CT Housing Commissioner Asks to Meet with Mayor on Manchester Homeless Shelter

State Housing Commissioner Evonne Klien has asked to meet with Manchester Mayor Jay Moran about serving the homeless in Manchester after the group running the homeless shelter in town announced it would close it, the Hartford Courant reported.

The director of the shelter, run by the Manchester Area Conference of Churches Charities, said the group planned to close it after the state demanded that the shelter follow a state and federal policy to take in active substance abusers. The shelter has had a policy of not taking them in except when the weather was too cold or hot for it to be safe outdoors. The state gives the shelter $174,000, just over half of its $330,000 annual budget, according to the Courant.

The newspaper reported that Moran said he will meet with Klein, but he also said there are problems with replacing MACC Charities — the group owns the 466 Main St. building that houses the shelter, although if it wants to use the building for any other purpose, it would need town approval. If MACC Charities doesn’t allow someone else to run the shelter, a new location would be needed to establish a different shelter.

Moran also pointed out that 93 percent of the shelter’s recent clients neither lived in town nor worked in it beforehand but were referred to the Manchester shelter by a state referral program, according to the report.