Community Corner
Lawmakers: City's Homeless Shelter to Expand After Another Closes
After learning this fall that the Mercy Shepard Home was shutting down, state Rep. Matthew Lesser and state Sen. Dante Bartolomeo worked with nonprofits and community leaders to help the homeless.
Local and state officials announced Monday the expansion of a Middletown emergency homeless shelter just as a transitional housing program for the homeless is closing.
At a press conference at Connecticut Valley Hospital, State Sens. Dante Bartolomeo and Paul Doyle and state Rep. Matthew Lesser joined state and local officials to celebrate what Lesser called "amazing efforts to expand permanent supportive housing, increase shelter space and ensure that we can house everybody in Middlesex County who needs housing."
In September, Bartolomeo said, Mayor Dan Drew asked a number of legislators to gather and create a group of city, state and local officials and non-profits to remedy the effects the closing of Shepherd Home in Middletown would have on the homeless.
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The now shuttered Shepherd Home on Bow Lane, part of the Connecticut Valley Hospital campus, was a transitional living program for 70 homeless, single adults working to find housing, managed by the Mercy Housing and Shelter Corp.
"When Middlesex County was facing a housing crisis this fall, Sen. Bartolomeo and I asked the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services and the Department of Housing to step up and fill the gap," Lesser s Partnering with local nonprofits, they have more than met the ask and have done outstanding work for our community. We had tough deadline — house people before the cold hit — and we've met it."
Case managers and individuals set and meet goals that will return them to self-sufficiency and independence while living at Shepherd Home. In addition to providing intensive case management, individuals are served three meals a day. Mercy also works with clients to prepare them for employment and job placement, with a final goal of finding permanent housing.
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