Community Renewal Team, Inc., showed off renovations Monday to its family shelter in East Hartford, making it a more welcoming place for families who have lost their homes.
CRT Vice President Christopher McCluskey said the ongoing renovations showcase a broader problem, though: homelessness continues to rise and lawmakers in Connecticut and Congress need to address the problem.
“Our common goal is making sure families’ episodes of homelessness are brief and nonrecurring,” he said.
CRT invited U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal and East Hartford Mayor Michael Walsh to see renovations to its 40-bed family shelter on Main Street.
CRT received $98,000 in federal aid to help pay for new flooring and paint; upgrades to the electrical system and plumbing; and renovations to three of the building’s four bathrooms.
The nonprofit hopes to upgrade the fourth bathrooms and make changes to improve energy efficiency over the next six months.
McCluskey said the changes were needed, at least in part, because homelessness is on the rise and so is demand for shelter space. The Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness said homelessness rose by 39% between 2020 and 2022, McCluskey said.
He added that the data indicates the trend is continuing this year: annual Point-In-Time Count, a federal-mandated attempt to count the number of homelessness, found a 3% increase in January.
McCluskey said those numbers also don’t track people who are technically not homeless but are in unstable conditions as they move around living with family and friends.
“People may not necessarily present (themselves) at a shelter but more and more families, more and more individuals, more and more veterans, more and more children are unstably housed,” he said.
Shelter providers like CRT are also seeing a spike specifically in families who need shelter, putting a demand on facilities that are able to house parents and caregivers together with their children.
McCluskey said there are typically between 12 and 17 children in the 40-bed East Hartford facility at any one time, up from what they typically see. Families are also staying longer than they did in the past.
That’s limiting CRT’s ability to bring in new families who need shelter.
McCluskey and Blumenthal said the rise in homelessness is likely due to many factors, some of them COVID-related.
Blumenthal noted many people lost their jobs. State and federal moratoriums prevented evictions, but those have long-since expired.
Blumenthal said some of those renters have struggled in cases where landlords didn’t forgive overdue rent. Domestic violence also rose during the pandemic, leading to more women seeking shelter.
He said he’s pushing for funding for programs aimed at helping people avoid or get out of homelessness, especially assistance for veterans.
“There is no justification, none, for the homelessness of any veteran in this country,” he said.
McCluskey said more money also needs to go to diversion programs to help people avoid homelessness.
He also said the state needs to improve the inventory of affordable housing. This includes fostering relationships between landlords and shelters.
“Landlords are our partners, not our enemies,” McCluskey said.
