Homelessness: Advocacy and Social Policy

Abstract

On March 20, 1990, the Connecticut Supreme Court reversed a decision of the New Haven Housing Court in Savage v. Aronson, a case brought by the Yale Law School Clinical Program. The trial court had issued a state-wide injunction on behalf of all homeless families residing in emergency housing, ordering Connecticut's welfare commissioner to stop enforcing the state mandated one-hundred-day maximum on emergency housing assistance. The trial court found that high rents, low levels of Aid to Families with Dependent Children ("AFDC") benefits, and lack of rent subsidies had prevented these families from obtaining affordable housing. After finding that families lodged in welfare motels as an emergency measure had been unable to locate permanent residences, the trial court enjoined the welfare commissioner from evicting them except to permanent housing. In so holding, the trial court accepted the plaintiffs' interpretation of the Connecticut AFDC statutes, that the state was required to support dependent children and their caretaker relatives in a "home," and that for those clients, the welfare motel was "home."