New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Officials eye $4.85M grant to address homelessness
NEW HAVEN — A plan to use a $4.85 million federal grant to address issues related to homelessness, including $4 million to build “deeply affordable” housing aimed at people without homes, advanced this week after a number of homeless residents and advocates said the way the city treats people experiencing homelessness needs to change.
The grant from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Home Investment Partnerships Program and the American Rescue Plan “can be used to construct affordable housing units” or “non-congregate shelter units” and provide housing rental assistance, said Nicole Lambert, a Boston-based consultant for Answer Advisory.
She spoke Wednesday night to a joint meeting of the Board of Alders’ Community Development and Health and Human Services committees, which ultimately gave a unanimous positive recommendation to the full Board of Alders, which will consider it in the weeks to come.
The number one barrier to people obtaining housing in New Haven is “the lack of deeply affordable housing,” Lambert said. Language and mental health barriers also come into play, as do systematic housing issues “such as the high rent that everyone is facing now” and issues and gaps with the state’s 211 system, she said.
The goal is “to provide money to increase the supply of housing options for the most vulnerable,” Lambert said, and the $4 million would be used to construct new “deeply affordable” housing.
Briam Timko, a member of the Unhoused Activists Community Team, or UACT, which includes unhoused people and their supporters, said that at the top of the organization’s list of demands are that the city stop evicting people from public lands and not remove their belongings.
“There are basic human rights that people are owed,” said U-Act member Tyrell Jackson, who grew up in West Haven and lives in an encampment along the West River off Ella T. Grass Boulevard.
“A holistic view is what’s needed,” Jackson said. “We need more, faster action.”
Mary Guerrera, executive director of Fellowship Place, which has operated in New Haven for more than 60 years, said that attendance at “The Inn,” Fellowship Place’s facilities to provide services for people without homes, including showers and laundry, “has doubled and sometime tripled” in the last couple of years — and the people it serves have gotten older.
“We’re seeing people in their 60s and 70s who have been homeless for some time,” she said. “These are very vulnerable individuals who need a lot of support and a lot of services,” Guerrera said.
Among them are “one gentleman who’s been housed three times,” and each time, “he’s failed out of that housing because he couldn’t make it in an apartment by himself ” because he needs additional services, she said.
One solution is to create more site-based apartments with “a real sense of community,” where “everybody has a similar history,” rather than just provide rental vouchers, Guerrera said.
She called the grant “a real opportunity” to take care of people’s needs.
Mark Colville of the Amistad Catholic Worker House, who provides tent space for unhoused people in his back yard in the Hill, emphasized the need to stop evicting people from public spaces.
“I am not homeless. But I have spent the last 30 years surrounded by unacknowledged neighbors,” Colville said. “... If you don’t begin by acknowledging people who don’t have housing,” people “will keep criminalizing the homeless.”
Essentially, the way the city now treats them, “people don’t have an acknowledged right to exist,” Colville said.
Jacob Miller, a real estate broker who also works with U-ACT, said the city needs permanent public bathrooms and showers. When it comes to building housing, “even the most optimized developers are talking about $200,000 a door,” Miller said. “So we’re talking about building 20 units.”
Steve Werlin, executive director of the Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen, said New Haven, like many places “is in the middle of a homelessness and housing crisis.” He suggested that $1 million of the money from the grant be allocated to non-congregate homeless shelters to address the loss of shelter beds since the Grand Avenue shelter closed.
He also suggested that $1 million be designated to renovating existing housing and that the remaining $2 million be used to build new “deeply affordable” single-room-occupancy housing, which would allow more units to be built.
“This is not actually a lot of money when it comes to housing creation,” said Margaret Middleton, CEO of Columbus House and co-chair of the Greater New Haven Coalition to End Homelessness. Columbus House runs what currently is the only full-service overnight homeless shelter in the city.