More than 50 local business and non-profit leaders from northeastern Connecticut attended a legislative breakfast on Friday to not only hear from their elected officials but also to let them know what problems they’re facing in the region.
A panel of seven state representatives and senators from both parties attended the annual event held at the headquarters of EASTCONN in Hampton.
Topics of conversation included the need for more financial assistance from the state for the region’s non-profit service providers who are seeing more demand from residents with intellectual and developmental disabilities to older citizens who are asking for rental assistance to stay in their homes.
Susan Hunter, executive director of the non-profit Windham Area Interfaith Ministry (WAIM), said people are turning to her organization because they have nowhere else to go.
“So, when other agencies run out of funds, people come to us and what we’ve seen is an increase in rental assistance … some of them are elderly and on fixed income, so if their boiler goes, they want to stay in their house, they come to us for assistance.” Hunter said.
Hunter added that her organization also serves a population who have assets like a home and are also employed, but their incomes are limited and once they are sick or unable to work for a few weeks, they then can’t afford to pay their bills.
The situation is also exacerbated in the region because of a lack of affordable housing options – a situation Sen. Cathy Osten, a Sprague Democrat who co-chairs the General Assembly’s powerful Appropriations Committee, said she knows all too well and is hoping to fix this legislative session.
However, she talked about needing to overcome the perception of eastern Connecticut within some state agencies.
“Nobody in New London County, nobody in Tolland and nobody in Windham County deserves to even get a chance to apply for these grants,” Osten said, in reference to the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority’s competitive housing grants. “They took us completely off the market from applying for these grants. I have a chance to try to rectify that in the budget this year, because I’ve asked. The commissioner of the Department of Housing says ‘nobody really wants to live in Eastern Connecticut.’ These are exact quotes.”
Osten added that the region needs to start speaking up to get its fair share because it is currently being cut off.
Another point of contention attendees raised was the availability of childcare services in the northeast corner with one business owner calling it a “childcare desert.”
Sen. Mae Flexer, a Killingly Democrat who also sits on the Appropriations Committee, said she hears this all the time from her constituents and is also concerned the region is not seeing more financial incentives to grow childcare businesses.
“I think the governor has been trying to have a vision on access to childcare and having a more comprehensive plan around early childhood education. But the money isn’t there,” Flexer said. “And that’s really going to be the difference between whether we do something that is meaningful or whether we stand up and pretend that we’re doing something.”
Flexer said both the large and small organizations represented in the room often can’t fill job openings because “people can’t find access to reliable, consistent childcare. People can’t find 9-to-5 slots. There are childcare providers in our region who’ve been caretakers of our children for decades who are on the brink of closing their doors because they just can’t make ends meet,” Flexer said.
She added that there was no easy answer as many of the childcare providers know they need to increase their fees, but they also know the families they look after can’t afford to pay more and will simply stop using them because they don’t have the money.
Flexer told the audience bluntly that if we don’t learn the lessons that came out of the COVID-19 pandemic and do something more meaningful now, then she doesn’t know when the legislature will ever do it and how that will affect those with or without children in the long term.
