State Rep. Antonio Felipe, House chair of the Housing Committee and City Councilwoman Eneida Martinez were among city officials who joined advocates at a legislative news conference urging Governor Lamont to invest more resources to reduce homelessness.
State legislators and homeless service providers are calling for more state funding to address homelessness in Connecticut, directly asking Gov. Ned Lamont on Friday for more spending.
At a press conference at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford, key members of the General Assembly’s Housing Committee and End Homelessness Caucus, alongside advocates with the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness, laid out their demands for aid. Funding is needed to prevent rising homelessness and provide housing to the more than 8,000 unhoused people in the state, proponents said.
The legislature’s 2026 session kicked off Wednesday, and legislative leaders and advocates are working quickly to ensure their priorities are addressed. Friday’s was the latest in years of repeated calls from advocates to increase state funding to help people experiencing homelessness statewide.
Rep. Eleni Kavros DeGraw, D-Avon, co-chair of the legislature’s Planning and Development Committee and a member of the End Homelessness Caucus, urged the state to allocate funding to programs that would prevent deaths among people living in unsheltered conditions.
“I am not sure what it is going to take for the executive branch to hear us when we say, ‘Not one more,’” Kavros DeGraw said. “We can do better. We should do better, and this is the year to do better.”
The End Homelessness Caucus formed during the 2025 legislative session. This year its members are asking the Housing Committee to establish a $10 million fund to help people in need with rental and security deposits, utility assistance, transportation and other short term stabilization needs. They’re also seeking $31.6 million in the general fund to provide shelter for the unhoused.
“This is not an agenda, this a statement of need,” said Antonio Felipe D-Bridgeport, the co-chair of the Housing Committee and founder of the caucus. “People are in need right now.”
Rob Blanchard, a spokesman for Lamont, defended the governor’s efforts to address homelessness, saying his administration is investing in programs that provide in-person services. Blanchard said Lamont has tapped $5.2 million of a $500 million emergency fund the legislature established to backfill federal funding cuts under the Trump administration.
That $5.2 million was put toward the Continuum of Care program, including hubs for homelessness, community health workers and Department of Social Services resource centers, Blanchard said.
“These efforts are part of his ongoing commitment to strengthening essential safety nets and increasing affordability for all Connecticut residents,” Blanchard said.
Unsheltered homelessness has been increasing in Connecticut in recent years.
The population of people living outside, in their cars or in other places not meant for human habitation rose by 45% from 2024 to 2025. An annual count, which took place in January last year, showed that 800 people were unsheltered on that night.
“Frontline teams are doing everything possible, but we need predictable — we need life-saving resources in place so that when the next emergency hits, protecting human life is not dependent on extraordinary measures,” said Sarah Fox, CEO of the CT Coalition to End Homelessness.
Bridgeport Councilwoman Eneida Martinez, who has worked with the homeless population for over 20 years, said her city lacks shelter and funding to help those in need, especially during the winter months. Due to increased immigration enforcement under the Trump administration, many unhoused noncitizens are afraid to go to the shelters, she said.
Martinez said she checked in on a homeless man on Jan. 31 who she has regularly helped for the last two years, and she urged him to go to the shelter to avoid frigid temperatures that night. Because he was undocumented, he refused to go out of fear, she said.
The next morning, Martinez said she got a call that the man had died due to the freezing conditions.
“Homelessness is one of America’s most visible yet least understood challenges. It affects people from all walks of life who struggle due to hardship, lack of affordable housing and other barriers,” she said. “Governor, I urge you to please find a way to meet the needs for those that are in need.”
This article first appeared on CT Mirror and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Click count for OIB
https://onlyinbridgeport.com/wordpress/watch-the-thursday-night-fights-city-council-committee-bumps-pereira-as-meeting-presider-for-nieves/
I want to touch on this latest controversy about the homeless man who departed.
It seems like a lot of Mia Copa, considering CC members advocated and supported giving out tents to the homeless in the Port. While it always seemed like a retard idea, as a means of enabling, which it is. Considering homelessness is considered a more complex issue.
For the most part, any single able-bodied person who can find work at minimum wage in CT should be able to afford their own shelter. Sure, they will not have the means for the luxuries like Mama Bear and an LV bag. Or even the privilege to patronize a rooftop bar at happy hour. However, for the most part, they should be able to pay their rent/shelter.
To John’s point and his civics discussions about the Rent Commission, or lack of as it relates to the quality of housing, as a means to profits.
What say you, Port CC and elected office? Ironic if you think about it. This video show noting but Maria calling out, playing the rules, laws, and regulations she was shunned for not supporting, and CC members who did want to disregard them as a means to move City Business forward. Things that make you go WTF 🤣
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uhm03zFQsg
Though, to be fair, in recent times, vultures have seemingly made it even more challenging to make ends meet, across the board, to say the least. And not so fair, absent from John’s POV by the CC. SMH
While I have been down that homeless road several times. I can assure you, it’s a total mind fuck getting uprooted, not knowing where you are going to live, having to stay with others, disrupting their lives, and peaced, seeking shelters, while you try to find yours and a sence of stability.
Even when you find yourself facing financial instability, to maintain your residence when times become financially challenging, facing the prospect of homelessness, being uprooted is a mind fuck in itself. JS
However, fostering a lifestyle, “stability” by supporting such an idea like giving out tents, is not the way to go for them and others, as you try to build a better quality of life for your “constituents” in the city. It’s not only retared to foster a sence of stability in a untable mind, It’s dangerousin New England, clearly.
The remedies for homelessness are complex because the reason one becomes, finds themsleves homeless is complex. Perhaps of their own devise, their own choice, drugs/mentalness.
Perhaps other forces are at work, forever reasons unbeknownst that transcend that coded-side game as you don your hat and look out for your neighbors and walk by over those who are not.
Who knows?
At anyrate, try to play nice— The Prophet JS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgT1AidzRWM