Blue Hills Civic Association Helped Hundreds Get Flood Grants Before Hitting Financial Trouble

By Charlotte Harvey and Sofia Acosta
UConn Journalism

Until April 2025, many peo­ple thought Blue Hills Civic Association (BHCA) was a bless­ing to Hartford and its cit­i­zens.

The orga­ni­za­tion led a very impor­tant role in the flood com­pen­sa­tion pro­gram run out of the State Comptroller’s office. The pro­gram paid for back­flow pre­ven­ters and other fixes to stop com­bined sewage over­flows from enter­ing peo­ple’s hous­es in the city’s North End neigh­borh­ods.

BHCA pub­li­cized the pro­gram and helped res­i­dents com­plete and sub­mit appli­ca­tions to receive com­pen­sa­tion from the fund.

Now, the non-profit’s future is in des­per­ate straits, with even its web­site down.

The first real signs of col­lapse hap­pened on April 8, 2025, when there was an email sent out to staff mem­bers inform­ing them of their imme­di­ate ter­mi­na­tion.

The state gov­ern­ment ter­mi­nat­ed its fund­ing of the orga­ni­za­tion after learn­ing of a $300 thou­sand loss of fund­ing last year to theft by wire fraud when scammed by some­one fraud­u­lent­ly alleg­ing to be one of their part­ners.

The theft occurred in October 2024 and was dis­cov­ered by staff when con­tact­ed by the real part­ner orga­ni­za­tion in December of the same year to inform them they never received funds. BHCA informed the gov­ern­ment about the theft in March of this year.

The ter­mi­na­tion of the fund­ing was as a result of that three-month delay in noti­fy­ing the gov­ern­ment. A con­trac­tu­al agree­ment required them to noti­fy state offi­cials with­in two weeks of any sus­pect­ed theft, accord­ing to an April 2025 CT Insider arti­cle.

Prior to this, though, the state gov­ern­ment pro­vid­ed fund­ing to the orga­ni­za­tion in order to run their com­mu­ni­ty pro­grams and to com­pen­sate them for work they did in col­lab­o­ra­tion with state agen­cies. According to a tax state­ment in 2022, 85% of the nonprofit’s rev­enue was derived from state grants. Over the last two years the group has received about $13 mil­lion in fund­ing. They were ordered to return any of these funds that have not yet been spent.

According to a report on the com­pen­sa­tion pro­gram pub­lished and dis­trib­uted by State Comptroller Sean Scanlon’s office, BHCA received $150,000 from the office of the state comp­trol­ler for its efforts in imple­ment­ing and sup­port­ing the flood com­pen­sa­tion pro­gram. That amount makes up only half of what the orga­ni­za­tion lost in the scam.

The report is quot­ed as say­ing, “Another com­po­nent that was statu­to­ri­ly required was the use of Blue Hills Civic Association (BHCA) for out­reach and appli­ca­tion assis­tance.”

Madi Cjeska, spokesper­son for the Office of the Comptroller, said the statute cre­at­ing the flood com­pen­sa­tion pro­gram dic­tat­ed that BHCA was used for mar­ket­ing, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and out­reach for the flood pro­gram.

“Working close­ly with the OSC and Dr. Rhule, BHCA was an inte­gral part of the program’s suc­cess. I wish to thank all who knocked on doors, answered calls, and han­dled daily drop in vis­its,” states that same report.

The dis­cov­ery of the theft of money in December 2024 also coin­cid­ed with the end­ing of the flood com­pen­sa­tion pro­gram, which had a due date for appli­ca­tions of November 1 of 2024. “Our agency wasn’t aware of that prior to the news break­ing,” Cjeska said about the theft.

While BHCA’s web­site is cur­rent­ly down and may be for the fore­see­able future, it is still acces­si­ble through inter­net archives.

In December 2024 BHCA said on its web­site that it is “Hartford’s old­est civic orga­ni­za­tion,” hav­ing been estab­lished in 1964.

“BHCA serves as a cat­a­lyst to inspire vibrant, healthy, civi­cal­ly engaged res­i­dents and lead­ers who are sup­port­ed by strong schools, cul­tur­al­ly com­pe­tent health care, eco­nom­ic equal­i­ty and safe neigh­bor­hoods,” it stat­ed on its “About” page.

According to the page, their work is com­posed of orga­niz­ing, advo­ca­cy, and multi-gen­er­a­tional pro­grams with the goal of cre­at­ing sta­ble and attrac­tive neigh­bor­hoods.

Their archived page list­ed 18 com­mu­ni­ty pro­grams as part of its 2024 Impact Programs, includ­ing things like “620-plus stu­dents received hol­i­day gift cards,” “120+ Families received home vis­its,” and at least 45 stu­dents receiv­ing sup­port from BHCA’s clin­i­cal social work­er.

Kelvin Lovejoy, a staff mem­ber who said he had worked for Blue HIlls for 18 years, the last eight as direc­tor of com­mu­ni­ty orga­niz­ing and out­reach, said the orga­ni­za­tion pro­vid­ed a great ben­e­fit to the com­mu­ni­ty.

“There’s a mantra that we have when peo­ple ask us about our work. We say, ‘We work with youth to con­nect with fam­i­lies to change com­mu­ni­ties,’ ” Lovejoy said. “So it’s a multi­gen­er­a­tional approach that we have, and we believe in the con­cept of ‘it takes a vil­lage to raise a child.’ ”

In November 2024, BHCA had a tab on the web­site with infor­ma­tion about the flood com­pen­sa­tion pro­gram and inform­ing vis­i­tors to the site about the pro­gram and how to apply. In December, after the due date of appli­ca­tions, the tab had been taken down.

BHCA list­ed itself as the point of con­tact for appli­cants in both the in-per­son process, the mail-in process, and obtain­ing an appli­ca­tion by email.

Lovejoy said BHCA was inter­est­ed in get­ting involved with the grant pro­gram because of obvi­ous sys­temic injus­tice caus­ing the com­mu­ni­ty to suffer—and the desire to change that.

“We helped to con­nect for dis­tri­b­u­tion the $5 mil­lion that came through the flood com­pen­sa­tion, but what he heard was some very trag­ic sto­ries. We saw peo­ple trau­ma­tized. We saw an injus­tice in the sys­tem in which we have,” Lovejoy said.

However, Lovejoy also rec­og­nized the good that came out of the pro­gram and BHCA’s involve­ment in that.

“We also saw quite a few happy end­ings because of those dol­lars because of the con­nec­tion, because of the engage­ment through Blue Hills Civic Association, folks were able to have their homes repaired.”

As of right now, accord­ing to Cjeska, the comptroller’s office con­tin­ues to appre­ci­ate the work that BHCA did in the work they did regard­ing the flood com­pen­sa­tion pro­gram.

“I mean, I wouldn’t say that because of what’s hap­pen­ing now that they weren’t extreme­ly help­ful in mak­ing sure that we reached as many Hartford res­i­dents as pos­si­ble,” Cjeska said, refer­ring to the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion BHCA finds them­selves in.

In the same way that it is unclear whether or not more money will be allo­cat­ed through the bud­getary process to con­tin­ue the com­pen­sa­tion pro­gram, it was unclear as of spring 2025 whether Blue Hills Civic Association would oper­ate again.