Bennington County Coalition for the Homeless

Bennington County Coalition for the Homeless desperately needs your help.

Hi, I'm Chloe and I'm the Executive Director of BCCH, Bennington County Vermont’s only emergency homeless shelter. In 2022, we housed and provided essential services to over two hundred Vermonters - men, women, and children. We have faced many challenges the last few years including managing Covid outbreaks, staffing our sites, and securing adequate funding. Currently, we lack the funding to many of our operational expenses. For just one example, our shelter desperately needs to be weatherized. We need to come up with $3,800 to cover this - which is just one of many maintenance and repair expenses we have in the near future to keep both shelters running.

BCCH strives to prevent homelessness by providing emergency overnight shelter, short-term emergency housing, and a wide range of other resources. We offer much more than just a bed. BCCH provides food, laundry, clothing, job application assistance, case management, and referrals to all other needed supports. Our two shelters include our adult shelter at 966 Main Street which houses sixteen adult guests and our Norton House Family Shelter which serves nine families. Both our shelters usually operate at maximum capacity and turn people away weekly – if not daily.

In addition to the shelters, we serve many others experiencing homelessness through motel and community outreach and offer drop-in services for those in need. We offer drop-in use of our kitchen, laundry, and bathroom. We also support people who come in and warm up, meet with a case manager, apply for services, and need help seeking or applying for housing or employment.

I am creating this GoFundMe because we are really in a financial pinch right now. I know many of you are too and if you can't give anything today, I totally understand. But if you can give, please know that it will go a long way in helping your Vermont neighbors. We do everything we can to serve the residents of Bennington County who are struggling, but right now, we are the ones struggling. And we can’t survive without you.