The budget deadline looms large as the end of Connecticut’s legislative session draws near. How much support can providers of the state’s homeless population expect to receive?
WSHU’s Ebong Udoma spoke with CT Mirror’s Ginny Monk to discuss her article, “From an old ambulance, they help the growing homeless population,” as part of the collaborative podcast Long Story Short. Read Ginny’s story here.
WSHU: Hello, Ginny. Your deep dive into the work of the neighborhood health workers employed by Hartford Healthcare gives perspective into how some of the state's money on the unhoused is spent. Is that why you decided to do a tag-along with the team?
GM: So, I wanted to do a tag along with the team because I had been hearing reports that medical needs of people experiencing homelessness had been getting more complicated, that they were dealing more frequently with end of life care, and that all of this was really exacerbated by the lack of shelter, which is pretty directly tied to the amount of funding that the state gives to shelters. Service providers have been saying for several years that their resources are stretched thin, and I wanted to see what kind of results that would produce.
WSHU: They're asking for about $33 million, and the state is offering five million in the governor's budget and three million in the appropriated budget. That's a far cry from what they're asking. How are they stretched right now? What did you see on your tag-along?
GM: What I saw was a lot of folks whose injuries and illnesses were tied to their lack of housing. So the health care workers talked about people they'd seen who had frostbite, people who were unable to get regular treatments for diabetes, people with gunshot wounds and other wounds that were the result of living outside, even a man who had been living in a dumpster and was injured from being dumped into a dump truck.
WSHU: You mean, the dump truck picked him up inside the dumpster, and that's how he got injured?
GM: Yes.
WSHU: Wow. Why are we having more of this? Is it because there are more homeless people?
GM: Yeah, so the homeless population in the state has been rising for the past few years, and I think it's important to keep in mind that this is after almost a decade of decreases in the homeless population. There are a lot of reasons for this, but one of the big ones that service providers point to is the lack of housing, particularly the lack of affordable housing. As rents rise, it's harder for people to pay for their housing, and we're seeing more seniors getting evicted, losing their housing, becoming homeless, and often, though, for that population, their medical needs are more difficult to address.
WSHU: So that's why they have this mobile unit that goes out in an old ambulance and goes to these sites, right?
GM: They're going to shelters and encampments and really just offering as much care as they can at the moment. So sometimes treating overdoses, bandaging and cleaning wounds, and offering prescriptions where they can.
WSHU: Now, how is this program funded?
GM: So it's funded largely through Hartford Healthcare, and then it also has some private donations and grants. What they were speaking about for the state funding was the need for service providers to get more money so that they can put more people into shelters and maybe see less of these complicated medical cases that are made worse by living outside.
WSHU: Now we have a shortage of shelter space as well, and that's why a lot of these people are out even in the middle of winter, right?
GM: So shelters are having to turn people away at the doors even when they have expanded capacity, which they do when it's particularly cold. And then the other thing that the health care workers talked about was that many of the shelters are not accessible for people with disabilities, people who have difficulty getting around. There are some that are on second floors without elevators, or sometimes a shelter will only have a top bunk available, and the person just can't get into a top bunk.
WSHU: Wow. The person who had frostbite that they were able to treat ended up losing his limbs, right?
GM: He lost both of his legs, yes.
WSHU: Having people who are older and sicker means they need a lot more attention, right?
GM: So another one of the issues that they ran into with this particular man is that after, you know, after the amputation and he had been treated at the hospital, they wanted to discharge him right after a certain amount of time, following a procedure, you'd be discharged. But he still hadn't done the physical therapy. He hadn't been fitted for prosthetics, and they were just going to discharge him with no legs, so a lot of people had to work really hard to find a place for him to stay in a rehabilitation center.
WSHU: Wow, but he's been taken care of, right?
GM: He's in a rehabilitation center now, still doing physical therapy and learning to use his new legs.
WSHU: So let's go back to the discussion that's going on in the legislature right now. We have a budget discussion. What are lawmakers and the administration talking about? Because the governor came up with $5 million in his budget, the appropriations committee came up with $3 million in their budget, and the providers are asking for $33 million. So is there going to be any movement there?
GM: So it doesn't seem likely at this point. Legislative leadership has indicated it's most likely they'll go with the budget the Appropriations Committee settled on, although things can certainly change at any moment here at the Capitol, I think the thing with any budget negotiations is there is a lot of stuff the state has to pay for, and a lot of people asking for more money, so lawmakers kind of have to decide, what am I going to give money to, and what am I not? So anyone who gets money, it typically means another program doesn't, and these are the decisions they're making.
WSHU: But how does it look? As far as the homeless situation is concerned, is there any chance that they'll end up with more money?
GM: So there's certainly a chance that they'll increase the amount of funding. There's been some bipartisan support for increased funding from the homelessness caucus, which was a group of lawmakers that started this year, kind of doing press conferences and meetings to talk about priorities for addressing homelessness in the state. There are also a couple of other measures, one that looks likely to pass that would offer mobile showers, so a vehicle would drive around offering people showers who are living outside, and then another that would ban what’s called hostile architecture, so architecture that makes it hard for people to sit or lie down. These are some of the things that the legislature, outside of the budget, is looking at to help the homeless population.
WSHU: So all in all, it doesn't look too good for an increasing homeless population that we're having in Connecticut.
GM: That's what I'm hearing.
