Thanks to our partners at the APT Foundation, DESK’s entire staff received or renewed their basic life support certification. Working with countless community members each year across the region, DESK staff are often the first to respond before first responders arrive. In critical, life-threatening situations, when seconds matter, a robust first response can be the difference between life and death. This workshop helped our staff recognize the signs of an emergency and develop skills to respond both individually and as a team, including how to use an Automated External Defibrillator.
This includes connections to shelter, food, vital documents, storage, showers, mail services, enrollment in government benefits, and clothing. We’re proud to have added basic life support skills to our toolkit.
As a member of the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness, DESK helps lead statewide conversations with policymakers about how we can best serve our guests. In fact, our Client Engagement Specialist, Claudette Kidd, spoke at the Capitol this February with CCEH! This year, we have budget and non-budget requests for the session that will end on May 6.
We are making several policy requests so that the state has a more robust response, including:
SB 364: A mandate for the state to establish stable, year-round extreme weather protocols (so we don’t keep getting caught off-guard every time it snows or is hot!) taking effect in October 2026 in preparation for next winter.
HB 5260: Anti-criminalization legislation, requiring municipalities to prioritize a services-based response to people in crisis, as opposed to a law enforcement response, also taking effect by October 2026.
Budget requests go in front of the state’s Appropriations Committee. This year, we are asking for:
$10 million annually to provide services that prevent people from slipping into homelessness in the first place — Prevention.
$12.3 million annually for emergency shelter and warming/cooling centers during extreme weather conditions — Response.
$15.8 million annually to pay for the people who are staffing outreach, drop-in centers, diversion, intake, and shelter — Response.
$32.3 million to fund case management for people who have been housed through the state Rental Assistance Program — House.
Interested in getting involved?
Find out who your state representative and your state senator are. Go here and enter your address.
Figure out if your state representative or senator serves on the Appropriations Committee by going here: click on the “Committee Membership” bar at the top, and look at the list of names.
If your state representative or senator is on the committee, that means they’re powerful! They decide what goes into the budget. So you should call them up. Find their phone number by navigating to their webpage from the list of House members or Senate members. Here’s a phone script you can use. (You’ll probably just get a staffer or an answering machine — but that’s OK! Leave your message regardless.)
If they are not on the Appropriations Committee, they still hold some influence over their colleagues who are on the committee. You should feel free to call them (using the same details above), or you can send them an email. Find their email address by navigating to their webpage from the list of House members or Senate members. Here’s an email template you can use.
Spread the word to colleagues, friends, family, or anyone else who (a) lives in Connecticut, (b) wants to do more for their community, and (c) thinks we don’t do enough to end homelessness in our state. April showers are going to bring May flowers sooner than we think – don’t wait to raise your voice for our neighbors.
Our policy work amplifies the work that we – and our 3,000 yearly volunteers – do on the ground, every day. Join in the solution on the ground by volunteering, hosting a drive, or donating.
And we don’t speak alone. As a member of the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness and the Statewide Harm Reduction Partnership, we add our voice to an array of service providers, policymakers, and people with lived and living experience.
Among those voices is Claudette Kidd, DESK’s Client Engagement Specialist. On top of her day-to-day duties at DESK, Claudette serves alongside advocates and legislators as a member of the End Homelessness Caucus. Last month, as they prepared for the start of the legislative session, Claudette joined the Caucus for a press conference in Hartford, in which she spoke about her lived experience in shelters and how that experience has helped her better engage with her clients, meet them where they are, and connect them to services and resources to improve their lives and overall wellbeing.
