by Jamil Ragland CTNewsJunkie
HARTFORD, CT – Legislative leaders and advocates for people experiencing homelessness announced the formation of a new legislative caucus Thursday morning with a mission of ending homelessness in Connecticut.
The newly formed caucus, which they call the “End Homelessness Caucus,” is chaired by Rep. Kadeem Roberts, D-Norwalk. Rep. Lauren Sweet, D-Hamden, will serve as the vice chair, and Rep. Tony Scott, R-Monroe, is the caucus’ ranking member.
According to Roberts’ legislative page, the goal of the new caucus is to explore policies that will tackle the complex factors contributing to homelessness and work towards its hopeful eradication. The End Homelessness Caucus will work collaboratively with service providers and advocate for policies necessary to secure housing and life-changing services for those who are currently unhoused.
The priorities announced by the End Homelessness Caucus include:
- Passage of House Bill 6894: An Act Establishing An Interagency Council On Homelessness;
- Passage of House Bill 7033: An Act Prohibiting A Municipality From Imposing Any Penalty On Homeless Persons For Performing Life-Sustaining Activities on Public Land;
- Adding $33.5 million as an annual line item in the budget for homelessness services, and;
- Adding a $5 million annual line item in the budget to fully fund cold-weather services.
At the top of the news conference, Sarah Fox, CEO of the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness, laid out the challenges the state faces in terms of the number of people seeking help.
Sarah Fox, CEO of the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness, speaks to legislators, homelessness advocates, and reporters about the need for the new, bipartisan End Homelessness Caucus in the General Assembly during a news conference Thursday, Feb. 20, 2025, at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford. Credit: Jamil Ragland / CTNewsJunkie
According to Fox, in 2024 there were over 131 calls made to 211 for shelter, housing, and rental assistance. Over 21,000 people sought help through the state’s coordinated access networks, or CANs. Over 4,500 people were diverted from homelessness, preventing them from ever entering a shelter, and over 8,000 individuals were served by emergency shelters, transitional housing, and outreach. Some 6,000 individuals and families were successfully housed last year.
“But behind these numbers are real people, families, seniors, young people, and individuals who find themselves without a place to call home,” Fox said. “Parents choosing between rent and food, seniors who have worked their entire lives to keep a roof over their heads, and more and more of them are losing their homes after decades of stability, forced into shelters or worse because of rising rents. And despite our best efforts, one in four people seeking life-saving shelter and housing services were turned away due to capacity constraints. That is unacceptable. No one should be denied shelter when their life is at risk, not because we lack solutions, but because we lack the resources to implement them at scale.”
House Majority Leader Jason Rojas, D-East Hartford, has been a longtime voice for housing policy in the General Assembly, but he said that given the rise in homelessness in Connecticut and the stories of those who are unhoused, legislators haven’t done enough.
“I’ve been around a long time, but it’s great to have our newer colleagues taking a leadership position on this because this is a solvable challenge that we face,” Rojas said. “We’ve made a lot of progress in the time that I’ve been here in the legislature but we haven’t sustained it and that’s really what the issue is here. We claim victory on something, then we pivot to other things and we move on, but then suddenly those issues come back. So it really takes dedicated effort, dedicated time, and to the point that Sarah made, dedicated resources to ensure that nobody has to confront homelessness.”
Roberts explained why the money to fight homelessness needs to be annualized
“When we were tasked to create this, we listened to the advocates who are actually, currently working on this,” he said. Some of the advocates are working on this, but we’re not committing any funding to the advocates themselves so that we can help them provide for their families. We understand $33.5 million is a lot of money, but there’s also 169 cities and a lot of people that need services.”
Scott said that it was the duty of the legislature to help those who are most in need and the most vulnerable.
“I’m very happy to be here and to be supportive,” Scott said. “And I want to be very clear. I might be the only Republican standing up here, but the Housing Committee last year passed $50 million out of the committee and it was unanimous. That’s every Republican, every Democrat. This is not a partisan issue. This is a Connecticut issue. An every citizen issue. There are over 3 million people in this state. Every one of us has a little bit of say with having the homeless out there. So I can tell you, we will have Republican support, we’ll have Democrat support. It doesn’t matter. We have a lot of support. We need as many voices as possible so we can send a message to the governor, we can send a message to the Appropriations Committee that this has to happen now and we don’t have to have another press conference next year to have the same situation.”
Rep. Eleni Kavros DeGraw, D-Avon, spoke about how homelessness had become an issue in affluent communities as well.
“I hear about it all the time,” DeGraw said. “People think, ‘oh, you live in an affluent community, nobody cares about [homelessness].’ The number one thing I heard from knocking on doors this year, is ‘I care about the fact that you care about these people.’ We have to stop being so cynical to believe that people don’t care about this. We have to prioritize that line item, and we have to be here, standing on business, making sure that we are stopping any woman, any man from being in trauma, and especially our children. As a parent, I can’t imagine what it’s like to have to say, grab what you can, we’re going to be living in the car. Grab what you can, we’re going to find the nearest shelter. As a parent, it breaks me. And so that is why we’re here today.”