Connecticut Supportive Housing Initiative Receives Award

Supportive Housing Pilots Create Housing with Services to End Long-Term Homelessness

Connecticut's Supportive Housing Pilots Initiative received the prestigious Innovations in American Government Award from the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. The initiative was one of just seven winners of the award, which comes with a $100,000 prize to help winning programs disseminate their models to other communities.
 
More than 1,000 programs from across the country submitted applications to compete for this year’s awards, which are administered in partnership with the Council for Excellence in Government in Washington. 
 
The Supportive Housing Pilots Initiative is a collaborative program designed to create affordable housing and support services for people affected by mental illness or chemical dependency who are facing homelessness. Supportive housing combines decent, safe, affordable apartments with individualized health, support, and employment services. It is a proven, effective means of reintegrating families and individuals with chronic health challenges into the community by addressing their basic needs for housing and ongoing support. Research has demonstrated that supportive housing significantly decreases its residents’ usage of expensive inpatient and emergency room care.
 
The initiative aims to create at least 650 supportive housing units within Connecticut over a four-year period. Close to 400 of the units are already in place; another 300 apartments are under development.
 
The Pilots Initiative was spearheaded by the Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, working in collaboration with the Office of Policy and Management, the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority, the Departments of Social Services and Economic and Community Development, and the Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH), a national, nonprofit intermediary.
 
"The Supportive Housing Pilots Initiative is significant both for its local impact as well as its national replicability," said Janice Elliott, CSH’s Connecticut-based Managing Director of Program Support, who coordinated the development and implementation of the initiative. "At the local level, hundreds of men, women and children who had been chronically homeless are now stably housed and connected to needed social, mental health, health, education services.  From a national perspective, the initiative provides a replicable, cost-effective model for how other states can provide lasting solutions to homelessness in their own communities."
 
The roots of this initiative go back to 1992 when the Melville Charitable Trust helped to organize a funders’ collaborative. TPI helped to launch the Melville Charitable Trust, working with their talented board to sustain their dynamic vision. The Trust raised nearly one million dollars to add to an additional $1.5 million from national funders like the Ford Foundation, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts, to support Connecticut Supportive Housing efforts to bring this social innovation to the state. 
 
Over the years the Melville Charitable Trust helped to build a partnership of funders – providers and developers who have worked shoulder to shoulder with the state's interagency task force on homelessness – the Office of Policy and Management (OPM), the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (DHMAS) and the Connecticut Housing Finance Agency (CHFA). They have been integrally involved and energetic adapters and implementers, demonstrating that under the right circumstances and with sensible, strategic and sustained support, government and the private sector can build wonderful effective relationships.