dlyon Dec 9 2004 - 8:37am Local News
By GAIL ELLEN DALY
Chronicle Staff Writer
MANSFIELD — In Connecticut, with 33,000 homeless including 13,000 children, the answer is supportive housing, according to those attending a forum on homelessness Wednesday.
“We’re at crisis proportion now,” said state Rep. Walter Pawelkiewicz, D-Windham, “and in the last year, there has been a 38 percent increase in those turned away from shelters.
Pawelkiewicz and state Rep. Denise Merrill, D-Mansfield, were guests Wednesday at the First Church of Christ in Mansfield Center to discuss the issue and suggest solutions.
The forum, organized by the church’s Just Peace steering committee, drew more than 50 people anxious to hear more about the issue.
Supportive housing, Pawelkiewicz explained, combines affordable rental housing with support from professionals in health and employment services.
A case manager addresses individual needs. He said it looks like any other housing and those living in the units pay their own rent.
One successful venture, “Reaching Home,” already has 2,300 units throughout the state, with a goal of creating 10,000 units over the next 10 years.
“The state’s commitment has nowhere to go but up,” said Merrill. “And federal housing funds keep shrinking.”
Merrill said since Connecticut is considered a wealthy state, “we never got much federal funding.”
She called the state’s programs “limp,” with long waiting lists. “And the governor (M. Jodi Rell) has asked the Department of Social Services to cut $400,000 before we even start the session,” Merrill said.
Tom McNally, director of Willimantic’s Hospitality Center thanked everyone for their donations, but said the center needs a stable income.
Pawelkiewicz briefly discussed Common Ground’s plan to turn the former Hotel Hooker and the YMCA in Willimantic into supportive housing.
He said a Windham-based downtown advisory committee is currently looking into the redevelopment of those buildings as well as alternatives to that use, which has proven controversial in Willimantic.
