Could a payment of $500 change someone’s life? 

Researchers at Yale are preparing to publish two papers looking at the outcomes of a program offering one-time cash to victims of community violence and intimate partner violence in and around New Haven. 

The takeaways are similar: The programs profoundly help people meet urgent needs, strengthen their connections with community organizations and allow them to take greater charge over their futures.

Back in 2023, Yale New Haven Hospital received a $75,000 grant from the nonprofit 4-CT. The grant allowed the hospital to offer people who have been shot, stabbed, severely assaulted or trafficked two payments of $500 each. That included people who have experienced intimate partner violence. (In the last year, the hospital has reduced the payment to a single installment of $500.)

Dr. Lucy Paredes, a research fellow at Yale and author of the paper, told CT Mirror that she interviewed between 15 and 20 recipients of cash assistance between June 2023 and July 2024. 

Paredes said she was struck by how severely an injury could affect someone’s finances — not just because of hospital bills, but also the loss of steady income from being out of work for a period of time. She said she’d spoken to people who couldn’t qualify for things like family medical leave either, because they had already used up their allotted sick time or were new at a job and hadn’t yet accrued it. 

“ When you’re injured and you can’t work, your monthly expenses are coming regardless of what contextual factors are happening,” Paredes said. “That people had something that they could use as a support in that moment was, I think, a really salient point for a lot of the people that we interviewed.”  

A key part of the program was that people were allowed to use the cash in whatever way they saw fit. 

“The fundamental idea behind cash transfers is that you have to trust people to know what’s best for themselves and what’s best in terms of what they and their families need, and to give them the flexibility,” explained Sarah Blanton, the executive director of 4-CT, which distributed the grant to Yale. 

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Paredes said she found that the money allowed people to give themselves time to fully heal from their injuries, rather than taking risks or rushing back to work out of desperation. She said the majority of the people they interviewed used the funds for basic necessities — things like food and rent. 

Blanton said she’d heard a story of a father who was granted custody of his children when the mother was put in jail and used the money to purchase mattresses for his children to sleep on that night. 

Compass Youth Collaborative, which partners with the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center in Hartford, was able to offer cash assistance to about 230 youth in their program beginning in the fall of 2024 and through 2025. The collaborative works with young people between the ages of 16 and 24 who are at risk for being part of a gang, being involved in violence or with the criminal justice system. 

Larry Johnson, the organization’s director of hospital and crisis response, said the young people spent the funds on things like groceries, school supplies, transportation, utilities and hygiene products. 

Four families spent the money on burial expenses. Johnson said that, in one instance, the mother of someone who was killed was at the funeral home and discovered she didn’t have enough to pay for the funeral services. Johnson said that, thanks to 4-CT, they were able to get her the funds she needed immediately.  

One young man used the funds in order to get a gang tattoo covered up and changed, for his own safety. And for four of the young people, the money made it possible for them to attend the prom. 

“We were actually … out there at the stores helping them get fitted for suits and for dresses. Nails got done, hair got done,” Johnson said. “One of the youth actually bought her first dress. [She] hadn’t ever had a dress on in her life, and she bought her first dress.” 

The program also offers cash assistance to people who are victims of intimate partner violence.

Jim Dodington, a doctor specializing in pediatric emergency medicine at Yale, said that the percentage of people in the cash assistance program that have undergone intimate partner violence has increased. While it was originally about a 70-30 split, with most of the recipients being exposed to community violence, this past year it was moving closer to 50-50, he said. 

“In fact, sadly, in this last year, we’ve seen, really, an uptick in the number of domestic violence victims,” Dodington said. 

Blanton said victims of domestic violence sometimes use the funding to relocate. 

 ”When there’s a domestic violence situation, having resources to go somewhere else can be life-saving,” Blanton said.

‘We’re not just selling you dreams’

Researchers are doing a separate study on victims of intimate partner violence who have received cash assistance through the program. Gunjan Tiyyagura, a professor of pediatrics and emergency medicine at Yale and the senior author on the study, said they interviewed 13 women who each received a cash transfer of about $500. 

Tiyyagura said that poverty and intimate partner violence were often entwined: victims would find themselves trapped with their abusers because of financial needs, and the stress of having little money would worsen the abuse. Immigrants, she said, were often in an even worse position because of their lack of legal status or inability to apply for benefits through the state. 

