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Housing issues affect everyone in Connecticut, from those who are searching for a safe place to live, to those who may find it increasingly difficult to afford a place they already call home.WNPR is covering Connecticut's housing and homelessness issues in a series that examines how residents are handling the challenges they face. We look at the trends that matter most right now, and tell stories that help bring the issues to light.

A Place Of Their Own: Ending Family Homelessness In New England

Ryan Caron King
/
NENC
Chastity Kerr lives in a 27-bed family shelter in Hartford, Connecticut with her children.

For the past six months, Chastity Kerr has lived at a 27-bed family shelter in Hartford, Conn., with her three children, ages 14, 11, and 8.

Her current address, the Salvation Army’s Marshall House, is in Hartford’s historic Asylum Hill neighborhood. This is the neighborhood Mark Twain once called home. So did Harriet Beecher Stowe. And now? The Kerrs live here in a room with a private bath while Chastity Kerr looks for more permanent housing.

Her needs are pretty simple: Three bedrooms. A basketball hoop for the boys. A place of their own.

But her challenges are complex. Kerr has battled addiction, so she doesn’t want an apartment in Hartford, where she’d be too close to her old haunts. Windsor might work, or a suburb with decent schools.

Read the full story at the New England News Collaborative.

Susan Campbell is a long-time journalist whose work has appeared in The Hartford Courant, Connecticut Magazine, CT Health Investigative Team, The New Haven Register, The Guardian, and other publications.

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