Housing

Barre motel to become homeless shelter

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An $8 million state grant will transform the Quality Inn in Barre into a hotel for individuals and families experiencing homelessness, according to a news release from Downstreet Housing & Community Development.

Downstreet will purchase, renovate, and operate the site.

The inn has already been serving homeless since the start of the pandemic, according to the Times Argus. The site currently has 42 rooms.

Downstreet is the housing agency that operates several multi-unit residential properties and a mobile home park in Bradford. – July 9 Journal-Opinion

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Categories: Housing

17 replies »

  1. Keep building more & more & more. Keep flagging them into VT from out of the state and out of the country. Keep doing so as you intentionally ruin the economy, destroy the working class, and install socialism & its cousin socialized medicine. It’s been the plan for the DNC’s social experiment called “Vermont”.

    It’s worked perfectly everywhere else it’s been tried. Oh, wait. Scratch that last part. It’s never worked anywhere in the world.

    The Supermajority: Traitors to the USA and full-on Communists hiding behind their moniker of “democrat socialists”.

    As Elon Musk stated- “What is the penalty for traitors again?”

  3. Have to re-read Rob Rober’s article
    VT–What “Paying Just a Little More” really meanshttps://mail.yahoo.com/d/folders/1/messages/AG58U3dNm05hZowoMwUoUIgynEc

    Interesting statement by Sen Mark MacDonald “But, as Senator Mark MacDonald admitted in a moment of candor about he and his colleagues under the Golden Dome, “We don’t do things based on helping poor people.” No, they certainly don’t.”

    Just a little bit of your money hear and a little bit more there it doesn’t mean a thing., In Montpelier they think they are Robin Hood. Why aren’t their salaries reduced by the amount of taxes they apply to the serfs.

  4. Will there be a state grant to reimburse the nearby residential and business neighbors for the predictable burglaries, car breaks, stolen bicycles, shoplifting losses etc?
    This model of public money to purchase entire motels has worked so well in Shelburne along Rt. 7…just read the weekly police blotter.

  5. Just an after thought, bringing all the “homeless” in the city, state, not counted are the services required. more police, increase of school students, medical facilities and staff, more food, more laundry, killings, robberies, disease, higher taxes to support it all, etc. It almost like creating another city of people within a city. Just providing housing is the minor sacrifice people will have to make. But the people instigating it all are “I feel good” about helping people, yet destroy another aspect they don’t realize. Have the locals had a chance to vote for this and take it from there? It has worked well in other cites.

    • Those people who experience societal wealth-guilt and “feel good” about setting up such facilities live nowhere near them. Shelburne is the best example. There are no semi-permanent homeless shelters built on Shelburne Point, along the lake toward Charlotte or up on Spear Street.
      Advocates will argue that they need to be down on Shelburne Road, “close to services and the bus line”. Just ask the proprietors of those “services”: how many folks have bolted out the door lately with an armload of beer, snacks and resalable items like power tools etc.

  6. Where is Montpelier getting the $8,000,000 dollars. Oh yes, the new taxe increases that our Representative’s in Montpelier made sure we will be responsible to pay. Let’s do the math. There are 42 units, and Montpelier extended a $8,000,000 grant.
    $8,000,000 ÷ 42 = a little more than $190,000 per room. SERIOUSLY ❗ These are single rooms. Somebody is getting richer, and somebody is getting poorer, at the hands of the Representative’s you put in Montpelier. Need to modify a room in your house ? A new kitchen, with new appliances (stove, refrigerator, dishwasher), new cabinets, new countertop, and flooring will cost a little north of $75,000.

