Editor’s note: This is the second of a two-part series exploring homelessness in rural Northwest Connecticut. Click here to read part one.
Ten years ago this month, the Northwest Connecticut Community Foundation (NCCF) joined forces with New Beginnings of Northwest Hills Litchfield County, a collaborative of several dozen local and regional social service agencies, in announcing a comprehensive plan to end homelessness.
Since then, the plan has served as a roadmap for aligning housing and an array of services spread out across a vast rural Northwest Corner.
Fast forward to 2023, and after eight consecutive years of decline, the number of unhoused people is surging, fueled by inflation, increased evictions, soaring housing costs and a lack of housing overall.
“Homeless work has changed dramatically in the ensuing years,” said Julia Scharnberg, vice president of community engagement for NCCF and lead researcher and writer for “The Plan to End Homeless in Northwest Connecticut.”
“When we first put together this working group, it really brought together a remarkable cross-sector collaboration of organizations,” she explained.
“Working together, we came to the understanding that homelessness is a rather holistic problem and that housing is the foundation to having a stable situation,” enabling people to focus on the rest of their problems, like mental illness, domestic violence, job loss or reentry into society after release from an addiction treatment facility, noted Scharnberg.
“Back in 2013 there wasn’t a coordinated approach…it was very bureaucratic. People had to go to a whole bunch of different agencies.”
But within one year, the state was divided into coordinated access networks (CANS) of which there are currently seven. “We are part of the Northwest CAN covering from the Massachusetts border to Waterbury,” Scharnberg explained.
“We are very blessed here in Northwest Connecticut. We have a wonderful nonprofit community of people calling each other, trading information back and forth, and making teams around people.”
Pete Rourke, 61, is shown here at the flagpole recently dedicated to veterans outside the FISH NWCT shelter, where he has been staying since Sept. 20. With the help of a network of social services, Rourke, an Air Force veteran, recently signed a lease for a studio apartment.Photo by Debra A. AleksinasA call to action
With winter looming and anticipating a “pending humanitarian crisis,” due to shortage of shelter space and funding, a coalition of service providers sent out a call to action in late fall.
State and local advocates for the homeless in Northwest Connecticut gathered Nov. 10 at the Torrington Library to discuss homelessness response programs to support urgent funding for cold weather emergency winter shelters and to address chronic underfunding of the front line for nonprofit shelters and response programs.
Panelists for the roundtable included Jessica Gueniat, Torrington Library director; Nancy Cannavo, president of The Gathering Place; State Rep. Jay Case (R-63); Sarah Fox, CEO of the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness; Deirdre DiCara, executive director of FISH NWCT; and Leonardo Ghio, project director with the Northwest Hills Council of Governments.
At the time of the roundtable, funds earmarked for the Northwest CAN for 2023 were delayed, as was the opening of an emergency overflow shelter, compounding the urgency for action.
Gov. Ned Lamont and the congressional delegation announced earlier this year that the state is receiving an $18 million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to address homelessness among people in unsheltered settings and in rural communities, and the funds, directed at homeless outreach services, access points to homeless services and permanent supportive housing, will be distributed over the next three years.
“Stable housing is not only critical for the development of safe communities, but it is a moral imperative,” said Lamont.
In her testimony before the Connecticut General Assembly’s Housing Committee in support of Raised House Bills No. 6554, “An Act Appropriating Fund for Certain Homeless Response Programs,” and Senate Bill NO. 909, “An Act Establishing a Right to Housing,” Fox said the pandemic and the increase in homelessness in the state has surged 39% over last year.
It takes a village
Reliable and consistent funding is essential, said advocates for the homeless, but so, too, is community involvement. Behind the scenes, friends and neighbors, too many to name, from throughout the Northwest Corner are the unsung heroes.
There is the couple who moved out of the area last year but return every week with two bags full of groceries for the homeless shelter; the volunteer who spent two and a half years keeping shelter residents COVID-19-free during the pandemic; the clergyman who unlocked the back door of the chapel on cold nights to give the unhoused a place to sleep; the many local businesses who pitch in to help with shelter repairs or supplies.
In the rural Northwest Corner towns where there are no dedicated shelters, social services agents shoulder the burden of identifying and assisting the unhoused or those who are at risk of homelessness.
“I have one client who is homeless and has been for quite a while,” said Malia Hill, Sharon’s Social Services director, who noted that the individual was frightened when seeking services in Torrington, as he didn’t feel safe there being among people with mental health issues.
“He feels this is a safer place here and he doesn’t want to live in cities. It’s his best option,” said Hill.
As DiCara noted, “No one is stereotypical in their story.”
