Hartford resident Mattie Bell sits in a brown recliner in the living room of her first-floor apartment in Hartford’s north end. The room is dim, with the shades drawn, and the faint scent of cigarette smoke lingers.
She is surrounded by pictures of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, while watching the Home Shopping Network on TV and listening to her two rescue cockatiels, Pretty Girl and Charlie, chirp.
At 76-years-old, Bell has lived in the same apartment in Hartford’s Frog Hollow neighborhood for nearly four decades. It was from that apartment that she raised her three children and cared for her eight grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.
Bell has relied on federal Section 8, or Housing Choice Vouchers, for more than 50 years.
She first received housing assistance as a 25-year-old single mother of three, a decade after moving to Connecticut from Georgia. In Georgia, Bell said assistance like Section 8 wasn’t readily available.
“If you didn't work, have a little shack of your own, you were in trouble. You had nothing,” Bell said.
Bell is worried about the potential impact federal cuts by President Donald Trump’s administration will have on social services, like housing assistance and social security. Even with the Section 8 voucher, Bell pays $800 a month in rent.
If the worst comes, Bell’s family would take her in. She’s more concerned about others.
“I know how it will be. A person with three or four little kids trying to go to work, trying to pay daycare, they not going to be able to do it,” Bell said.
Bell is one of about 161,000 Connecticut residents who rely on federal rental assistance, which is under threat.
Connecticut’s housing aid needs
The Trump administration named Connecticut among 34 states that may lose their field office for the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
In 2023, Connecticut received more than $1 billion in funding for federal rental assistance programs.
Brittany Ignace is an attorney with Greater Hartford Legal Aid. Ignace helps low-income residents, including Bell, secure housing aid.
“Many of our clients are seniors or they're people with disabilities,” Ignace said. “The HUD cuts will have a devastating impact on many families across the state.”
A potential scaling back of HUD support would lead directly to an increase in homelessness, Ignace said. She’s concerned for what her clients’ futures may look like without housing security.
“We see people struggle every day to afford rent, and that matters. This is going to matter for people,” Ignace said. “It is going to affect thousands of families in Connecticut, and it is going to cause a rise in homelessness.”
It’s hard to predict what tangible effect a potential cut would have on Connecticut renters, Ignace said.
“We do think it's too early to tell,” Ignace said. “What we expect is that a lot of people are going to lose the public housing or vouchers.”
Potential HUD cuts unclear
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, of Connecticut, said he and his Congressional colleagues on the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, have contacted HUD four times for clarification on what, if any, field offices will be eliminated. They received no response.
HUD officials told Connecticut Public that while there were no announced field office closures, the office is exploring consolidation. HUD released a statement which said:
“HUD has not announced any field office closures. To be good stewards of taxpayer dollars, HUD is exploring consolidation while ensuring service to the American people remains the priority.”
HUD field offices are needed, because they do more than administer Section 8 housing vouchers, according to Blumenthal.
“We all know by now that providing a roof over somebody's head is not the answer. That roof has to be accompanied by counseling and job training and sometimes treatment for substance abuse disorder,” Blumenthal said.
Nationwide, more than $260 million in contracts for housing aid have been canceled.
All citizens should be concerned, as a lack of housing aid would further exacerbate an already strained housing market, according to Blumenthal.
With the potential loss of Connecticut’s HUD field office, Blumenthal is unsure what would become of the state’s housing needs and federal aid recipients.
“We'd have to go, probably, to some regional office in New York or Boston,” Blumenthal said.
But the lack of clarity is part of the problem.
Changes to HUD haven’t specifically called for the defunding or scaling back of financial support for Section 8, but proposals by Trump’s administration call for the firing of half of the HUD staff that administers Housing Choice Vouchers.
There is a lot of confusion surrounding the Trump administration’s execution of cuts to federal jobs and programs, Blumenthal said.
“They fire people first and plan if they're going to plan at all. And so far, we see no plan for what the field offices are doing, who specifically are going to lose their jobs. It's all chaos,” Blumenthal said.
Potential HUD cuts may impact CT programs
HUD’s removal would impact more than Section 8 recipients.
Connecticut’s Rental Assistance Program (RAP) may also feel the pressure, according to Chelsea Ross, executive director of the housing policy advocacy group Partnership for Strong Communities.
“We're concerned about federal cuts to federal funded rental assistance having huge ripple effects everywhere around the country, but in the state as well,” Ross said.
RAP operates in largely the same way as Section 8. The main difference being RAP is funded solely by the state budget and doesn’t rely on federal support.
About 6,500 Connecticut households receive RAP benefits, Ross said. The program’s waitlist has only opened twice in the last 17 years. The last time the waitlist opened was for a week in 2014, when 86,000 residents applied for aid.
Back in Hartford, Mattie Bell says despite what may happen with federal housing aid, she’s vowing to help her neighbors. Local communities have been stepping up to take care of each other, but politics get in the way.
“It's a scary situation. It’s a sad situation, because we try to help make things better, and yet that is tearing down what people are doing, tearing it down,” Bell said.
