The New London (Connecticut) Homeless Hospitality Center (NLHHC) is a non-profit human services agency whose mission is “to serve as a bridge out of homelessness by helping our guests pursue their self-selected path to permanent housing.”
Begun as a coalition of citizens, faith communities, and service organizations, the Homeless Hospitality Center has operated a daytime hospitality center and overnight shelter since 2007, and also offers employment and health care assistance.
Since 2011, our Southeastern Connecticut Fund for Land Equity (formerly the Francis Fund), has made ten loans to NLHHC. The first was for the purchase, renovation, and conversion of a four-family house into an eight-unit transitional housing facility for homeless veterans. Similar loans in 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2016 helped NLHHC purchase four multi-family homes (comprising nine units altogether) to provide housing for low-income veterans for affordable rental housing for people emerging from homelessness. A loan in 2018 funded the purchase of vacant land in an urban New London neighborhood where NLHHC plans to build three brand new duplexes for their transitional housing program, providing as many as eighteen people with an affordable place to stay; and one the following year supplemented construction financing for the first duplex.
Loans in 2011 and 2013 supported the creation of a permanent home for NLHHC’s hospitality center and offices: first to help acquire a former church property and then for renovations to enable it to accommodate all of their day and overnight services including showers, laundry, meeting spaces, and beds; a health outreach clinic; and the organization’s offices. Our most recent loan, in 2021, financed the purchase of a two-story building at the opposite end of downtown that will serve as a second resource center on the ground floor with several affordable efficiency units above.