Many of the people who are working to help Connecticut’s homeless are themselves struggling to make ends meet, and some are facing homelessness as well, according to a report released Tuesday. The report, from the Housing Innovation Lab, an initiative of the nonprofit The Housing Collective, analyzed the homeless response system in Fairfield County and Northwestern Connecticut. The analysis found that, even as the state deals with more people experiencing homelessness, many of the frontline workers trying to solve the problem are themselves housing-insecure. Most staff reported in a survey that they earned less than the area median income for a four-person household, and many were below the threshold for what’s called ALICE — a term that means Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. In Fairfield County, more than 20% of frontline shelter staff said they had been at risk of losing their housing in the last one or two years. Another 7% lost their housing, and a few had to seek shelter services. In Northwest Connecticut, nearly 30% of the staff reported that they had been at risk of losing their housing. Many frontline workers also reported that they’d taken second jobs, accessed food pantries or gone without food to make ends meet. “They’re facing the worst market conditions that we’ve seen while they’re also trying to work within this system to help others be rehoused,” said Lauren Sheehan, one of the report’s authors and chief operating and strategic officer at The Housing Collective. Sheehan said they conducted the report to better understand the experiences of people within the system.  The report said that one of the first steps to fixing this problem is to increase staff wages, particularly for anyone earning less than $33,975 annually, before considering broader systemic change. “Much of our system of care is primarily government-funded, and so many of our programs have not seen cost-of-living increases in years,” Sheehan said. And all this is happening as homelessness is increasing. Annual censuses of the homeless population show that the number of people experiencing homelessness has increased for the past three years in Connecticut. It rose about 13% from 2023 to 2024, to 3,410. Service providers for the past couple of legislative sessions have asked lawmakers for more funding in the state budget for staff raises and cold weather services. They say need is far outpacing resources. In 2022, the state budget for homelessness services was a fraction of what providers asked for, and last year, providers received no additional money after budget talks erupted. Homelessness has been increasing across the country. Late last year, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development issued a report showing that homelessness rose 12% in 2023, the largest one-year jump since 2007. This comes amid increasing housing prices for the rental and home-buying markets. Many renters across the country are paying more than the recommended third of their income on housing costs. Sheehan also said the report found that workers said they needed more training as it becomes harder to find housing. Many don’t feel prepared to do the work they’re hired to do. “The nature of this work is really difficult,” Sheehan said. “And we’re finding that it can be challenging for people to commit to this work for long periods of time, and so it’s resulted in us having vacancies in essential roles for long periods of time.” Training of new workers to fill those long-vacant slots can be rushed. One of the report’s recommendations is to improve training for service providers. Staff opinions on how race affected people’s experience of the system varied, according to the report. The percentage of people who believed race affected how people were served in the system was about even with the percentage of people who didn’t think race affected service. Sheehan said it’s a question experts will look at more in future conversations. “We need to take a race and gender equity lens and look through that lens,” she said. The report also found that the system has work to do to ensure that people who have experienced homelessness can voice their opinions on the way the system needs to change. Recommendations include including people with lived experience in meetings to discuss solutions to homelessness.