Kathleen McKenzie was perfecting her rice recipe with her mother’s voice echoing in her mind. The trick, her mother would say, is using equal parts rice and water and adding the seasoning before it’s cooked.
For about two years, 70-year-old McKenzie was homeless and often living outdoors. During that time, she lacked the peace of mind she needed to remember — to hear her mother’s voice. So this moment, cooking the rice in the quiet of her own kitchen, with her own dishes, marked a turning point for McKenzie.
McKenzie, who goes by the nickname Gypsy, had always planned to spend her retirement doing things like this — perfecting recipes, hosting parties and writing into the early hours of the morning. But that plan was abruptly interrupted when she was nearly 70 and lost her housing.
“I was channeling my watching her cook and remembering what she did,” McKenzie said. “My kids used to go ‘Mom, this rice is awful.’ At the age of 70, I finally developed a knack for making rice.”
McKenzie spent two years without a home, living in a tent on the New Haven Green, then in a tiny house in the city at the Rosette Village Collective, a backyard where people experiencing homelessness can set up their tents and stay. She’s part of a growing population of older adults who are facing homelessness in Connecticut.
But in June, McKenzie moved into a basement apartment in the Dixwell neighborhood of New Haven. She was able to get rehoused and keep her housing, but for many people in similar situations, that’s become more difficult in recent years because of rising rents and a lack of housing supply.
McKenzie’s story highlights a few of the experiences that are becoming ever more common with homelessness in Connecticut. She lived outdoors for months. She lost her housing when she was already past retirement age. And she knows what it is to struggle mentally and emotionally after experiencing homelessness.
It takes time to reacclimate, McKenzie has found.
“The transition is killing me,” she said a few weeks after getting her new apartment. “Obviously, I don’t know, almost any experience that you go through, there is a sort of ricochet effect. I have been given all this bounty and all this beauty. I’m still not over the trauma of being homeless.”
The latest data from the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness show that there are more than 5,000 people experiencing homelessness in Connecticut, including more than 1,300 people over the age of 55, and they’re staying homeless for longer than before, putting additional strain on the state’s shelter system. As the shelter system is more strained, more people are living outdoors.
The rise in Connecticut’s homeless population and the strain on the system have made homelessness a central issue in the state legislature this year. Lawmakers are embroiled in a debate over the best ways to fund the system and how to ensure there’s enough housing to go around.
McKenzie lived in Wisconsin for nearly 20 years before moving to New York. Her arthritis had gotten bad, and she said she couldn’t take the weather anymore.
She later moved to Connecticut, where her son lives, to leave what she says was an abusive relationship. But her son’s drug addiction made living with him untenable and she wound up living on the streets of New Haven.
Now, McKenzie has plans for how she wants to fix up her home. She keeps plants in the windowsill, alongside a row of plastic dinosaurs, a favorite toy of hers from when she was a child. She’s slowly gathering the dishes she’d need to throw cocktail parties again, and spends much of her time reading novels and writing.
She wants to write down her whole story, beginning with her childhood as the third of four children and the daughter of a Baptist minister, her move to New York, and her time in homelessness.
“You can’t just typecast somebody as unhoused, and that’s what defines them,” said Colleen Shaddox, one of McKenzie’s friends and a volunteer at Rosette Village. “She [McKenzie] is one of the most well-read people I know. She has a beautiful singing voice. She’s funny as all get out. She has a really strong spirit.”
McKenzie entered homelessness in Connecticut during a complicated time for the state’s systems of care. After nearly a decade of decreases in the homeless population, the state started to see increases for the first time in 2022.
Shelter workers and advocates have said for years that the system is underfunded, that workers aren’t paid enough, and that people outnumber the available space in shelters. Experts say more people are entering homelessness nationwide because of rising rents and a lack of housing — conditions that are particularly acute in Connecticut.
“Families are being turned away from essential services, and emergency shelter stays are longer than ever,” said Sarah Fox, the chief executive officer of the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness, in written testimony to the Housing Committee.
Politics
Fox wrote in support of House Bill 6893, which would allocate $33.5 million to the homeless response system for additional shelter during extreme weather, increases to staff pay, flexible funding to keep people housed and eviction prevention.
Gov. Ned Lamont’s proposed budget falls far short of that, including just $5 million for eviction prevention and regional homeless service providers, as well as $4.5 million annually for cold weather services.
Lamont has offered some support to the system, including by establishing the Interagency Council on Homelessness, to improve state efforts to help address the issue. But his administration has prioritized savings and paying down the state’s debt.
