have to go through this whole thing again is another big factor,” Duda said.

Some have been lucky enough to have employers with housing. A handful of Stowe Mountain Resort employees, with their dependents and pets, have been put up at resort-owned housing for free, according to spokesperson Courtney DiFiore.

In Cambridge village, Jenn Huante, who was distraught after her apartment flooded as she needs to be near her sick father, will soon be able to return. But another local renter, Joshua Carpenter, recently took to an online forum to seek advice, alleging that his landlord broke his lease and wouldn’t return his damage deposit.

“It’s put a lot of people in very difficult situations, as the rental market was already really tight before this crisis,” said Jessica Hyman, an executive with the Fair Housing Project, part of the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity. “There just simply aren’t enough homes out there, and what’s out there isn’t affordable.”

The Fair Housing Project has a flood response guide for renters on its website and Hyman urged anyone whose rental situation was affected by the disaster to call the hotline at 802-864-0099.

Loans and buyouts

As landlords, the Cotnoirs qualify as a small business, and could potentially qualify for a disaster loan through the Small Business Administration, which works with FEMA to lend at more favorable terms to businesses and homeowners than typical banks. Rene Cotnoir said he was going to seek SBA help.

They aren’t alone.

Carl Dombek, a spokesperson with the administration, said that 78 applicants have been referred to the administration by FEMA, 50 of which were homeowners. Dombek said the SBA has already approved more than $800,000 in loans in Lamoille County and $9.4 million across the state.

Some homeowners are investigating whether their buildings meet the significant damage threshold, meaning renovation costs would have to be 50% or higher of the assessed value the day before the flood, to qualify for state or federal buyout.

Like FEMA, the deadline for seeking flood assistance from the administration is Sept. 12, and Dombek urged people not to wait for an insurance assessment before applying.

At a meeting hosted by regional floodplain manager Rebecca Pfeiffer in Johnson last week, Foy said nearly 50 residents sought information about buyout programs.

Nearly 30 mobile homes, mostly located in the riverside trailer parks located on the town’s western edge, have been officially condemned.

“It’s a pretty bad situation regardless of the circumstances and the benefits available,” Johnson’s Foy said of the buyout meeting and options for federal aid. “Whatever road you end up going down, it’s going to take a long time, that much was very clear.”

In Cambridge, town administrator Jonathan DeLaBruere said four or five building owners in the village had applied for buyouts.

In the meantime, some organizations are literally handing out money. In Johnson last week, on a sunny Thursday afternoon, as two men named Steven from Hickey & Foster Real Estate — firm co-founder Steven Foster and agent Steven Lawrence — sat outside Jenna’s Café handing out checks.

The checks came from funds raised by the Vermont Association of Realtors, where Foster serves as board vice-president. The two Stevens said the people receiving the checks applied for one of two disaster relief funds managed by the statewide association.

The two relief funds are the Disaster Relief Fund, which provides up to $500 in immediate financial assistance, and the Realtors Relief Foundation, which provides financial assistance for “homeownership-related challenges,” including support for renters.

Vermonters can apply for funding from both, although the Realtors Relief Foundation money — a $500,000 grant from the National Association of Realtors — takes four to five weeks, whereas checks from the other fund are cut quickly.

Those were the checks that Foster and Lawrence handed out last week on Johnson’s Main Street. Lawrence said he and Foster could have simply mailed the checks, but found face-to-face time with recipients, at a bustling hub in a flood-ravaged town, helped lift everyone’s spirits.

Tommy Gardner contributed to this report.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Housing troubles follow July flood.

LUDLOW — Sometime in the afternoon of July 9, Angela Kissell and her husband began knocking on doors in this southern Vermont town, telling residents to prepare for a possible evacuation. She’d been following forecasts of a storm that could bring as much as 5 inches of rain to Ludlow in the next two days, and the possibility of flash floods.

About 12 hours later, at 4:30 a.m. on July 10, Kissell joined other members of the Ludlow Fire Department in evacuating people from a manufactured home park as the Black River engulfed it.

And then, Kissell — who’d been Ludlow’s emergency management director for just two months — asked the municipal government to activate the Ludlow Community Center as an evacuation center.

