Letter From The Executive Director & CEO It’s Time To Reconnect With Our Forgotten Populations
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n 2019 we were in tough times as a state. We were losing population pretty quickly and many of the people that were leaving were writing farewell CT letters to the editor proclaiming why they were leaving and the failures, from their perspective, of Connecticut. In addition, we were dealing with what Ben Barnes, OPM Secretary coined “a permanent fiscal crisis.” Despite all of those criticisms, our state was making incredible progress and getting back onto solid financial footing. Yet there were populations that have unfortunately gone unnoticed and CCM is going to do our part to make this state work for everyone. First, we want to talk about homelessness. Back just a few years ago, homeless was tracking downwards. At that time, CCM took steps to do its part to support efforts to help tackle the crisis. We partnered with the Coalition to End Homelessness to create a committee of municipal leaders with the goal of developing municipal tool kits to support our membership on best practices and resources available to tackle homelessness in their communities. And then in 2020 the pandemic hit and everything changed, the CCEH priorities shifted into making sure people had safe places to live and shelters were not overrun and CCM shifted into writing Executive Orders to support the continuity of municipal government operations and to lobby and advocate the state and federal governments for funding. The pandemic left the work that we had begun with the CCEH in the rearview. And after decades of declining numbers, our homeless population increased by 16% in 2022 and continued to rise in 2023. So while we talk about those successes, we must acknowledge this massive blind spot in our recovery. We have learned over these last several months about another underserved and unrecognized population – Disconnected Youth. Thanks to a report by Dalio Education and the six forums that CCM held to discuss this issue, we know that over 100,000 kids are at-risk or disconnected entirely. To use one of their phrases, it’s like filling Yankee Stadium twice, then a little bit of Fenway Park. And just like the numbers of our homeless population, that figure was at just 40,000 when we looked at it just back in 2016.
These two populations dovetail and feed into each other. The Dalio report tells us that of school aged kids, 1 in 3 are in danger of not graduating and an article last month reported that New Haven had 250 students who were homeless last year and this year that number is 567. In the first time in decades our graduation rate is declining. When we look back at 2019 today, it’s a different state: we have balanced budgets and surpluses, people moving into the state and unfunded pension liabilities that we are getting our arms around a bit and making progress on. We should celebrate those accomplishments. While we can reflect on successes of the state, when we read articles that say we now have the wind at our backs, let’s remember how cold that wind is to these children who are homeless during these winter months. As we enter 2024, I ask each of you to work with CCM to do our part to rededicate our efforts to making sure we have less children who are left looking for their next meal, without a home to lay their head down at night. Through our collective efforts I hope to be able to report back to you in a couple years that we were successful in our support of Connecticut’s most vulnerable and served with integrity those who need our attention the most.When we talk about how we are winning on Wall Street, let us not forget that we have more kids than ever before that are losing on Main Street.
Fireside Chat on the Dalio Education report
Joe DeLong CCM Executive Director & CEO 4 | CONNECTICUT TOWN & CITY | WINTER 2024
