State: On track to end chronic homelessness

Waterbury — Connecticut is on pace to eliminate chronic homelessness by the end of the year, the state’s top housing official said at a press conference in Waterbury Tuesday.

State Housing Commissioner Evonne M. Klein said increased coordination between providers and government officials has helped make “significant progress” toward housing the state’s chronically homeless — those who have a severely disabling condition and have been homeless for longer than a year.

“We’ll always have a homeless population, but what we know today is that we can house them,” Klein said. “We have a system in place to identify homeless people and rapidly house them. So we’re — this is important — ‘exiting’ people out of homelessness, not managing them.”

The goal of ending chronic homelessness was set when Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed onto the “Zero: 2016” initiative two years ago. Malloy was one of only four governors to do so. The state announced last fall that it had ended chronic homelessness among veterans, becoming the first state in the nation to do so.

“Connecticut has been a national leader in our efforts to end both veteran and chronic homelessness, and we are proud of the significant role our state has played in helping the nation reach this major milestone,” Malloy said in a statement.

State housing officials say chronically homeless individuals are considered “high need” because of the amount of support they require once they have been placed in homes.