Annual count shows slight decline in Connecticut homelessness
STAMFORD — When volunteers walked city streets and visited shelters on an unseasonably warm winter night early this year, they found two more homeless people than last year, bucking a downward trend statewide.
On that night, volunteers for the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness, traversed cities across the state, finding nearly 3,400 homeless people, the lowest number ever recorded, according to data released Thursday. It was a 25 percent decrease from the group’s first Connecticut homeless count in 2007, although the 2018 numbers were similar to last year.
Chronic homelessness — people without long-term housing — is down 15 percent from last year, and nearly 70 percent since 2014, the coalition found. Nearly three quarters of those people are in the process of finding permanent housing.