New Haven's COMPASS Program Faces $1.4M Funding Gap

New Haven’s COMPASS program puts social workers and peer counselors on the streets to handle 911 calls that don’t require a police response. But the city now faces a hard deadline to find more than $1.4 million to keep it running past the end of 2026, when the federal pandemic relief money that partly funds the program runs out.

The stakes are concrete. On a recent Wednesday afternoon, COMPASS outreach workers Sarah Alkire and Wanda Jofre were driving through the Hill neighborhood when they spotted a man nodding off on the sidewalk near St. Bernard’s Cemetery. They turned around, pulled up alongside him, and rolled down the window.

“Are you doing OK?” Alkire asked.

No 911 call sent them there. No dispatch. They just saw someone who might need help and stopped. That’s the job.

What COMPASS Actually Does

Elm City COMPASS, which stands for Compassionate Allies Serving our Streets, is run by the nonprofit Continuum of Care. Teams of social workers and peer counselors respond to 911 calls involving adults dealing with mental health crises, substance use, or homelessness. Between those calls, they do exactly what Jofre and Alkire were doing that afternoon: proactive street outreach, building relationships over time with people who are often wary of any kind of institutional contact.

Jofre serves as Continuum of Care’s clinical director of acute and emergency response services. Alkire is COMPASS’s lead clinician. Both grew up in the New Haven area. They work with people who are unhoused, in the grip of addiction, or in acute psychological distress, and often all three at once. The program also fields calls involving domestic violence survivors, elderly residents losing their memory, tenants facing eviction, and people dealing with hoarding intervention.

They don’t push sobriety on people who aren’t looking to get sober. That’s a feature, not a bug. The harm reduction model COMPASS operates under prioritizes keeping people alive and connected over demanding behavior change as a precondition for help.

The Funding Cliff

COMPASS is one of two Continuum of Care programs currently kept afloat in part by American Rescue Plan Act funds, the federal pandemic relief money Congress allocated back in 2021. The other is a non-congregate shelter at 270 Foxon Blvd. Both programs face the same problem: ARPA dollars must be spent by the city by the end of this year, and there’s no replacement funding locked in.

The gap is $1.4 million, at minimum.

Mayor Justin Elicker has pledged to find the money. “These programs are both very important to the city, and we’re working to find the funding. We’re cautiously optimistic about that,” he said. He added that the city will “find a way to make sure these programs continue.”

Cautiously optimistic is not the same as funded.

New Haven’s budget situation isn’t unique among Connecticut cities right now. Municipal leaders across the state are scrambling to replace expiring federal relief money while managing pressure from Hartford over education funding and rising pension obligations. The COMPASS funding gap is a local version of a statewide problem.

A Model Worth Watching

The program has drawn attention from officers within the New Haven Police Department, too. Officers D. Cole and Terrence Rountree Jr. were with Jofre and Alkire during a recent outing, and Cole’s question cut to the heart of what makes COMPASS notable: “When are they going to expand so you guys can work with kids?”

That’s a significant endorsement from inside a police department. It also signals something about how the street-level relationship between law enforcement and social services has shifted. COMPASS can’t force anyone into psychiatric care, but it can call in a crisis intervention team with that authority when someone poses a danger to themselves or others. The rest of the time, the outreach workers focus on showing up consistently and leaving the door open.

“Meeting a person where they are” is how the program frames its philosophy. It’s a slower approach than crisis response. And it depends entirely on continuity. Workers who vanish from someone’s life because funding dried up don’t just lose ground. They damage trust that took months to build.

Reporting by the New Haven Independent first surfaced the details of the funding gap and the program’s day-to-day operations.

The General Assembly’s budget negotiations in Hartford this spring will shape how much flexibility cities like New Haven have to plug gaps like this one. Watch the municipal aid line items. That’s where this gets decided.