As in the case of community violence, Tiyyagura said the women used the funds to buy basic necessities like food, transportation or clothing for themselves or their children. Some used the money to get new locks in their homes. One woman, Tiyyagura said, used the money for a housing deposit so that she could leave the home of her abuser. 

Beyond just the physical benefits, Tiyyagura said, the cash also allowed the women to feel more empowered, and it improved trust with case managers at the hospital. 

“[They said] they just felt for the first time somebody could trust them, or that this was help that they had never even expected,” Tiyyagura said.

Multiple researchers told CT Mirror that, contrary to some people’s concerns that people could misuse the funds they receive, they had not seen this happen. Blanton said that studies on cash assistance programs overwhelmingly showed that people who got cash were not wasteful. 

“When people get a set amount of money, they tend not to go and spend it on vices,” said Blanton. “They spend it on their basic needs, and overwhelmingly, if they are parents, they spend it on their kids.” 

Paredes said this was consistent with the people she’d interviewed. And Tiyyagura said that while donors had expressed concern to 4-CT about the use of the funds, and violence survivors questioned whether people might come into the ER and misrepresent themselves in order to get the money, she’d found no evidence of either of these things happening in the study. 

The goal with the cash assistance program isn’t simply to hand people money and send them off. The hospital tries to connect victims with other nonprofit partners in the community. Nearly everyone who spoke to CT Mirror said that the cash assistance helped build trust between victims and the organizations that were offering services. 

“ It’s a tool that allows the people to see that we’re serious and we mean what we say. We’re not just selling you dreams,” Pepe Vega, Yale’s program lead for violence prevention outreach, said.

Vega said he knew of a situation where a victim used the funds to pay a debt he owed to someone. It worked, he said — the victim was left alone. 

Vega, himself a survivor of gun violence on two occasions, said he remembers being pulled over by police officers, while in an ambulance on the way to the hospital, who demanded to know the identity of his shooter. Later, when Vega saw a police officer talking with one of the doctors at the hospital where he was treated, he decided to leave. The second time he was shot, Vega said, he didn’t even bother to go to the hospital. 

“I know these stories that go on every day in the community, and people are so afraid to go to the hospital and so afraid to talk to anybody afterward because they don’t want to be looked at as a perpetrator when they were a true victim,” Vega said.

Tiyyagura said that beyond cash assistance, the hospital helps survivors of intimate partner violence come up with a safety plan, makes sure they have a place to go for the next 24 hours and reaches out to domestic violence services if the person agrees.  

Broadening success

Dodington said the hospital provides intensive case management for 60 to 90 days after someone comes in with an injury, helping them apply for funding from the Victims of Crime Act and connecting them to community organizations. Those include the City of New Haven’s Victim Services Support Network, the Urban Community Alliance, the Community Violence Intervention Program or Project Longevity. 

“The $500 is in many ways the initial step towards trying to provide stability so that you can then engage in these services,” Dodington said.

Blanton said the money also made it far more likely that people would answer follow-up calls from the hospital after they were discharged. 

“One of the things they found was that there was an incredibly high increase in the frequency with which people answered their phone calls, not because they expected more money, but it was because the hospital actually met them where they were at and delivered something that they really need,” Blanton said. 

Gun violence rates in New Haven have decreased significantly in the last few years. After peaking at 26 murder victims and 110 assault victims in 2021, firearm violence dropped to 16 homicides and 43 non-fatal shootings in 2025. Mayor Justin Elicker called last year’s numbers “the lowest level of gun violence we’ve seen in a decade.” 

Paredes said that with such a small sample size, it’s difficult to measure program success. A 2023 study at Yale, also with a small sample size, did not find any statistically significant change in reinjury for people who participated in the hospital’s initial violence prevention program, which ran from 2020 to 2022. 

But Paredes said that success can be defined in other ways, too. 

“From the anecdotal experience of talking to these individuals, from what I had heard from the caseworkers at the violence intervention program, I think hearing how even just this little bit of financial assistance truly helped shape people’s recovery to me warrants its existence and demonstrates that there’s a need for this that’s not being filled by the current systems of support,” Paredes said.

