2023-24 Annual Report

2022-23 Annual Report

ENFIELD PEOPLE FOR PEOPLE, INC.

ENFIELD SAFE HARBOR WARMING CENTER (“ESHWC”)

ANNUAL REPORT ON OUR OUTREACH & ENGAGEMENT EFFORTS & 2022-2023 WINTER SEASON OVERNIGHT OPERATIONS

April 15, 2023

MISSION STATEMENT

Our mission is to serve the homeless of the Enfield community. We serve by helping anyone in need by offering warmth, basic essentials, and connections to community resources. We serve every guest with compassion and respect.

Who We Are & What We Do

Winter in the final months of 2022 and early 2023 brought unseasonably cold overnight temperatures. consistently at or below freezing, creating life- threatening conditions for anyone without heated shelter, especially our chronically homeless and others whose circumstances do not allow heating in their dwellings.

By walking through the doors of the ESHWC in Weaver Hall at St. Patrick Church on Pearl Street, our homeless and heatless guests are making a positive choice to care for themselves and to connect with other people and with the support services that can help them move toward a more positive life.

At all times, our guests are received warmly by our staff and volunteers, provided with refreshments, and given a respite from the cold. In exigent cases, we also provide access to public and private transportation to make it possible for those who need to travel to and from the ESHWC or to tap into services provided by other agencies (e.g., medical care, benefits, etc.).

We provide our walk-in clients with information and contact information for government agencies and other non-profit organizations that can assist them in securing temporary and permanent housing, obtain employment, and receive medical and social services needed to help them regain and maintain their independence.

We address a basic human need of shelter and safety on behalf of our community. We provide a stable environment where guests can focus on needs other than shelter. There are still too many people we cannot serve, and still many nights of winter where our limited funding prevents us from providing safe accommodations.

The National Health Care for the Homeless Council (https://nhchc.org) advises that homeless persons are six times more likely to become ill and three times more likely to die than persons who are housed in heated space during cold periods of the year. By providing overnight shelter and warmth, as well as basic necessities such as pre- packaged food and clothing, we have mitigated the need for far more expensive public services like hospital emergency care, hospital in-patient services, emergency medical response, and police departments and correction facilities. National studies indicate that communities can decrease costs by up to 70% when homeless people have shelter and appropriate support. We believe providing warming for these vulnerable, disadvantaged people is a necessary and cost- effective community service.

Overnight Shelter

Since 2016, the Warming Center has provided warm and safe overnight shelter for the greater Enfield community. We also seek to arrange transitional housing and permanent accommodations available through other organizations. Most importantly, we offer a respectful place for a guest to enter without judgment, persecution, or guilt.

As part of our intake and assessment of all of our guests, we collect information such as demographics, housing history, veteran status, and what their immediate needs are. Our intake process allows ESHWC to create a database that provides pertinent information to assist Enfield Social Services and other agencies in helping individuals find the community resources and services that they need. This system also allows ESHWC to keep a record of the individuals who access our services as a point of contact to Social Services by referral, allowing Social Services to keep accurate data of the homeless here in Enfield who may not have been counted.

With this information we can research and identify other services and methods to ensure the guests have access to the services that are needed. We review the status of our guests and, based on outcomes, review potential improvements to processes and inter-agency relationships to ensure we are able to meet not only the immediate need of a safe warm place to stay but also that our guests are able to contact and work with appropriate agencies to meet their physical, social, and psychological needs.

During our previous 2021-2022 winter season (January 2-March 31), our guests were sheltered from 9pm to 7am (and other times when weather conditions demanded longer hours). With the support of the Town of Enfield and our sister non-profit agencies, we extended our operating days/hours starting December 1, 2022 through March 31, 2023, and for the longer hours of 7pm to 7am.

During our 2021-2022 season ending March 2022, we served a total of 70 overnight guests. Since re-starting our overnight operations on December 1, 2022, we have seen 129 individuals at an average of 27 guests each night, most of them first-time arrivals to our facility, including 38 women, 91 men, and 3 families. We were able to secure transitional or permanent shelter placements for 12 guests. Other local shelters and warming centers are reporting similar extraordinary numbers.

Outreach & Engagement

Apart from the winter season, our organization operates a year-round outreach program in Weaver Hall. We open a walk-in center one or two nights each week to provide in-person respite, distribute pre-packaged food, clothing, toiletries, etc., and provide referrals to government agencies and the not-for-profit sector.