Individuals, businesses and organizations from throughout the Northwest Corner donated warm-weather clothing to a recent coat drive for the homeless and low-income families, which drew about 600 people who arrived two hours before the giveaway and stretched around the corner for several hours, said shelter officials.Photo contributed
2-1-1 United Way Help Line: If you or someone you know is experiencing a housing crisis, call the United Way Help Line at 2-1-1 to schedule an intake.
Winsted YMCA Emergency Shelter, 480 Main St., Winsted: 860-379-0708
FISH/Friends in Service to Humanity of Northwestern Connecticut, Inc., 332 South Main St., Torrington: 860-496-1648
New Beginnings of Northwest Hills Litchfield County/The Gathering Place, 21 Prospect St., Suite A, Torrington: 860-618-3455
New Beginnings is the sponsoring organization of The Gathering Place, a drop-in center for the homeless. The Gathering Place serves as the local point of entry for all homeless, serving all 26 towns in Litchfield County
To volunteer or make a donation: Contact the social services agent in your community, or either of the nonprofit agencies above, to find out how to donate services, clothing, food or gas cards or your time as a volunteer.
— Compiled by Debra A. Aleksinas
Travel league baseball came to Torrington Thursday, June 26, when the Berkshire Bears Select Team played the Connecticut Moose 18U squad. The Moose won 6-4 in a back-and-forth game. Two players on the Bears play varsity ball at Housatonic Valley Regional High School: shortstop Anthony Foley and first baseman Wes Allyn. Foley went 1-for-3 at bat with an RBI in the game at Fuessenich Park.
Anthony Foley, rising senior at Housatonic Valley Regional High School, went 1-for-3 at bat for the Bears June 26.Photo by Riley Klein
Uncommon books at the intersection of art and literature.
Pearson first encountered the world of alternative publications — magazines filled with experimental writing, artworks in the form of a book, and samizdat literature — as a young writer living in Berlin just before The Wall came down in 1989. Later, in New York City, she spent a great deal of time with artists “who were always making and assembling, whose continuous art-making made the thin membrane between art and life even more porous,” she explained.
Pearson traces the idea of publishing to a 2001 exhibition of artist-poet Joe Brainard. That show led to “The Nancy Book,” Siglio’s debut title in 2008, and she’s never looked back. The book contains over fifty full-page reproductions of Brainard’s dazzlingly accomplished and witty drawings of the cartoon strip character, Nancy. It includes essays and contributions by Robert Creeley, Ann Lauterbach, Frank O’Hara, Ron Padgett, and other poets of great renown, all thrilled to celebrate and remember Brainard (sometimes called “a poet’s artist”) who died of AIDS in 1994. Pearson said, ‘My first project with Brainard was such a good experience, I kept going. “
Since then, Pearson, the sole proprietor of Siglio, has designed, edited, and published over 40 books and other printed editions. Her books are characterized by unexpected juxtapositions of texts and images and collage-like assemblages, as well as for carefully designed and gorgeously printed volumes. Her list includes many “rediscoveries” of unpublished manuscripts and little-known publications. At the same time, she has commissioned new work from an impressive array of artists and writers such as Christian Marclay, Sophie Calle and Cecilia Vicinua among others.
Uncommon books at the intersection of art and literature.Richard Kraft
Though most Siglio books feature work by artists and writers from the 1960s to today, one standout— “Tantra Song” (2011) — showcases vibrant 17th-century Indian tantric paintings collected by poet-ethnographer Franck André Jammes, their modernist feel echoing Hilma af Klint or Brice Marden. Siglio also frequently draws on the spirit of the Fluxus movement, reissuing works by figures like John Cage and Ray Johnson with editions that honor their playful, ephemeral, and poetic origins.
Siglio also excels at photo-narratives rooted in highly specific, often eccentric concepts. “Memory” (2020), by avant-garde writer Bernadette Mayer, reproduces her journal and daily rolls of 35mm film from a month in the Berkshires in 1971, capturing the texture of each day. “Call and Response” (2022), created during COVID lockdown by composer and visual artist Christian Marclay, pairs his photographs of London’s quieted streets with musical scores composed in reply by his friend Bruce Beresford—each image in dialogue with sound.
Siglio books are sold through it’s website (sigliopress.com), as well as museum or specialty bookshops. (The Lenox Bookstore represents a number of Siglio books; the newly opened Lakeville Books & Stationery has copies of “Tantra Song.”) In all cases, Pearson strives to make “two or three degrees of connection” with each book buyer, including a “special gift” — often a piece of printed ephemera — with each purchase.
