LEBANON — The city is among the state’s largest communities without a homeless shelter, according to a report the Human Services Department presented to the Lebanon City Council at its meeting this week.

But that may soon change.

On Wednesday, the City Council, by a unanimous vote, directed City Manager Shaun Mulholland to identify feasible sites for a seasonal shelter that can house up to 15 individuals, as well as cost estimates for construction, to present to the council “as soon as possible” for consideration.

For now, the closest shelters are the Upper Valley Haven in White River Junction and another in Claremont, but the shelter beds are often full. Demand for housing of all kinds in Lebanon and beyond far outstrips supply.

“The situation this coming winter is going to be worse because we don’t have the hotels,” Mulholland said in a recording of the meeting, referring to a program that funded hotel rooms for unhoused people during the pandemic. “That safety net is gone, and there is nothing in its place.”

A count conducted in Lebanon on Jan. 25 found 85 people in the city of about 15,000 lacked permanent places to stay, according to the Human Services report. Of those, 62 were in a hotel room, 16 were living in a place not intended for human habitation, five people were couch surfing and two were sheltered but “imminently homeless.”

Of those living in hotels, 69% were funded by the New Hampshire Emergency Rental Assistance Program, which has since ended for everyone except families with children. The program ends for families next month.

Nearly half of the people who were experiencing homelessness on Jan. 25 were doing so for the first time, the report said.

Among the newly homeless are Paul and Marilyn Morey, who are both 66. There were two other cars parked at the park and ride near Exit 18 on I-89 in Lebanon, where the Moreys parked on Monday, their first night sleeping in their car after being evicted from an apartment at 22 Maple St., in West Lebanon.

The Moreys have been unable to find another place to live in Lebanon that fits their needs and their price point after first receiving an eviction notice in November when the 13-unit property was sold and the new owner announced plans to renovate and raise rents. Working with Lebanon attorney Patrick Hayes, the Moreys were able to get extensions to stay in their one-bedroom apartment through Monday, but now time has run out.

“There’s nothing available for senior citizens,” Paul Morey said of rentals in Lebanon in a phone interview this week.

The Moreys join fellow former 22 Maple St., resident Angelo Bermudez, who moved out in December and has been unable to find a permanent place to live. He has been couch surfing and staying at area hotels and also has spent some nights in his car.

“Everybody’s on a waiting list. I’m going to be waiting a while,” Bermudez said in a phone interview this week of his living situation. “... I take it day by day.”

Bermudez, a veteran and custodial worker in his “mid-40s and change,” said he is looking for a new rental for $900 a month or less.

“Anything more than that (and) Jon Bon Jovi better come in there and play for me,” he said.

But finding something in that price range is tough. Between 2017 and 2022, median rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Grafton County rose nearly 50% to about $1,700 a month, according to New Hampshire Housing. That was the steepest increase in the state.

Meanwhile, without a place to live, Bermudez had to give his cat, Lady Alice, to a shelter. She was readopted by another family. Around the same time he lost his apartment, he also lost his car and for a while had to walk or take a bus to get around. He has since found a new car, but he finds it difficult to get enough rest.

“I’ve not had a decent night’s sleep in months,” he said.

In addition to the seasonal shelter, Lebanon Human Services Director Lynne Goodwin and her team also recommend that the city work to develop a year-round, low-barrier emergency shelter such as the one the Haven is trying to develop at the former 25,000 Gifts building in White River Junction.

She also recommends a separate year-round emergency shelter; a site for as many as 10 micro-dwellings; 20 single-room occupancy units; transitional housing for those in recovery from addiction and those with mental illness; permanent supportive housing for 20 people; landlord incentives to lease to low-income households; and partnering with developers to build workforce housing with the goal of 20% of all new rental units being affordable for households earning less than 50% of the median household income for the Lebanon area, which is about $74,000.

“Ideally this would be recommendation No. 1,” Goodwin said of the new affordable units. “But this is probably the longest time frame to come to fruition. If we’re really going to put a dent in the homeless population in our city, we need to create more affordable housing in Lebanon.”

For his part, Morey said he and his wife have found it difficult to find a new apartment that includes parking for both their car and their truck. They want to stay on the New Hampshire side of the core of the Upper Valley. He has a booth at Consign & Design in West Lebanon where he sells records from his vinyl collection.

