Burlington pod community looks back on its first-year

BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – Burlington’s pod community is now nearly one year old, but has the experimental approach to provide shelter for people experiencing homelessness worked?

Nearly one year after opening on Elmwood Avenue in Burlington’s Old North End, the city’s pod community is at capacity, with a waitlist of over 100.

“The number of people who could have no place to go — this is so much better. This is the success of that,” said Michael Monte with the Champlain Housing Trust, which manages the pod community. He says around 35 people are living here at any one time.

Alcohol and drugs are forbidden, no guests are allowed, and residents have to check in and out. Monte says over the past year they’ve had 32 discharges, 27 of those being involuntary. “At the beginning, we had a lot of involuntary leaving that sort of settled down quite a bit,” he said. “People who are living there who are successful can move on to permanent housing.”

Monte points to five people who have found more stable housing, whether in permanent housing or with family. He says two other people are ready to move out soon. “This is not a bad transition. I would not want to do this, or we should not be doing this permanently. Let’s hope that we can move to a place where there’s enough affordable housing for people to be able to be housed permanently and get the support they need,” he said.

Since the pods opened, neighbors have reported a sharp uptick in negative behavior around the area including drug dealing, drug use, and general loitering. Evan Langfeldt, who owns low-income apartments directly adjacent to the pods says it’s been difficult. “I think we have to acknowledge that this has not gone the way people had hoped it would and maybe anticipated it would. And so I think we also have to acknowledge when something hasn’t worked and try plan B or throw some additional resources at it. And that’s, I think, what has been most frustrating to us,” he said. Langfeldt says the city hasn’t been accountable when it comes to protecting the neighborhood from negative impacts that the pods, or those loitering near them, bring.

“All of the city departments, including CEDO and the police department, work in collaboration to understand where the pockets of challenge might be across the city. And I think that we have a commitment from the police department to have an ongoing effort to make sure that our neighborhoods are safe across Burlington,” said Sarah Russell, the city’s special assistant to end homelessness

The $1.4 million-a-year project is primarily state-funded. Officials agree it’s not a long-term solution to the housing problem. They say they had hoped to move residents out faster but that the winding down of the state’s hotel-motel program created a bottleneck in moving people into affordable, permanent housing.