Ending Homelessness

Central to our mission, is assisting our homeless guests move from homelessness to permanent housing.    What every homeless person most needs is a permanent home.  Through a staff located at our Daytime Hospitality Center, and by partnering with others, we seek to assist our guests to chart a path back to housing.  Our staff has been entrepreneurial and creative in assisting guests to return to permanent housing, assisting well over one hundred individuals to leave the shelter in the past year.

Improving Access to Services—Individuals experiencing homelessness often face many challenges, including mental illness, substance abuse, lack of income, and poor health.  Support services are available, but homeless individuals often have a hard time accessing those services.  A large part of our work is to improve access to services, and to make those services more effective, by working in partnership with other agencies.

One aspect of our effort to increase support to our guests, was the creation of a weekly Community Care Team Meeting facilitated by NLHHC. This weekly meeting brings together staff from HHC, Covenant Shelter, Visiting Nurses of SE CT, Sound Community Services, Lawrence & Memorial Hospital, Southeastern Mental Health Authority, and Eastern Region Service Council (substance abuse case management).  This group focuses coordinated attention on individuals with the greatest support needs.  As this group matures, we see remarkable improvements in the creativity, timeliness, and effectiveness of our joint response to homeless individuals in the greatest need.  At any one time, this Care Team is actively engaged with about twenty homeless individuals. The availability of coordinated support allows us to effectively serve even high-need chronically homeless individuals in our Housing for Health Project.

Improving Health—The Visiting Nurse Association of SE CT provides an experienced nurse who is at our Hospitality Center, three times per week.  She provides direct assistance to guests—answering questions, assisting with medication management, offering first aide.  Equally important, she also helps identify untreated health problems, and guides guests to the proper treatment. 

Help in Finding Housing--On October 1, 2009 NLHHC implemented the federal HPRP (Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-housing Program) for single adults in our region.  An experienced case manager with deep ties to area landlords, and experience in supporting housing stability, has a targeted focus on providing housing location support.  In just a few weeks of operation, a half-dozen of our homeless guests are close to moving into permanent housing. 

Better Meeting the Needs of Veterans--In October 2009 NLHHC was also selected by the Department of Veterans Affairs to provide an eight-unit transitional housing project for homeless veterans. This project will help us meet our pressing, and sadly growing, problem of homelessness among veterans.  This funding was secured through a highly competitive national RFP process, and our's was the only project selected in New England.  We believe the Veteran Administration’s selection of our project, demonstrates our effectiveness in reaching our homeless veterans, and the great need for this support in the New London area. 

Working With Local Business-- In the fall of 2009, we also began new outreach activities, to see if we can be of some help in reducing the impact of homelessness on the downtown business district.  In particular, our goal is to reduce the incidence of littering, loitering, panhandling, trespassing, and public intoxication in the downtown area.   We are working in partnership with business owners, the public, and the New London Police Department to identify the specific individuals who are engaging in behavior that disrupts everyone’s enjoyment of our beautiful downtown.  When homeless individuals come to our attention, we focus a variety of resources to help that individual secure the help they need.  This support has, in at least several very significant cases, lead to a noticeable reduction in tension between business owners and homeless individuals.