“There is nothing available anywhere unless you want to pay $3,000 a month and have one car,” Morey said.

Waiting lists for rental units in the Upper Valley are long.

Ditha Alonso, executive director of the Lebanon Housing Authority, said it takes about a year to come off the waiting list for one of the authority’s 166 public housing units, for which people must be income-qualified. The authority has even fewer units available than usual now that seven units at Rogers House, a senior living complex in downtown Lebanon owned by the authority, are offline due to a fire there last month. It can take as long as eight years to get a federal Section 8 voucher, which can follow the voucher holder to a privately owned unit.

But it’s even getting more difficult to get landlords to accept the authority’s 166 Section 8 vouchers, she said. The authority has started an incentive program to encourage landlords to accept the vouchers, offering $1,200, $100 per month of an annual lease, at the time a contract is signed.

Alonso said the authority’s waiting lists have grown as more and more Upper Valley residents are being evicted when the rental property they are living in is sold and remodeled to be rented out at a higher rate, sometimes as much as three times what they were charging previously.

“Then the former residents that were there, they can’t even afford that,” she said. “... Most of the people on our waiting list, they’re all desperate. (...) That’s what we deal with a lot lately.”

With the 44-unit Heater Landing on Heater Road, the authority built the only new affordable housing units to come on line in Lebanon last year, according to the Human Services Department’s report. The rest of the 380 rental units completed in Lebanon last year were market rate. It took just 2½ months to fill the Heater Landing units, Alonso said.

Alonso said she encourages people who receive eviction notices to get on every waiting list they can, but she acknowledged that it’s difficult. The authority does offer preference for people affected by natural disasters and for households with children in area schools, but otherwise people have to wait their turn, she said.

“I am not a mind reader,” Alonso said. “I don’t have a crystal ball to predict when your turn will come. I just feel so bad.”

Waiting lists for units belonging to the White River Junction-based Twin Pines Housing also are lengthy these days, said Andrew Winter, the nonprofit housing developer’s executive director. In some cases, there are hundreds of people waiting for units, especially smaller ones.

“One of the challenges is that sometimes folks may be living in New Hampshire and they may not be able to move easily to Vermont for a variety of reasons,” Winter said. “That just makes it even harder.”

Twin Pines has three projects in the works this summer in White River Junction: a 42-unit project on Prospect Street, across from the Listen Thrift store; a plan to convert the former Fairfield Inn on Ballardvale Drive to 40 apartments; and 18 units for the chronically homeless to be located near the Haven’s shelter on Route 5. The organization also is working to develop 60 units of workforce housing in New London.

While the White River Junction projects are expected to open next year, Winter acknowledged that that’s a long time to wait for people who are currently homeless.

There are plenty of obstacles to building new affordable housing. Winter pointed to rising construction costs, a lack of available labor and higher interest rates, “all of which is making units more expensive, and unfortunately also some projects are just not going to happen,” he said.

Obstacles can sometimes be overcome. Randy Purtteman, an Army veteran in his early 70s, also received an eviction notice for his home at 22 Maple St., last Veterans Day. But with some help from Veterans Affairs, he was able to move into one of the newly renovated units, where he continues to live.

Purtteman, who has Parkinson’s disease, was diagnosed with cancer and has had two surgeries since mid-December. With the VA’s help, he now pays $1,500 a month, which is up from $1,000 that he was previously paying, for a larger renovated unit. He said his landlord has installed a ramp and made sure that the doorways inside his apartment, which has new appliances and flooring, are wide enough for a walker or wheelchair.

“When I first was given the letter, I thought it would be a disastrous few months,” Purtteman said.

He said the assistance from the VA should last for two years, at which point he’s hoping to have a car paid off so he will have more money to put toward rent.

“I think I’ll be able to handle it in a couple of years,” he said. “It would have been nice to be able to stay at the rent I was paying. (But) with all the renovations that he’s done, it’s worth the extra money.”

Staff writer Patrick Adrian contributed to this report.

Nora Doyle-Burr can be reached at ndoyleburr@vnews.com or 603-727-3213.

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