Zoom
City social services chief Mehul Dalal at Tuesday night’s budget hearing.
The city’s plans for protecting and supporting New Haveners most in need during the Covid-19 crisis involve not just moving homeless residents from shelters into hotel rooms, but also distributing food to the hungry, coordinating direct financial assistance for those suddenly without a paycheck, and making existing financial empowerment services accessible by phone to eliminate the need to meet up in person.
City Community Services Administrator Mehul Dalal outlined those social service strategies Tuesday night during his portion of a four-and-a-half-hour Board of Alders Finance Committee departmental workshop on Mayor Justin Elicker’s proposed $569.1 million general fund budget for Fiscal Year 2020 – 2021 (FY21).
Tuesday’s online budget hearing.
The meeting, just like Monday night’s nearly six hour budget hearing, took place online via the Zoom teleconferencing app.
The proposed budget includes a 3.56 percent tax increase, the elimination or defunding of roughly 80 currently vacant city positions, and the restructuring of the current Youth Services, Parks, and Public Works departments into two consolidated new departments. Click here to read the full document.
Click here to watch a full video recording of the budget hearing.
Dalal elaborated Tuesday night on a recent development announced by Mayor Justin Elicker that afternoon during his daily coronavirus-related online press briefing: That the city and the state have decided to empty out the city’s homeless shelters and move hundreds of people into hotel rooms. Elicker said that 84 homeless people are already staying in city- or state-paid hotel rooms.
“One of the primary ways to prevent this from spreading even further is by not having high congregation settings, which is exactly what a shelter is,” Dalal said.
He said that one of the Elicker administration’s first actions after declaring a state of emergency around Covid-19 was to try to “decompress the shelters so that they’re not as crowded as they typically are.”
“There has been a tremendous and very heart-wrenching impact on the homeless population as a result of Covid,” he said.
Dalal said that the city has contracted directly with hotels for “immediate decompression,” and that the city and state will be funding current shelter staff to move over to hotels and other new housing locations to continue to provide support for the homeless.
“I hope that we will get the maximum amount of reimbursement that we can” from the state and federal governments for these services, Dalal said. “I don’t know if we can escape without a budget impact.”
What funding sources is the city tapping into to help cover the costs of the city’s homelessness services, both during this crisis and beyond? asked East Rock Alder Anna Festa (pictured).
Dalal said the city has a close partnership with the Coordinated Access Network (CAN), which is funded in part by the state Department of Housing (DOH), which in turn derives some of its funding from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
“Ultimately it goes to the federal budgeting process,” he said. “Whether they’re willing to allocate and appropriate more money to HUD” in its homelessness line item. “We try to maximize through our partners to get these funds from” the state DOH.
Why does the mayor’s proposed budget include more money for lodging contracts for single homeless people than for homeless families and homeless youth? asked Board of Alders President and West River Alder Tyisha Walker Myers (pictured).
The proposed budget allocates $475,000 to lodging for families, $780,000 to lodging for single people, and $90,000 to lodging for youth. Those numbers have stayed flat for each of the past two fiscal years, as well.
“We committed to not reducing those and to not subjecting those to overall cuts,” Dalal said.
“Part of this has to do with the patterns of homelessness.” In general, he said, the city sees many more single adults as parts of the homeless population than families or youth. This distribution of funds reflects “the prevalence and the proportion of the different populations,” he said.
That may be the case now, Hill Alder Ron Hurt said. But the Covid-19 pandemic has upended the lives of everyone in society. “A lot of families in the coming month will be facing homelessness. Do we have a plan going forward to address these issues financially?”
Dalal said that his office has had “very robust discussions” to ensure that those who are struggling to meet the basic needs of survival right now receive help first.
“In terms of priority, we want to make sure that people are able to eat, because I think there’s been so much disruption in terms of where people are able to access food,” he said. The city’s Office of Food System Policy has been working with emergency food providers, United Way, and CARE through the Coordinated Food Assistance Network to provide free grocery delivery to those in need.
Dalal said the next phase of city social service priority will be focused on coordinating direct financial assistance for those desperately in need of cash. “That won’t be the city,” he said. “There are many partners such as banks, nonprofits, and [the federal] government that are looking at direct financial assistance.”
He said that part of that second phase of financial support will likely involve reorganizing the city’s financial empowerment services “so that they can be done in a telephonic manner.” The city currently offers a range of money management and tax assistance and housing support services through the New Haven Opportunity Center at 316 Dixwell Ave.