With roughly 800 people reportedly sleeping outside, including 27 children in Fairfield County alone, the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness (CCEH) was joined by lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle seeking an additional $20 million to strengthen the state’s homeless support system.
“We are experiencing a historic rate of homelessness at this point,” said Rep. Eleni Kavros-DeGraw, D-Avon. “It is unconscionable that we have anyone outside in the weather that we’ve been experiencing, but it certainly is more so when we consider the number of families we have outside right now.”
According to numbers gathered by the CCEH, homelessness in Connecticut has increased 14 percent year over year since 2021 and there is not enough space at the shelters. The organization states that evictions due to rising rent and a higher cost of living due to inflation has pushed more and more people onto the streets and, in some cases, into the woods.
“We cannot uncouple homelessness from our affordable housing crisis,” said Sarah Fox, CEO of CCEH. “Today we see more people falling into homelessness than ever before due to housing scarcity and rising rents.”
This is the second such press conference in which lawmakers and nonprofits were raising the alarm over the increase in homelessness and people sleeping outside during the winter.
Rep. Geraldo Reyes, D-Waterbury, said he believes the official number of homeless is understated due to undocumented individuals in the state who are afraid to “come out of the shadows.”
“One thing I haven’t heard here is the influx of immigrants, undocumented people that are here in the state of Connecticut. I’m here to tell you that 800 number is majorly under-counted,” Reyes said. “They’re going to continue to come. They can’t afford to stay in New York, they’re coming, and for those of you who haven’t realized this yet in your neighborhoods or cities, it’s coming.”
The lawmakers and nonprofits who serve the homeless are seeking an additional $20 million, including an annual $5 million every year to help shelter people during the winter. They are also seeking $7.4 million to pay shelter employees, $3.6 million to maintain staff at Coordinated Access Networks and $2 million in flexible funding subsidies, among other funding requests.
CCEH says they need reliable funding that arrives on time and can support not only the homeless, but the people serving them.
Rep. Tony Scott, R-Trumbull, who serves on the General Assembly’s Housing Committee, said the committee appropriated $50 million for homelessness, but got less than that under the final budget.
“We’re back here again, asking for more,” Scott said. “We know that this goes across party lines, and we need to do what we can for the most vulnerable.”
Lawmakers are about to enter a short legislative session, generally used for budget adjustments, but with requests for more funding coming from many sides and little wiggle room in the budget, Gov. Ned Lamont and the General Assembly may have a lot of negotiating to do.
There is very little room left under the state’s spending cap and some lawmakers have begun calling for Connecticut to adjust its fiscal guardrails to free up more money to fund programs. During a press conference regarding higher education funding, Senate President Pro-Tem Martin Looney, D-New Haven, called for adjusting the revenue threshold for the state’s volatility cap while maintaining the guardrail structure.
Rep. Holly Cheeseman, R-East Lyme, ranking member on the Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee, said Connecticut residents deserve a “place they can call home.”
“I would encourage us to find a way, given the constraints we face, to make that a reality in Connecticut,” Cheeseman said.
Gov. Ned Lamont recently announced the formation of an inter-agency council to address homelessness that will focus on improving the state’s response to homelessness, including looking at Connecticut’s housing situation, mental health and jobs. CCEH wants to make the council permanent and ensure “people who are currently or formerly unhoused, service providers, partners and advocates,” are part of the “decision-making process.”
Kavros-DeGraw said she was “hopeful” for the funding push with the number of supporters and lawmakers who turned up for the press conference and added that the state’s current systems to help the homeless, including the 211 hotline and housing vouchers, are overburdened or not available.
“We are so grateful for the people who work at 211, but we also know that sometimes when you call 211, you’re on hold for 87 minutes. You call, and, as one of my constituents experienced this week, there are no housing vouchers left,” Kavros-DeGraw said. “That means that we have to do something about this because there is not enough to go around.”
“We have multiple people who have vouchers, but the vouchers aren’t enough to go rent a place, so those vouchers expire,” said Rep. Jay Case, R-Torrington. “We need to work with the housing community and everybody else to see how to make those vouchers, so they actually work. They expire and people can’t use them.”
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Get real! STOP the illegal immigration and there won’t be an unmanigable housing problem.
Stop voting Democrats in and most of the problems will disappear. They create problems then whine about solutions. They created a housing problem for the mentally ill through deinstitutionalization decades ago and now have a problem of homelessness.