Old Hotel Site In Hartford To Become Modern Homeless Shelter

HARTFORD, CT — A prominent homeless shelter in town is getting a new location, one that brought state and city leaders into the city to commemorate the ocassion.

Gov. Ned Lamont and Connecticut Department of Housing Commissioner Seila Mosquera-Bruno Wednesday announced the Stewart B. McKinney Men’s Emergency Shelter in Hartford will be moving to a new location in a state-funded project designed to improve the quality of care the shelter is able to provide to individuals in need.

The shelter’s new location has 68 fully-furnished rooms and 127 beds and includes space for wrap-around services.

Located in a former hotel building at 207 Brainard Road, this new location will enable the Community Renewal Team – the nonprofit organization that owns and operates the shelter with the ability to provide improved services to its residents through the use of individual, private rooms to sleep and receive wrap-around services.

The shelter’s former location at 34 Huyshope Ave. required its residents to use large congregate settings that provided little to no privacy, including the use of bunk beds crammed in truck bays.

Lamont said relocating the shelter into a former hotel is an example of evolving thought that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic on how to best provide services to people experiencing homelessness.

Like many shelters nationwide at the onset of the pandemic, the McKinney Shelter temporarily moved its residents into a hotel, also located on Brainard Road, so it could house residents in individual rooms to prevent the spread of the virus.

In addition to the public health benefits, the shelter’s operators found these private settings to be a much better arrangement for providing behavioral healthcare and other kinds of counseling services.

“There were a lot of lessons learned from the pandemic in nearly every aspect of our lives, and the way services are provided to people who are experiencing homelessness is one of them,” Lamont said. “Under this new arrangement, residents at the shelter will not only have private rooms, but they will also have other individual spaces on site where they can receive health clinics, behavioral health services, job training, housing services, case management offices, and more.”

The shelter will function as a 24-hour-a-day facility providing meals and support services on site.

Daytime hours will allow for case management, housing placement, and medical and employment services.

“Adding the wrap-around services to the shelter site, and by being open during the day, it gives the guests the opportunity to receive assistance immediately, which allows them to work on a path to permanent housing,” Mosquera-Bruno said. “Community Renewal Team is our valued partner in this meaningful work. We are pleased to be here with them today to announce the new McKinney.”

The Connecticut Department of Housing is supporting the Community Renewal Team with more than $3.4 million in state funding to purchase the former hotel.

Additionally, the Connecticut Department of Housing is funding ADA-compliant bathrooms and a commercial kitchen, with construction on those scheduled to begin in October.

“The new location for the McKinney shelter will allow us to move away from a congregate shelter to a model that supports a transition to independent living and more permanent housing, promoting dignity, privacy, and safety for those residents with nearly one hundred beds available,” Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin said.

For the full announcement, click on this link.