A tent encampment that harbored homeless residents in Bristol for years is now empty. But instead of pushing occupants out of one place only for them to settle in another corner of the city, officials opted to guarantee them all housing.
The Prospect Street encampment in Bristol is the most recent attempt of Connecticut’s encampment-to-housing movement, a barrier-breaking rapid-rehousing model led by the West Hartford nonprofit Journey Home.
Sarah Pavone, the director of strategy for Journey Home, said two of the encampment’s former residents have moved into their apartments and two others are expected to sign leases within the next week. They join a growing list of individuals who were living outside in cities like Hartford and New Britain who are now in permanent supportive housing thanks to the model.
“In all of the sites that we’ve done, and across three cities now, 100% of the folks we’ve engaged have accepted housing and I think this really busts the myth that some folks just don’t want services or don’t want housing,” Pavone said. “This work also shows that with the proper resources and partnerships that we can solve homelessness, we can figure out this complex issue and ensure that we don’t have anyone needing to sleep on the street or in an uninhabitable location.”
Bristol cleared the Prospect Street encampment on Aug. 22, according to city officials. The fate of its residents seemed uncertain in July when news broke that the sale of the city-owned parcel to a private owner was pending.
Initially, the city set an eviction date for July 18, causing many to flee the site, according to former residents. But three days before the deadline, Bristol switched course to pursue the encampment-to-housing model.
Pavone said outreach workers identified five people as “regular stayers,” who were connected with housing services. She added that no other individuals were identified as staying overnight at the encampment during the four weeks that outreach workers made regular visits to the site.
On the cleanup day, Pavone said Journey Home’s team transported residents to hotels or relatives’ homes where they have stayed while their permanent housing arrangements are finalized.
However, Pavone explained that one former resident has yet to move on to these transitional housing arrangements. For weeks, Pavone said this individual has been in the hospital, recovering from health problems including a skin infection that Pavone said was “exacerbated” by the inability to properly clean or care for her wounds while living outside.
“A portion of her hospitalization is directly correlated to her being unsheltered,” Pavone said. “(She) is going to be in the hospital for quite a few weeks, but we’re working with the discharge planners to ensure that she’s able to exit to housing and not the street.”
When Bristol’s Opioid Task Force decided to pause disbandment efforts in July to explore the encampment-to-housing model, Bristol Mayor Jeff Caggiano explained that the city understood that if cleanup efforts were not paired with housing, residents at the encampment would likely resettle in another part of the city.
In August, the Bristol City Council put the final stamp of approval on the proposal, appropriating $86,000 in opioid settlement funds to establish the pilot program “to re-house individuals with substance abuse, and homelessness comorbidities currently encamped at Prospect Street,” according to meeting documents.
“There’s two sides of every story and there’s an awful lot of division in this country, but having a little grace and dignity is not a bad thing,” Caggiano told the Courant Wednesday as he reflected on the decision.
Data suggests that rates of substance use disorder are higher among Connecticut residents who are living without shelter. According, to the state’s 2024 Point-In-Time Count of Individuals and Families Experiencing Homelessness, 19% of unsheltered individuals reported having a substance use disorder compared to 12% of the sheltered population.
Over the next 20 years, cities and towns in Connecticut are expected to receive a combined $78 million from opioid litigation settlement agreements, according to a report by the Connecticut Mirror republished by the Courant. As a whole, the state is expected to collect $600 million to fund “substance use disorder abatement infrastructure, programs, services, supports, and resources for prevention, treatment, recovery, and harm reduction,” according to the CT Opioid Settlement Advisory Committee.
Caggiano said Connecticut should consider investing these funds in the encampment-to-housing model.
“I would encourage them to look at this project as a potential way for them to help with the opioid crisis and also a crisis that we know is happening here with homelessness and lack of housing,” Caggiano said.
“There’s many reasons why people can suffer from opioid or substance abuse disorder, opioid addiction and/or homelessness, and I think that looking and looking into new ways to handle these problems is something we should all be doing,” Caggiano said. “It’s been like this long before I was elected and I hope it’s not like this long after I’m out of office.”
In 2024, the number of individuals and families experiencing homelessness in Connecticut rose for a third consecutive year after experiencing a steady decline between 2018 and 2021, according to data from the state’s annual Point-In-Time Count.
According to the 2024 report, which gathers data on a single night in January, 574 of the 3,410 people experiencing homelessness in the state were considered “unsheltered,” living outside, in their cars, or in other places that are not meant for human habitation.
During the spring and summer, the number of individuals experiencing unsheltered homelessness tends to rise when cold-weather shelters close for the warmer months.
“As of August, 4,690 individuals, including 483 children, are actively experiencing homelessness, according to the Connecticut By Name List,” Katherine Whitney of the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness said in an email to the Courant last month. “We know that unsheltered homelessness is chronically undercounted and underrepresented. We estimate that at any given time, approximately 20-25% of people experiencing homelessness are unsheltered.”
As the nation battles a housing crisis, the rise in unsheltered homelessness has coincided with a rise in encampments, and municipal efforts to disband and “clean up” sites in Connecticut and across the country.
Instead of typical responses that force encampment occupants into shelters or another location outside, the encampment-to-housing model seeks to cure homelessness at the source.
The model, which was first developed by the Clutch Consulting Group, concentrates resources on a single location or group of people to streamline the path to housing.
Pavone explained that the model links encampment residents to a team of specialists who provide outreach, housing and services. Other staff engage landlords by building relationships and offering financial incentives for property owners who agree to work with Journey Home and provide flexibility in their tenant screening processes.
Once housed, participants continue to receive support services and landlords are connected with a specialist at Journey Home who can provide assistance if a program participant, or any other tenant, is at risk of losing housing.
“I think sometimes when folks first hear (about the model), it sounds too good to be true and they’re skeptical of it,” Pavone said in an interview with the Courant in July. “So far we’ve had success. Of course, we’ve had challenges, but the whole point of this model is (to have) all of us come together to overcome those challenges and make sure we’re getting as many people (into) housing as possible.”
