I am disappointed we haven't been able to come up with a better system: rural/ small towns tend to have small unsheltered populations, so seasonal shelters aren't a great fit either. The facilities have to be family friendly shelters or choose to be for adults only so that limits the populations it can serve (and small towns are rarely large enough to accommodate two separate shelters). It's difficult to find a pool of volunteers large enough to staff (and because it's overnights, is even more difficult to find volunteers), the insurance for temporary shelters is expensive, and its sometimes difficult to find locations for these temporary shelters (think "not in my backyard" now with the added difficulty in the rental market) Hotel vouchers seemed promising because they allowed for privacy, decreased worries about location/ volunteers/insurance. The amount of money it costs either way to house unsheltered populations is very high and especially problematic in rural New England (if we had higher population density and better public transportation some of the costs/issues would be decreased). Our money would be better spent toward keeping people in their own housing- whether that's through a guaranteed income, subsidies, job training, caseworkers who could assist people in getting jobs or housing or navigating fuel/ for assistance, or more plentiful and affordable housing, I don't know.... This is a complaint I've heard from other people who have experienced homelessness in VT, but I don't know what the solution is because fines or inspectors would probably not create better temporary housing, just less housing (these slum motels would not change, they'd just stop accepting these long term guests).