Connecticut Department of Housing | Office of Communications

Contact: Meghan Bard| meghan.bard@ct.gov

For release: December 13, 2023

HUD AWARDS DOH $4.5 MILLION FOR MOBILITY SERVICES

The Connecticut Department of Housing was recently awarded $4.5 million by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for mobility services for Section 8 recipients in the New Haven and Bridgeport areas.

DOH partnered with Elm City Communities, the Housing Authority of the City of New Haven, on the grant application to HUD, which will allow for the hiring of approximately 10 new caseworkers who will work with residents to find neighborhoods that better suit their long-term needs.

This program will assist people who have housing choice vouchers, who live in high poverty, low opportunity areas, to potentially move to high opportunity, low poverty areas. A similar program exists in Greater Hartford.

“DOH strives to provide the households we serve through our rental assistance programs with the ability to live in communities of their choice. Many of our households seek to move to areas of high opportunity to access better schools for their children and better economic opportunity, but they often find it difficult to navigate rental housing in these opportunity areas,” said DOH Commissioner Seila Mosquera-Bruno. “This federal award will allow DOH to provide additional assistance, through mobility counseling, to these families seeking to move to these high opportunity communities. DOH has an existing mobility counseling program in Greater Hartford, and this federal award will allow us to expand these services to the Greater New Haven and Greater Bridgeport communities. We are also proud to partner with Elm City Communities to be able to expand the number of Connecticut households we can assist with this program.”

“Here at Elm City Communities/Housing Authority of the City of New Haven, we believe that every family should have access to housing that they can afford in communities of their choice,” said Karen DuBois-Walton, President of Elm City Communities/Housing Authority of the City of New Haven. “Too often our families face significant barriers when attempting to use their voucher to lease a unit. The HUD Mobility Grant will allow us to more effectively help our families access housing throughout the Greater New Haven Region by working in partnership with the Connecticut Department of Housing and Home, Inc. and will provide families with the support and resources needed to make these moves a reality,”