BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – Several Burlington City Council members Thursday said they were not aware of the city’s ongoing efforts to provide support to homeless encampments along Burlington’s waterfront.
“We became aware of that yesterday,” said City Council President Ben Traverse. The Democrat says the council learned of those services at a city budget meeting Wednesday where mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak proposed spending $50,000 to support encampments this summer. “This, to me, is humane and an attempt to be strategic in the short-term,” the mayor said.
The Progressive mayor says this is part of the bigger statewide issue with housing and Burlington needs more help, adding that the city needs to have a more organized approach to how people are camping. “Folks are working across departments to come up with a proposal that I will bring to the City Council on how do we support folks that are camping on public lands,” Mulvaney-Stanak said.
It’s not the first time the city has supported an area to camp with dumpsters and bathrooms. Just a few years ago, the city let the Sears Lane homeless encampment grow. But after tormenting the neighborhood with crime, drug use, and violence, the city shut it down.
It’s a lesson Traverse says the city needs to remember. “If we support the growth of encampments like that, I am concerned about unintended consequences and the growth of an encampment actually perhaps being detrimental to the health and safety of the folks living there,” he said.
He says in meeting the needs of the homeless population, the city must also make sure everyone is able to enjoy the public parks and waterfront.