Burlington homeless say they depend on parking garage food program

BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – Burlington’s mayor on Monday signed a resolution allocating $10,000 to help a group that distributes free food downtown move out of the Marketplace Garage by a July deadline.

Every day, from 1 to 2 p.m., the group Food Not Cops provides free meals and other essential items to those in need.

Chuck Root is homeless and is among those we spoke to who say they rely on the service. “I would just think people would see that there’s a solution here, not a problem,” he said.

Root frequents the Marketplace Garage, where the group has offered free meals for the last five years. “This is the one thing I can count on every day. So, I don’t eat three meals a day because it’s too much, and I don’t have that opportunity. It’s free food which is a basic need for humans. So, I would just think more people should support that,” Root said.

But the location has drawn ire from downtown businesses who say it sometimes makes the area feel unsafe. Following a letter last month penned by more than 100 downtown businesses, they called on Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak to move the location away from the garage. After several weeks of negotiations with the City Council, she said that a compromise was not possible.

“The core thing that runs through, though, is that mutual aid is incredibly important for Burlington to have online that is reliable, that’s able for folks to easily find and access in the center city, and that is filling a real need,” Mulvaney-Stanak said. In response, she allocated $10,000 to help facilitate the group’s move to a new spot.

City Council President Ben Traverse, D-Ward 5, agrees it’s an essential service and will focus on finding a new spot. “I would hope we could all agree that a parking garage is not an ideal location for food service, and I think there’s many other locations centrally located and accessible to the downtown that we can look into here,” he said.

The resolution signed by the mayor at Monday night’s meeting also asks the city to explore improving traffic flow around construction, expanding parking programs, and increasing the police presence downtown.

The mayor now has until July 14th to come up with a plan to move the food program out of the garage.

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