CT Public | By: Abigail Bone
Hartford resident Mattie Bell sits in a brown recliner in the living room of her first-floor apartment in Hartford’s north end. The room is dim, with the shades drawn, and the faint scent of cigarette smoke lingers.
She is surrounded by pictures of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, while watching the Home Shopping Network on TV and listening to her two rescue cockatiels, Pretty Girl and Charlie, chirp.
At 76-years-old, Bell has lived in the same apartment in Hartford’s Frog Hollow neighborhood for nearly four decades. It was from that apartment that she raised her three children and cared for her eight grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.
Bell has relied on federal Section 8, or Housing Choice Vouchers, for more than 50 years.
She first received housing assistance as a 25-year-old single mother of three, a decade after moving to Connecticut from Georgia. In Georgia, Bell said assistance like Section 8 wasn’t readily available.
“If you didn’t work, have a little shack of your own, you were in trouble. You had nothing,” Bell said.
Bell is worried about the potential impact federal cuts by President Donald Trump’s administration will have on social services, like housing assistance and social security. Even with the Section 8 voucher, Bell pays $800 a month in rent.
If the worst comes, Bell’s family would take her in. She’s more concerned about others.
“I know how it will be. A person with three or four little kids trying to go to work, trying to pay daycare, they not going to be able to do it,” Bell said.
Bell is one of about 161,000 Connecticut residents who rely on federal rental assistance, which is under threat.