Within the next 36 hours, dozens of people fled to local emergency shelters as Ludlow was pummeled by the statewide storm, momentarily becoming the storm’s epicenter. Some parts of Ludlow got nearly 8 inches of rain, which caused a massive mudslide downtown, spawned millions of dollars’ worth of damage to homes, businesses, roads, bridges and a state park, and temporarily cut off land access to and from the center of town.

Kissell, 48, said the experience underscored to her the need to come up with a more comprehensive plan for future emergencies in the town of 2,170 residents. “We learned so much,” she said, “that it’s just going to make us that much better for the next ones.”

Though she has been a firefighter in Ludlow since 2017, Kissell only became emergency management director on May 1. During that first day of the flooding, the learning curve was steep.

Stepping up preparations

Before moving to Ludlow with her husband in 2016, Kissell had built a career in mortgage and lending in New Hampshire. She joined the Ludlow Fire Department — where her husband was a firefighter — after seeing the need for more volunteers in a town with an aging population and with majority part-time residents. Only 10% of Ludlow homeowners lived there permanently.

At a Ludlow Selectboard meeting April 3, when Kissell formally expressed interest in becoming the town’s emergency management director, she pointed out that the local emergency operations team had not met in at least four years.

She also said the town had not addressed some emergency issues, such as opening a shelter during a storm last winter, and it needed an emergency director who would step up. She asked if Ludlow was prepared for an emergency.

The town’s longtime emergency management director, Ron Bixby, resigned on May 1. Kissell was appointed to the volunteer position on the same day.

In June, members of the town’s emergency operations team met to discuss their priorities, Kissell said. The following month, the flash floods came.

Kissell said she didn’t immediately have answers to several pressing questions as the natural disaster unfolded: What kind of support did local emergency responders need? How could they search homes cut off by the flooding? How can town workers immediately assess road conditions?

“We had no policies or procedures in place … I had nothing to go by,” she said. “I felt like I was a little dependent on all these other people who’ve been in their roles much longer than I have.” But it was Kissell who was leading the town’s emergency operations team, which includes the fire and police chiefs, town manager and head dispatcher. 

Kissell said the local emergency management plan consisted mainly of lists, such as emergency contact personnel, shelter locations and town equipment. 

Ludlow’s emergency operations team is currently assessing its next steps. The municipal manager, Brendan McNamara, said members will be holding more debriefings on the flood response and reaction. 

“The plan will be tailored to what becomes of those meetings,” said McNamara, who was appointed to his position in April.

State Rep. Logan Nicoll, D-Ludlow, said he was satisfied with the town’s emergency response to the flooding. “I thought everything went as well as it could have,” he said. “It was a difficult situation.”

‘Two flood-zone towns’

Kissell balances her emergency management role in Ludlow with her day job as town clerk in neighboring Plymouth, where she also serves as a firefighter. She missed two office days because of her flooding response work.

“When I came back up here, I felt really overwhelmed,” Kissell said outside the Plymouth Town Office this week. “I feel like I’m in two flood-zone towns.”

A portion of Plymouth, which is located about 10 miles north of Ludlow, was battered by 9 inches of rain during the July storm, according to data from the National Weather Service. Several homes were damaged and some culverts were washed out, but Kissell said local roads and bridges took the hardest hit: $3.36 million worth of necessary repairs.

In the flooding aftermath, shel said, Plymouth residents have been calling her office to ask which damaged roads have been reopened and where to get test kits to check their well water. Others, with tax season upon them, inquired about their property tax bills.

But being the emergency management director in Ludlow has helped her gain knowledge that has come in handy at the clerk’s office. For instance, in Ludlow, she developed a list of emergency contacts and resources — with the state government, Red Cross, Federal Emergency Management Agency — that she has shared in Plymouth.

Kissell said she sees a lot of work ahead as Ludlow’s emergency management director, but the July flooding gave her a crash course. She plans to write a step-by-step evacuation plan, gather supplies for emergency shelters in advance and prepare resources to guide residents in the post-calamity recovery.

“We’ll be better next time,” she said, “because there will be a next time.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: ‘There will be a next time’: Ludlow emergency management director gears up for future calamities.

Krystal Marshall loves the Montpelier townhouse she’s rented for the last two years, which abuts the North Branch of the Winooski River in the back. It’s the first place that’s felt like “an actual home,” she said, in part because she and her two kids each have had a room of their own.