With the statewide Cold Weather Emergency on everyone’s mind, Claudette took the opportunity to underscore the dire need to get all unhoused individuals inside. She advocated for $12.3 million in Extreme Weather Life-Saving Funding through the state budget and through S.B. 364, An Act Concerning Extreme Weather Protocols, which would meet the recent rise in unsheltered homelessness with 24-hour low-barrier operations in every community across the state, transportation, warming capacity, and heat response. She says that “the need for support does not stop at 5:00 PM when my shift ends, and staff in this field often work beyond scheduled hours to accommodate the urgent needs of clients who are trying to find a safe and warm place to stay.” Claudette spoke while she also was managing a complex multi-medical client case all day (and she had forgotten her glasses at home!). We are proud of her and grateful for her work at DESK to support and advocate for our guests. With this legislative session only lasting until May, the time to advocate is right now. The bill received a favorable report from the Joint Committee on Public Health and will be taken up soon by the full Senate, while the state budget cycle continues marching forward – making it crucial that DESK’s network of advocates makes their voice heard.
So, they decided to host a holiday party and invite their neighbors to donate to an organization that supported people experiencing homelessness. Once Roger, a longtime DESK supporter and community leader, heard about the party, he directed them to DESK.
The Griffins say that they hope that people all over the area will take the initiative to organize events with a purpose and that “in a world where you can choose to be anything, it’s more fun to choose to be kind.”
This party is a testament to the ripple effect of giving; DESK is proud of how our friends have stepped up amid a year of uncertainty over SNAP benefits, continued high food prices, and rising rates of homelessness.
We’re happy to welcome the Griffins to New Haven and grateful to our supporters who share our mission with their neighbors.
Let’s make the Griffins’ wish come true by responding with renewed passion and generosity to support our community.
Join the Griffins this season in helping fill in the gaps in our community by donating at deskct.org/stepup.
If you’re hanging out in New Haven, you’ve probably felt like there are more people sleeping on the streets than in the past. Your perception reflects reality, and not just for our city, but all across the state, and indeed the country. There are currently 405 individuals and eight families in Greater New Haven who are on the waitlist to get into shelter. Even during the coldest months of the year, we continue to have too few options for people to get in off the streets and find warmth and safety. Faced with federal cuts to the proven practices of reducing homelessness by providing unhoused people with housing, we are anticipating these numbers to nearly double this winter, as DESK’s services for unsheltered people become a matter of life and death. Meanwhile, cities nationwide have seen stepped up aggression toward unhoused people. Despite the evidence that strategies rooted in compassion have greater success of getting people housed, many municipalities have been opting for law enforcement approaches, emboldened by last year’s Supreme Court ruling in Grants Pass v. Johnson.
Public health is getting worse
Connecticut generally and New Haven specifically have a long history of providing proven, best-practice services to people who use drugs. In the 1990s, New Haven piloted one of the first syringe service programs as a highly effective means of reducing rates of infectious disease (particularly HIV) and creating pathways to trust, treatment, and recovery. Now those harm reduction models are under attack by federal authorities who reject science and seek to reinvigorate the “war on drugs” policies that targeted our Black and brown communities and failed all of us. Because of these cooperative, responsible, and well-funded services, New Haven has seen falling rates of fatal overdoses in the last five years. But despite the ample evidence, public funders are now shying away from what we know works for political reasons. As these funding sources disappear, it will be up to community-based organizations like DESK to ensure that people get the services they need to remain safe and healthy.
So what do we do?
For almost 40 years, DESK has been fighting an uphill battle against homelessness and poverty. We do this because we believe that we, as a community, can do better. We haven’t always been on the same page as our political leaders. Some-times, our elected officials have turned away from the compassionate approaches and best practices that we know work. When that happens, we look toward community—our neighbors—to step up.
Your support is critical to ensuring that everyone in New Haven has the opportunity to access basic needs.
Join me today in giving to DESK. Step up to the need that is facing us on our streets. Together, we can ensure that we will someday end hunger and homelessness with compassionate and proven strategies. Donate online at deskct.org/stepup.
And thank you as always!
Yours in service,
P.S. Are you in a position to give through retirement savings, securities, or planned giving? Learn more about how you can be part of DESK’s Legacy Society at deskct.org/legacy.
