By Steve Higgins, Special to the Register

Editor’s note: This is part of a weekly series of articles highlighting Neighbor-to-Neighbor LifeLine, an emergency fund-raising program led by United Way of Greater New Haven and the Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven. See www.n2nlifeline.org.

NEW HAVEN — After escaping an abusive relationship, Jackie (not her real name) and her three children ages 13, 9 and 8 ended up in a shelter. Although she qualified for Section 8 financial aid to rent an apartment, she did not have the funds to pay for the security deposit.

New Haven Home Recovery Inc., the nonprofit organization that operates the shelter, helped her pay the security deposit through its Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program, and also helped her pay some overdue utility bills related to her previous home so that she and her family could secure a rental apartment and get out of the shelter. Shortly after she moved into the new apartment, she landed a part-time job in transportation and is now thinking about furthering her education.

“We’re working with her now to open a savings account,” said Kellyann Day, executive director of New Haven Home Recovery, which helps women and children who face homelessness. Day said demand for shelter space has skyrocketed 250 percent since 2010. “Before 2010 we would receive maybe 15 or 20 requests a month that we could not meet because we were full. Now we’re receiving 15 to 20 calls a day that we cannot meet,” she said.

Neighbor-to-Neighbor LifeLine (N2N), an emergency fund-raising campaign led by United Way of Greater New Haven and the Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven, has given over $130,000 in grants to New Haven Home Recovery since 2009. “Neighbor-to-Neighbor has stabilized this critical program,” Day said. “The N2N funding filled the gap where public funding was not available. The demand for shelter has increased and we are experiencing a bottleneck at the shelter. N2N has provided the support to rapidly move families out of shelter at a time when federal dollars are starting to dry up,” she continued.

New Haven Home Recovery spends $35,000 a month on average to help women and children stabilize their housing and living situations. Most of that money has been coming from the federal government’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which is slated to end at the beginning of May.

Neighbor-to-Neighbor delivers funding to area nonprofits serving the need for emergency housing, food and other financial aid in the region. All donations go to participating nonprofits.

At Jewish Family Service of New Haven, Executive Director Jonathan Garfinkle has seen the number of requests for emergency housing assistance increase ninefold since 2009.

“Folks in distress are increasingly coming in the hope that we can provide that lifeline and offer the help to keep them in their home or break the cycle of homelessness,” he said. “The despair has increased, and the level of need has proliferated. It’s been a blessing to have these (Neighbor-to-Neighbor) funds. They really have provided a lifeline to countless clients of our agency.”

Garfinkle said the funding has pushed Jewish Family Service to improve by adding vocational counseling, financial coaching and other case management services. Continued...

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“Because we got this funding, we became a go-to agency for families in crisis,” he said. “The last thing that we want is for this financial aid to provide nothing more than a Band-Aid. The key is to help families achieve long-term stability.”

Garfinkle pointed out that a family of four must earn $45,000 a year to afford a two-bedroom apartment in New Haven. Yet 30 percent of area families are at or under the federal poverty level of about $22,000 a year in income. More and more clients are coming from the middle class, as formerly well-off people — many of whom previously donated to the agency – lose jobs and fall on hard times, he said.

“We are not just serving the chronically poor,” he added. “All it takes is for mom or dad to lose a job, and the crisis spirals.” Day agreed, saying, “It sometimes takes just one incident to cause your income to drop, and the next thing you know you’re so far behind you can’t catch up.”

On any given day, there are about 3,800 men, women and children staying in emergency shelters and transitional housing programs in Connecticut, according to United Way. Neighbor-to-Neighbor LifeLine welcomes both corporate and individual donations.

For more information, go to www.n2nlifeline.org/give or call United Way at 203-691-4231.

Steve Higgins is a freelance writer.

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