The townhouse is part of the North Branch Apartments, a 39-unit complex owned by the nonprofit affordable housing developer Downstreet. The complex consists of two sets of buildings lining the river — located at 87 and 89 Elm Street — separated by a small pocket park, where Marshall and her mother recently dug up the weeds and planted flowers.

“I love the space. I loved the community here,” Marshall said. “It feels like everybody that are in these two Downstreet buildings seem to really look out for one another.”

The catastrophic flooding that hit Vermont earlier this month tore up those flowers — and caused major damage to 87 Elm, displacing all of its residents. On the door of Marshall’s townhouse, fire safety inspectors have posted a “DO NOT ENTER” sign. Alongside it was a handwritten flier advertising free legal help.

A full accounting of the destruction wrought to Vermont’s housing stock is not yet available. Only top line numbers are beginning to trickle in, and they are preliminary. But a pattern appears to be emerging: Whether it’s rental buildings in north Barre City or a manufactured home park in Berlin, some of the hardest-hit housing was also Vermont’s most affordable.

From a first look at Federal Emergency Manage Agency data, Vermont Housing Commissioner Josh Hanford said reports thus far indicate that floodwaters disproportionately impacted low-income areas.

“There (are) lots of homes on back roads — single-family homes, middle-income and higher that also (were) damaged,” he said. “But not at this scale.”

There are many reasons why that might be. Vermont’s villages have historically been built in river valleys, and denser development has been concentrated there, patterns which modern zoning codes have largely reinforced. But money has also allowed the affluent to spread out on larger lots uphill, while those with less have remained in floodplains — even as the risks have grown.

“Market pressures … are constantly pushing lower income people further and further toward options that reduce their quality of life — older, more degraded housing stock, or housing stock that churns through natural disasters more quickly,” said state Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale, D/P-Chittenden Southeast, who chairs the Senate’s Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs Committee.

“Just the lack of available affordable housing in high, dry places, is a major factor in all of this,” Ram Hinsdale said.

Not ‘going to put it on the most expensive land’ 

Those development patterns are particularly striking when it comes to Vermont’s manufactured home communities. About 10% of the state’s manufactured home lots are in floodplains, according to preliminary research from the University of Vermont. And as with Tropical Storm Irene in 2011, it appears that these parks were once again hit hard.

Kelly Hamshaw, a senior lecturer in the Department of Community Development and Applied Economics at UVM, and a Ph.D. student focused on resilience and manufactured home communities, said there are a few reasons why that is. For one, these manufactured home communities largely pre-date regulations that might have prevented them from being located there. And second, the land was cheap.

“You have all of these late ’60s communities that popped up in places where, if it was going to be affordable housing, they weren’t necessarily going to put it on the most expensive land,” she said.

Even affordable housing developers, who are subsidized by public funds and private philanthropy (and aren’t trying to turn a profit), struggle to acquire property at reasonable prices. Marshall’s home at 87 Elm, for example, only came into Downstreet’s possession because of a prior flood. The nonprofit had been pursuing the North Branch apartments for years, but couldn’t get the owner to sell for a price it could afford until 1992, when a late winter flood devastated the capital’s downtown.

“We were concerned about gentrification of Montpelier — which actually was right on the money,” said Rick DeAngelis, who spearheaded the North Branch project as the then-head of the Central Vermont Community Land Trust, which later rebranded as Downstreet. The land trust was “so relieved” to finally acquire the housing, he said, that it “maybe didn’t focus enough” on future risks.

“We didn’t really think a lot about that — that we were going to be into this coming global warming crisis and it would flood every, you know, 10 years,” he said.

While Downstreet may have underestimated the risk at that time, it did not exactly ignore them. The buildings at 89 Elm — on the other side of the pocket park from Marshall — were so badly damaged from the 1992 flood that they were torn down afterward and rebuilt above the floodplain, according to DeAngelis. But because 87 Elm was merely rehabbed, flood resiliency work was more limited. 

Elevating 89 Elm largely worked. Only the basement flooded, and most tenants were not displaced, although an inspection this week found that three units would need to be vacated temporarily because of high moisture levels.

But at 87 Elm, flooding tipped over an oil tank, damaged four first-floor units and affected building systems located in the basement. The entire building has been emptied, and Marshall said she’s been told it could be weeks, if not months, before she can return.