We often are the first point of contact for individuals who may not know how to navigate the maze of resources and benefits available to them. During our guests’ intake processing, we offer to connect them with additional services within Enfield and the State of CT. We work with other social agencies to provide guests with information about programs and services available through the Town and State that can help them with healthcare, food, employment, and permanent housing. We also collaborate with community services, including Enfield Loaves and Fishes, Enfield Food Shelf, and have successful relationships with the Town of Enfield’s Department of Social Services and Hartford’s Journey Home. We also believe that the support and acceptance of our volunteers encourages our guests to feel more confident and to move toward self-sufficiency.

Administration

Enfield People for People, Inc. (EPFP) is the parent organization that operates the Enfield Safe Harbor for the Homeless and the ESHWC. EPFP is chartered in Connecticut, regulated by the Connecticut Secretary of State’s Office, and is recognized by the Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) public charity. EPFP is licensed as a Public Charity by the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection. A copy of our most recent federal information tax returns can be viewed at the IRS’s Tax Exempt Organization site. Copies of other public filings are available for review by contacting the above agencies or by accessing their databases containing our annual and other periodic filings, or by prior arrangement with the EPFP Corporate Secretary.

Additional information concerning our financial performance in calendar year 2022 and for 2023 year-to-date are contained in Attachment A.

We are governed by a Board of Directors and Officers (see attachment B) consisting entirely of uncompensated volunteers who set the direction for the organization’s operations, always with an eye toward future plans and programs.

Day-to-day operations are managed by an Executive Director and a trained staff of 6-7 persons, depending on our staffing needs during the year.

Our recurring tasks are recruiting and training volunteers, informing the community of our services, and reaching out to the homeless population who may benefit from our services. We also operate fundraising projects, solicit grants, cash, and in-kind contributions from the public and the business community, work with Enfield social service organizations, monitor the facility during the hours of operation, place information in various print and electronic media, and countless other daily and seasonal operational and administrative functions. We are exceptionally fortunate to have a dedicated cadre of volunteers to assist our operations. We could not ask for more, and we could not accomplish our mission without them.

We are committed to providing an environment free from illegal discrimination, including freedom from harassment of any kind, and we do not tolerate harassment, retaliation, or any type of discrimination or other action.

More information can be found on our website at https://enfieldsafeharbor.org.

Notable Achievements During this Period

When the COVID-19 state of emergency was announced by the Governor in 2020- 2021, we shifted its mission in 2020 through mid-2021 from providing heated overnight shelter during the coldest winter months to one of providing outreach, engagement, and advocacy for its clients. As a result, we are pleased to say that with our assistance all of our clients were able to obtain temporary safe housing during that period.

As the pandemic eased in 2022, we continued our outreach efforts and resumed overnight operations commencing January 3, 2022, through March 31, 2022.  We

likewise operated overnights from December 1, 2022, through March 31, 2023, and will continue our weekly outreach after that.

Financially, we benefitted in 2021 from lower payroll costs and lower fixed overhead costs owing to the influx of government funds designed to mitigate the pandemic. An example is that the State of CT funded the housing of homeless individuals in hotels during that period, relieving the ESHWC of the cost of operating the overnight warming center and the significant payroll expense associated with that. While 2021 private contributions were down, they were offset by one-time grants which enabled us to carry a positive cash balance into 2022 to resume our overnight operations in January 2022.

For the remainder of 2022 we continued to see a downward trend in personal contributions. At the same time we incurred the costs of resuming overnight operations for the months of January through March 2022, and again from December 2022 through March 2023. This caused a dramatic increase in payroll costs versus 2021, but we are fortunate that the corporate community has stepped up to defray that cost. As a result, we ended the 2022-2023 overnight season in solid financial condition, sufficient for us to continue O&E throughout the remainder of the year. We are hopeful that sufficient fundraising and grants can be obtained in the balance of 2023 to enable us to resume overnight operations as early as November 2023 (if weather conditions demand early opening of the ESHWC).

Through a $25,000 American Rescue Plan Act grant administered by the Town of Enfield, in early 2023 we identified and acquired some improvements to our current facility to enable more effective utilization of Weaver Hall in support of our guests. All proposed projects were assembled with reference to FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY COVID-19 BEST PRACTICE INFORMATION: HOMELESS SHELTERING.