Critics say this has meant that some social services are starved, including the homeless response system.
“I have been a part of the homelessness response system for over six years, and in that time, I have witnessed homelessness increase while funding continually declines,” wrote Tabitha Brown, a housing case manager at the Beth-El Center in Milford, in public testimony. “Families and individuals who lose their housing are not just losing a place to sleep — they are losing the stability that anchors their lives.”
The newly established End Homelessness Caucus, a group of state lawmakers focused on addressing homelessness, announced Thursday that one of their priorities would be securing that funding for the system.
“The budget allocations and our proposed legislation will not only provide a great relief to homeless individuals, but to the wonderful and dedicated employees of organizations that handle homelessness services, who often work around the clock for little pay,” said caucus chair Rep. Kadeem Roberts, D-Norwalk, in a statement.
On Thursday, the Housing Committee passed H.B. 6893 out of committee with bipartisan support. It will likely go to the Appropriations Committee for considerations as lawmakers negotiate the next biennial state budget.
“This is our stab as a Housing Committee to put it on the map,” said Housing Committee ranking member Rep. Tony Scott, R-Monroe.
Senior homelessness
A growing number of older adults, like McKenzie, are experiencing homelessness in Connecticut.
Service providers say that’s because older people are often on fixed incomes and can’t afford rent increases. In last year’s annual report on the state’s homeless population, the number of people over the age of 55 experiencing homelessness rose from 710 to nearly 800.
The annual report is a counting of the number of people experiencing homelessness on a single day in January. The last count with data available occurred in January 2024, and service providers say the numbers have risen since.
About 200 of those were over 64, and service providers say that number is still rising.
McKenzie said when she was homeless, her arthritis made the heat and cold harder to bear. She opted to stay in a tent rather than a shelter because she was afraid of being robbed. She had her bag stolen in a Connecticut shelter and lost her identification cards and money.
She recalls how difficult it was to be out in the elements. “It seemed to me that it rained every weekend last year,” McKenzie said. “And so that was kind of crazy, because your clothes get mildew, your baggage gets mildew. It was horrible. It’s cold in the morning, but if you bring along the proper amount of layers, you’re OK with that.”
There are close to 900 people experiencing homelessness who are living outside or in a place not meant for human habitation such as abandoned buildings or cars, according to data from the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness.
After New Haven police cleared the green of encampments, McKenzie found Rosette Village.
The village is a collection of tents and tiny houses in the backyard of Amistad House of Hospitality in New Haven. It’s meant to offer people experiencing homelessness their own private space while they transition out of homelessness. Tiny houses in public spaces have been used as shelter for people experiencing homelessness in several cities across the United States, including Dignity Village in Portland, Ore.
In New Haven, the village has come into conflict with the city because officials say those who created it violated building ordinances and didn’t get proper permitting to build the structures in 2023. Over the summer of 2024, the city ordered electricity shut off to the property. Last fall, the village appealed to the state to intervene in the battle over electricity.
“We always talk about housing being a human right, but community is a human right, too,” Shaddox said of the village. She said the sense of community helped McKenzie feel more at home.
Finding housing
Although McKenzie started looking for housing as soon as she became homeless, she said she found that there were lots of places to apply for help.
She’s had several case workers who helped her apply for social security benefits, disability benefits and a spot at the housing authority. But she struggled to find a place she could afford.
“The rents are exorbitant,” she said. “The pandemic caused rents to go up.”
She finally got connected with a religious organization that helps pay her $900 a month rent. She pays $317 of the cost, and the organization pays the rest. The people at Amistad helped her pay for the cost of her storage unit so she could afford the security deposit.
Although she says things are better now that she has a place to live, the transition has been hard. She lost belongings and experienced trauma when she became homeless. The possessions she lost extend beyond the money and her wallet. She lost photos, books, her writings, even her daughter’s ashes.
“I’m looking back at everything I lost,” she said. “It’s the accumulation of all the losses being built back up.”
She didn’t tell her family she was homeless until she had found a new place, which caused conflict with her sisters. She didn’t want them to worry, she said, and was embarrassed about her situation.
It’s common for people to have mental and behavioral health issues long after their experience with homelessness, research shows. But McKenzie is slowly finding her new community, visiting Rosette Village, and going to events where she can meet people in the hopes of hosting them at her new apartment.
She hopes to redecorate, maybe even add wooden doors onto the kitchen to match the woodwork on the trims that she loves.
But she keeps her old cot and sleeping bag, just in case.