Angie Harbin, Downstreet’s executive director, noted that the vast majority of the nonprofit’s housing stock was spared. Of more than 500 units, only 26 were evacuated, displacing 52 residents.  

Hanford, Vermont’s housing commissioner, said he’s actually far more worried about privately owned rental properties, which aren’t subject to the flood-resilient building standards that publicly funded affordable housing projects must follow. 

He pointed, for example, to a much newer Downstreet development, the Taylor Street apartments. It sits atop of Montpelier’s new transit center, and was completely unscathed by the flood — despite being sited just a block away from where the Winooski River meets its North Branch tributary. Floodwaters completely inundated the area, but because the housing units themselves were elevated, they weren’t impacted at all.

But the vast majority of renters don’t live in developments managed by nonprofits like Downstreet, he noted. Instead, they’re in privately owned properties rented out for profit. Those landlords will now have to take out a loan from the federal government to get their units back online.

“I’m fearful that some of these will not be quickly repaired, and make addressing our housing situation even harder,” he said. 

‘Where are they going to find the units?’

Vermont is in the midst of a well-documented and acute housing crisis. The state’s rental vacancy rates are among the lowest in the nation — and its rates of homelessness the highest. 

Hanford said Tuesday FEMA has already verified damage to about 850 residential structures. Even if most of those buildings are repairable, he said, the people who were living there need somewhere to stay in the interim. (Separately, some 4,000 Vermonters have already reported to 211 that their residences were damaged, with 750 saying their homes are uninhabitable.) 

FEMA will provide impacted residents temporary rental assistance, but the federal agency has been scouring for units and coming up empty. The agency even expanded its search to look for rentals at 150% of the fair market rents set by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development — and still could only find 149 units, according to Hanford.

“So if we’ve just displaced over 800 households or more, where are they going to find the units, when we have that sort of supply?” Hanford said. “How are those vouchers going to even work?” (At a town hall on Wednesday, one official with the U.S. Department of Agriculture offered this potential solution: Accept a publicly subsidized unit — out of state.)

At a special flood recovery hearing held by state lawmakers on Thursday, Sue Minter, the executive director of the anti-poverty nonprofit Capstone Community Action, noted that 300 to 400 renters have been impacted by flooding in Barre City, where more than half of all households are renters.

“We know that (there) is going to be a significant increase of people with nowhere to go,” she said. “And it isn’t going to be a quick fix because there (is) no housing to rent short term.” 

The state should advocate for short-term non-congregate housing from FEMA, she said, emphasizing that the problem would likely continue to reveal itself to be even more acute than initially estimated as more properties are inspected and deemed uninhabitable.

Emotional testimony a few hours later from Jake Hemmerick, the Granite City’s newly elected mayor, underlined the point. He emphasized that these were “fuzzy” and early projections, but as much as 10% of Barre City’s housing stock might have been impacted, he said. Even worse: The people who were flooded will have the hardest time bouncing back.

“My sense is the neighborhoods that were the hardest hit were the least resourced,” he said.

At Downstreet, Harbin said the plan is to get every single unit back online — including the ones that flooded. The nonprofit will look for ways to mitigate future damage, she said, but it “simply cannot lose the housing stock.”

Marshall, at 87 Elm, said she plans to move back in. She acknowledged feeling nervous about it, but said she sees no other options.

“If I left here, I would be at the B.O.R. with everybody else,” she said, referring to Barre City’s municipal auditorium, where the Red Cross has staged an emergency shelter to serve area residents impacted by the flood.

Marshall is temporarily staying in a smaller apartment also owned by Downstreet, which happened to be vacant. She noted that, relative to many of her former neighbors who have also been displaced, she’s one of the lucky ones. Some are renting Airbnbs, couch surfing or staying in shelters. (One household has found a permanent alternative, according to Harbin.)

Indeed, DeAngelis, who is now co-director of the Central Vermont shelter network Good Samaritan Haven, told VTDigger that last week he ran into a woman he recognized at the Red Cross shelter. She had once stayed at Good Sam’s Berlin shelter, and after months of searching, finally found an apartment — at 87 Elm.

“What are you doing here?” DeAngelis recalled asking her. “And she said, ‘I got flooded out.’” 

She is now back where she started: a room at Good Sam.

Read the story on VTDigger here: The flood waters disproportionately hit Vermont’s affordable housing stock — at the worst time.