·       Portable Dividers

Weaver Hall is a large but unsubdivided space where guests rest, packaged food is distributed, etc. Intake interviews of guests are also performed in the same area within full view and earshot of others. To mitigate the privacy and personal dignity concerns as well as to enable appropriate social distancing and temporary isolation of guests who present at the facility and subsequently exhibit signs of COVID-19. We purchased moveable room dividers so that areas of the facility can be configured as needed.

·       Moveable Secure Storage

Weaver Hall does not have storage space dedicated to our overnight operations; accordingly, our guests are required either to take their belongings with them when they exit the facility each morning or store them in unsecured plastic bags in a communal “heap” if they expect to return the next evening. This is both unsecure and not keeping with public health practices. We acquired 6 large-capacity moveable security carts meeting National Sanitary Foundation standards to mitigate this problem.

·       Cots

Our guests rest directly on the floor of Weaver Hall, as we do not have available cots/bedding/recliners or other furniture. Subject to coordination with and approval by the Fire Marshal and other pertinent Town agencies, we acquired 30 folding cots and 2 storage racks meeting FEMA-approval requirements.

Risks and Challenges

The closure of COVID-era hotel shelters has amplified the temporary housing crisis as Connecticut entered the 2022-2023 winter with fewer shelter/warming center beds and more people in need. Eighty-nine shelter programs operate in the state today, representing a total of 2,537 beds. After shelter space peaked in 2010, the number of emergency beds and transitional housing units for Connecticut’s homeless has decreased, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s 2021 Housing Inventory Count Report for CT.4 But with the economic fallout of the pandemic, the number of people experiencing homelessness is rising and the resources are simply not there to sustain the increase. This is being exacerbated by the pandemic-related freeze on evictions, which was lifted recently.

This presents three issues:

1. The capacity of the facility from which we operate.

2. Responding to our guests’ immediate needs but planning for the future comfort, health, and safety needs of a growing number of homeless at times of a resurgent COVID or other similar pandemic health emergency.

3. Fatigue experienced by our paid seasonal staff of 7 people who served a 30% increase in the number of guests previously served, while adding administrative burdens to our operations that may no longer be reasonable to expect them or our volunteers to cope with.

4 https://files.hudexchange.info/reports/published/CoC_HIC_State_CT_2021.pdf

5 Weaver Hall is located in the basement of St. Patrick Church, 64 Pearl St. Weaver Hall is a large open space with three separate restrooms, kitchen facilities, an elevator, and multiple ingress/egress points in case of emergency. The facility is provided through the generosity of St. Jeanne Jugan Roman Catholic Parish, rent free, and without charge for utilities, etc., allowing ESHWC to devote its contributions and grants to items, services, and programs that directly benefit the homeless and avoid most facility-related overhead.

For example, our staff members frequently work 13-hour overnight shifts while being required to remain awake and alert at all times.  Their duties also include guest intake, monitoring, and reporting.  ESHWC uses every

Future Funding Needs

The CDC reports7 that indoor air filtration plays a significant role in mitigating the spread of COVID and other pathogens, particularly in congregate settings. One future investment for the ESHWC would be the acquisition of portable high- efficiency air scrubbers to protect our staff and guests.

We also are responsible for data entry into the CT 211 and HMIS systems when we process guests into our facility. We do not presently possess the necessary IT equipment or internet connection to do so efficiently. Our plan when funds allow is to acquire 2 desktop computers and necessary peripherals to support this activity and to enable internet access to guests on an as needed basis for them to research and apply for benefits, etc.

As noted earlier, ESHWC has seen an exponential increase in demand for its services, especially in the frequent instances when the State of CT invokes the Severe Cold Weather Protocol where shelters and warming centers essentially need to operate around the clock. ESHWC proposes to add and train additional staff in order to reduce the burden of longer hours on existing staff and to create added surge capacity while minimizing the incurrence of overtime hours.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS 2022-2023

Rev. Peter Bushnell Chair & President

Marc Warnock Vice President & Vice-Chair

Lorraine Creedon Board Member & Secretary

Deacon Paul L. Robert Board Member & Treasurer

Rosalind Swift Board Member and Assistant Treasurer

Priscilla Brayson Board Member

Murray Brayson Board Member

Sue Banning Board Member

Sue Carllo Board Member

Debi Mastroni-Kenyon

Board Member (since March 2023)

Monica Wright

ATTACHMENT A – FINANCIAL REPORT