    • Kitchen price quoted is for an elaborate large kitchen. Average small home can get away at a cost of $50,000

  8. To suggest that 8 million dollars is needed to open functioning rooms to the homeless, or that 8 million is required to update the building that is already functioning as a hotel/motel is shear idiocy. With 8 million dollars a 2 acre parcel could be bought, and services to sites placed, and 100 small homes ( made of modular fireproof carbon sequestering hempcrete?) could be placed in a ring for a community and gardens and play space in the middle. Here the sleight of hand is the cost per square foot they will pay, and how much the NONProfit ( but extremely profitable for the players) will net the principles. The grant of course coming from dollars loaned to the taxpayers, and of course the cost of services as well dumped onto taxpayers. This, without considering the ongoing- these players need helpless people to continue to launder money for themselves and justify it as humanitarian service. This is their true intent. A homeless I met woman on the campaign trail confirmed that “they make money off of the homeless”, that is indeed what they are doing here. Creating economic conditions of homelessness and then making money ‘solving’ it. Instead, if you suggested that a farm of 50 acres was purchased for say 3 million and 1 million used to establish onsite bathing, toilet and washing facilities and then keep the rest in reserve for the homeless to be given training to grow their own corn and their own tomatoes and host their own chickens and create land security that turning into a functioning farm with capable people they would fight you tooth and nail. Even though that is exactly what would really help everybody. The homeless would be land secure for life, have work and if they want to eat, that is a great motivator to go out and tend chickens. All we see here is the amount moved from 6 million to 8 million, in Brattleboro they bought and existing hotel and put 6 million, maybe 1.5 million into it to accommodate homeless people and then found workarounds to deposit the overage to the good ole boys, they used the same amount in Montpelier. It’s corruption in pretense of humanitarian aid.

  9. If you build it, they will come….and the will!

    Somewhere along the line we have missed the accountability requirement for this segment of our society. Anybody chasing down the dads or moms who have abandoned their family, substance abuse is now fashionable and gets a pass( one unit will be set aside for a needle exchange program, another for a detox unit, another for counseling, ….), unemployment is at 2% plus or minus- where are the employers lined up holding job fairs that these folks can go back into making a contribution , I didn’t like my 2d grade teacher so I quit school and have been preparing for this my whole life…. You make up the need or excuse dejure.

    If there is mental illness build a facility for that care requirement and address that need.

    It would appear that there are no limits on the benefit. Once you are in you probably will be a guest of the State of Vermont for life. There is a reason that the amount of homelessness in VT has more than tripled in the last few years and is not just because housing costs are up. We are more than welcoming.

    Not to worry there will be additional units coming to an site near you.

  10. State Grant= Taxpayer Funded, in case anyone is confused. As others have pointed out, the cost doesn’t match the job

  11. In my earlier comment at 10:35am, “Have the locals had a chance to vote for this and take it from there? It has worked well in other cites.” HAS SHOULD BE HASN’T” Big fingers didn’t hit all the keys, sorry.

    Also HAVE to comment, the comments on this page are very good and enlightening, indicating there’s a viable backbone and common sense intelligence among some people. Politics is like a pendulum that swings to it’s Apogees at both ends of it’s traversing. Negative politicians will overrun it’s dominance. A quote “give a Liberal enough rope and they will hang themselves”. Liberals that have moved to the state and have taken over are reactionaries, not visionaries. We are in the reactionary cycle. Vermont was a visionary state with many patents (most in the US), hard working people, low taxes and a good life and great education for the kids indicating liberty. I was in that world so can comment, “The Greatest Generation”. Noted some comments from reactionaries that their “Modus Operandi” is to degrade others thereby elevating themselves as “achievers” yet accomplishing nothing. I read the comments and chuckle, “there’s a wasted life”, they depend on others for survival, (run to Canada). I put my life on the line for them, they wouldn’t for anyone..

  13. Yes, they are homeless, not helpless, since they are on the government tit, I see there is plenty of work along the interstate that could be done mowing, raking, and just some green up ” work “, maybe that will give them some incentive.

    Nah, it’s easier to stay in the room and watch TV, it’s free to them, but everyone else goes to work and pays their taxes……………..sounds fair, Nah !!!

    How many of these poor souls are from Vermont ???? , not many if any, they are here for the liberal programs like this boondoggle, it’s only money and you’re the money tree.

  14. Since its conception, the Democratic Party has been the evil party of slavery. This is just another way that they increase their plantation size and the number of slaves to the state. Democrats give people just enough money so they can satiate themselves with booze, drugs and junk food. They force poor children into government schools where they are taught that their rights come from the government not God. Then some sort of Stockholm syndrome takes over and the slaves to the state keep voting for their slave masters. Non of this is by coincidence and organized crime members, I mean politicians, are becoming wealthy.