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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Proposed Cuts: “Force CT Back” to More Band-Aid Homeless Shelters

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Monday, June 25, 2012   

HARTFORD, Conn. - Connecticut currently relies on $32 million a year in federal housing funds to work against homelessness, but money for key programs is in question as Congress debates the federal budget. Some Republican lawmakers want to do away with the Department of Housing and Urban Development, because they consider it a waste of money, but Carol Walter, executive director of the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness, says that would be a big mistake.

"The cost of having people bouncing from shelter to emergency room to jail, children bouncing from foster care to group homes and back to foster care, is much higher."

The Obama administration is proposing a $44.8 billion budget for HUD. That's a slight increase overall, but some in Congress are proposing deep cuts for programs like transitional housing, cuts Walter says will end up costing taxpayers more than the cost of helping people find adequate places to live.

She says service providers and government agencies have taken a bi-partisan and efficient approach to curbing homelessness in the state, but budget reductions could cut that progress off at the knees.

Walter also says enacting harsh cuts would mean a return to the Band-Aid fix of overflow shelters next winter, because the funding won't be there to place families in housing-based alternatives.

"What this move by Congress could mean is that we're really back in the sheltering business, because we will have no choice but to open up church basements, to open up fire stations, as we did in the '80s, in order to just meet the demand of people being turned out to the streets."

Congress is currently considering the 2013 HUD Appropriations Act. Walter says some lawmakers are proposing $100 million in cuts to existing programs, including both transitional and permanent housing.


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