BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – Burlington’s experimental pod shelter community has now housed people for just over 18 months, but are residents making progress transitioning to permanent housing? The pods in Burlington’s Old North End were built to help put a roof over the heads of people who had nowhere else to go. Officials say they are still doing that, as well as acting as a bridge for more than a dozen residents to find permanent housing.
Brian Bowles and his dog Miso were some of the first residents to find permanent housing after living in the pod community.
“It’s just heaven. We love it, we absolutely love it,” Bowles said. He says having a place of his own has helped his mental health. “This definitely stabilized it due to the different types of trauma that I’ve been through. You know that now I have a place that I can actually go through that trauma.”
Bowles says he lived in a tent before he lived in the pods and was even apprehensive about making that move. But he says he soon found the confidence in the stability and support it provided. “There’s a lot of good people there that helped me, very trustworthy people and people that actually cared. And that meant a lot to me because I could feel that they cared in their heart,” he said. Now he has a place all of his own in Essex.
The Champlain Housing Trust, the group that manages the pods for the city, says there have been just under 100 people who lived in the prefab shelters since they opened. There were growing pains the first summer with bad behavior attracted to the neighborhood. But CHT’s Michael Monte says that has decreased.
“We had some bumps from, security issues in the neighborhood. I think at this point, I think we’re pretty good. We, you know, things do happen on occasion, but we really don’t have that many responses to the pods over the last, you know, certainly six months or a year,” he said.
He says the city is now exploring extending the pod program beyond its original three-year contract to help house around 30 people at a time. The long-term plan is to build permanent housing at the location.
Shawn Conroy has lived in the pods for five months and says there are a variety of tenants. “They’re not all drug abusers or mentally ill. They were functional people trying to make their lives functional again. And because of places like this, they have that opportunity,” he said. Conroy says he stays away from any negative behavior and works with a caseworker to find housing and get services. “My goal is to find somewhere secure, safe, and affordable so that I can live just like everybody else on the planet. We all want a roof over our heads, within our means, that we can win at.”