Paredes said she felt the state could help by making it easier for victims to apply for funding that they are eligible for as violence survivors. And Tiyyagura said the state needs to do more to provide housing, a need that a one-time payment of $500 can’t cover. She also said there should be some kind of financial literacy training to go along with the funds. 

“ I think if there’s a way to make this more universal, that would be amazing. But I know a lot of [intimate partner violence] service organizations are struggling with not having money for cash assistance as well. I think funding is going down for all of these things as opposed to being maintained or going up,” Tiyyagura said.

Both Dodington and Blanton praised the state for treating violence as a public health problem rather than an issue of criminality. Blanton said that 4-CT had received a grant for $200,000 from the state Department of Public Health a few years ago, which allowed them to distribute about 250 cash assistance cards to people in Hartford and New Haven, ultimately assisting more than 850 people.

Blanton said the organization is now expanding its work to Waterbury and Bridgeport. 

Cash for reentry

In addition to the one-time cash payments, 4-CT also ran a longer-term cash assistance program for people returning to the community after incarceration. Men and women who enrolled in the program, known as Elm City Reentry, received $500 a month for 12 months. Blanton said the most frequent feedback she heard from people who engaged in the program was lower stress levels. 

“ Some people experience a reduction in stress, and it helps them reconnect with family members, or it helps them have the patience to wait in a job search for a better job that sets them on a career path versus a job at Taco Bell, for example,” Blanton said.

This was the case for Trevor Dixon, who enrolled in the program after he was released from incarceration to a halfway house in November 2021. Dixon said that when he first heard about the possibility of getting monthly cash payments, he was skeptical. 

“ Honestly, most of the programs that I ran through or that I’ve known about …  none of them really pan out to be what they say they’re going to be,” he said. 

After leaving the halfway house, Dixon moved into a property that his sister owned. But he said that his sister wanted him to pay rent to help with the bills, something he wasn’t able to do without a job. He used the $500 to purchase food, half of which he gave to his sister, who accepted it as payment toward the rent. 

“ I had nothing to offer. That was leverage. It helped me. It definitely did,” he said. 

Dixon said that while the monthly payment wasn’t enough to cover basic expenses, it was enough to help him establish a foundation. He was able to think deliberately about how he wanted to move forward with his work, rather than being forced to throw himself into a less-than-ideal situation out of desperation. 

Dixon said he wasn’t sure what he would have done without the money. 

“ I kind of ran all my wells dry when I was incarcerated. It’s kind of hard to ask the same people who were supporting you when you were locked up to keep supporting you when you come home and you don’t have nothing to offer yet,” Dixon said.  

McKenna Booker, the coordinator for New Haven’s Office of Violence Prevention, told CT Mirror that cash assistance has been a lifeline both for victims of gun violence and people returning to the community after being incarcerated for a firearm-related offense. The city runs the Program for Reintegration, Engagement, Safety and Support, or PRESS, to work with these people.

“ We’ve had several PRESS participants say to us directly that without this cash assistance, they without a doubt would have been compelled or felt compelled to rely on their previous survival tactics or survival strategies, which included picking up a firearm, illegal activity, possibly revisiting criminal habits and behavior just to meet basic needs, just to be able to provide for their family,” Booker said.

So far, Elm City Reentry has served three cohorts of 20 people each, and Blanton said they are currently raising money to fund a fourth group. 

Dixon found work making deliveries for DoorDash. He still had to be careful with money, he said — the only reason that the pilot worked, he said, was because he worked the whole time he received the funds. 

“ The pilot wasn’t made to live off of. It was just made as a boost or to help you with whatever you’re doing,” he said. 

Still, he said, he became more and more nervous as it got closer to the time the pilot was going to end. He said he was able to stock up on food and water and give his sister some advance payments in anticipation of the payments ending. 

Since the pilot ended, Dixon found a job doing work for a man who buys and sells real estate. Through a former employer, he was able to find a good apartment at a reasonable price. With the help of his employer, he’s paying off the cost of a truck. He said that family members treat him differently now, trusting him to handle situations. He’s made more progress in the last few years, he said, than he’s made at any time in his life. 

“ The program’s a blessing, and I hope the people that get this program use it similarly in the way that I did,” he said.