Fairfield County, CT

The ODFC Advocacy Taskforce works in collaboration with community providers, stakeholders, local legislators, and community representatives to advocate for appropriate resources needed to end homelessness in Fairfield County. 

The ODFC Economic Security Workgroup is composed of members across the housing and workforce development sectors. The work group's purpose is to link resources from the workforce development system with those from the homeless response system to create effective pathways to employment for our most vulnerable populations. 

As part of the application process for federal homeless assistance grants, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) requires that all funding recipients across the country conduct an annual count of the number of people experiencing homelessness within the last ten days of the month of January. This includes the number of people who were in Emergency shelter, Transitional Housing and Safe Havens as well as those who were unsheltered, meaning living in places not meant for human habitation such as in cars, under bridges, or on the streets. 

In collaboration with statewide partners, the annual PIT Count allows ODFC to:

• Collect data to inform our efforts and progress in ending homelessness
• Develop a consistent methodology for collecting reliable data to measure program/system effectiveness
• Help service providers and policy makers better understand the needs of our homeless populations to design effective interventions

Results from the January 2024 Point-In-Time [PIT] Count showed that in Fairfield County there were 713 people identified as homeless, with 109 of them identified as unsheltered and living in places not meant for human habitation on the coldest night of the year. This represents a 19% overall increase in homelessness since 2023. 

This committee of mid-level management staff from member agencies and community partners is designed to improve collaboration amongst all organizations within ODFC. This group is tasked with recommending system policy revisions or new procedures to the ODFC Executive Committee for review, and implementing all approved policies and procedures within their respective organizations to support system-wide change. With ODFC identified priorities as a framework, information and resources are shared at monthly meetings to ensure that Fairfield County’s homeless response system partners are well-informed and appropriately resourced at all times. 

The goal of YHDP is to support ODFC in the development and implementation of a coordinated approach to preventing and ending youth homelessness in Fairfield County one community at a time. A key aspect of YHDP efforts is its threshold requirement that participating communities throughout the county must partner with both their public child welfare agencies (PCWAs) and a Youth Action Board (YAB) when undertaking work to address youth homelessness.

Because youth homelessness and foster care involvement are intimately connected, PCWAs have a vital role to play in partnering with ODFC to prevent and end youth homelessness in YHDP communities. Together they  are now engaging in the hard work of building seamless systems to respond to homelessness among homeless minors who may have run away from abuse or neglect, to decrease homelessness among youth aging out of foster care, and to better address homelessness among former foster youth who are currently homeless but may be eligible for housing and services provided by the PWCA. The lessons learned in YHDP communities on developing these cross-systems responses will serve as a template for all communities to improve CoC partnerships with all mainstream social service systems.