Housing case workers in Fairfield County are overworked and under-supported, according to a recent study.
In 2023, the Housing Collective’s Housing Innovation Lab (HIL) began assessing the homelessness emergency response systems in Fairfield County and northwestern Connecticut.
Employees of more than 150 homeless service groups were anonymously surveyed, and asked about worker compensation, burnout and whether their work is leading to housing equity.
The report’s biggest takeaway is the lack of support for frontline workers, Lauren Sheehan, one of the study’s authors, said.
“Our staff are our greatest resource, but yet they are under-resourced,” Sheehan said. “We are under investing in them, and we need to do something about that. They are the closest they have ever been to unstable housing themselves.”
Senior leaders in these organizations want to support staff, but don’t have the resources to do so or aren’t sure how to go about supporting them, Sheehan said. More than half of the workers surveyed in Fairfield and Litchfield Counties said they were struggling to pay their bills.
The organizations surveyed comprise the Opening Doors Initiative, organized by the Housing Collective to streamline and improve homeless services in Fairfield County. Opening Doors serves as northwest Connecticut’s Coordinated Access Network to fulfill emergency housing needs.
The Collective is the backbone organization supporting both northwest Connecticut and Fairfield County's Coordinated Access Networks.
Nearly all of the homeless service providers surveyed in Fairfield County said more frontline staff with unstable housing experience are needed to help improve the homeless response system.
Existing organization leaders don’t need to be replaced, rather more advocates who have experienced being unhoused need to be added to the mix, Sheehan said.
“More faces with more varied perspectives need to be invited, and that space needs to be made so that new ideas, new perspectives, new lenses, can be there, and that's where the creativity, that's where the innovation is going to come,” Sheehan said.
Next steps are in the process, and the relevant data will be updated annually, according to Sheehan.
“The intention is that this report is not shelved. It's incorporated into the day-to-day action steps and planning of the body of work across Western Connecticut,” Sheehan said. “We need to keep going back to the folks that were initially surveyed and our new partners and collaborators to make sure that as we take steps forward, they're having the intended outcomes that we expect, and if not, we're course correcting.”
Shelter workers reported feeling unprepared technically and emotionally for some aspects of their job.
Proposed changes include increasing staff wages, conducting a network-wide wage analysis, creating a clear onboarding process for the most common network roles and increasing training opportunities.
“Many of the people around us are struggling, from those experiencing homelessness to the surrounding communities to staff members trying to give support,” Housing Collective CEO David Rich said. “We are committed to meeting the systemic challenges uncovered in this assessment while continuing to serve the most vulnerable members of our community in the best way possible. This is only the beginning.”
