Two Chittenden County motels are kicking out their state-sponsored homeless guests next weekend so they can rent rooms to eclipse visitors who can pay premium prices.

The Days Inn in Colchester and the Anchorage Inn in South Burlington have informed the state that their rooms won’t be available on Saturday and Sunday nights. The three-minute total solar eclipse, at around 3:30 p.m. on Monday, is expected to draw as many as 160,000 visitors to Vermont, and many Burlington-area hotels were booked solid weeks ago. Those with rooms are commanding unusually high prices.

The move will affect 46 households in the state's General Assistance Program that rely on the motel rooms for shelter.



“A lot of us don’t know what we’re doing those two nights,” said Jessica Robishaw, who has been living at the Days Inn since mid-December. Robishaw said she’s an assistant manager at a gas station down the road. Her family lives an hour or more away, so staying with them is not an option. She noted that the Days Inn has also asked its guests, housed through the state’s General Assistance program, to remove their belongings from the property.

“Where are we going to put our stuff?” Robishaw asked. “Everyone is freaking out.”
It's just the latest twist in a yearslong saga involving motel guests who are homeless and the Vermont Department for Children and Families, which administers the motel housing program. Vermont is currently paying $80 a night for rooms, said Miranda Gray, deputy commissioner of the department’s Economic Services Division. The state is using about 70 motels around the state.

It’s not unheard-of for motels to ask state-sponsored guests to leave, Gray said, noting that it often happens around college graduation time in Burlington.

“They do have every right to do that as a private business,” she said. “We know it’s challenging, certainly, for [homeless motel guests], but I think it’s been at least clearly communicated to them.”
In the future, the state will seek a more secure situation for homeless families, said DCF Commissioner Chris Winters.

"It is our hope that we can negotiate longer-term agreements with hotels soon that include the same sorts of standards we would want of traditional shelters — like you can’t kick someone out just to make money during an eclipse!” Winters wrote in an email.

The eclipse is expected to be good news for many of Vermont’s businesses, particularly those that cater to visitors. A report from State Treasurer Mike Pieciak estimated that the economic impact of the celestial event could be as high as $50 million, depending on the weather forecast, which currently calls for a sunny April 8.

“This will be a boon to our State’s coffers, with millions of dollars in tax revenues likely to be collected,” Pieciak said in a press release.

Robishaw said she loves the security of her lodging at the Days Inn. She earns $700 per week from her gas station job, she said, and is on a waiting list of six to 12 months for affordable housing. The program is her only housing option near her job at the moment. She's on probation, which includes rules about where she can live.

The state has an agreement with only one motel in the Newport region she hails from. It's the Border Motel, in Derby.

"So they send us to Barre, Rutland, Burlington," Robishaw said.

Clarification, April 2, 2024: A previous version of this story did not specify the exact number of households in the General Assistance Program that will need to move.