New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Mayoral hopeful: Close Congress Ave. methadone clinic
NEW HAVEN — The APT Foundation’s Congress Avenue methadone clinic, across the street from a city school, is “in an inappropriate place” and should be shut down immediately, according to Democratic mayoral challenger Tom Goldenberg.
“This is an inappropriate place— right next to a school in a residential neighborhood,” Goldenberg said at a press conference Tuesday. “This place needs tobemovedor shut down immediately.”
The clinic is across the street from John C. Daniels Interdistrict Magnet School of International Communication, If Goldenberg were mayor, he said he would “use zoning” to get facilities such as APT limited to industrial areas and would be prepared to take legal action to make it happen, if necessary.
The planMayor Justin Elicker’s administration has been working on forAPT, headquartered at 1LongWharf, to build a new combined facility that would house the headquarters and treatment and other medical service that are now in both its 495 Congress Ave. and 1 Long Wharf locations, is not soon enough, Goldenberg said.
It needs to happen “not in five years,” but now, he said.
“This community deserves respect. All of our communities deserve respect,” Goldenberg said. He said the APT Foundation’s purchase of the former Achievement First Elm City College Preparatory school building at 794 Dixwell Ave. in Newhallville for a proposed new facility was done with “a lack of transparency” and “what communications did community members receive? Nothing!”
But one of the APT Foundation’s clients, who rode by on his bicycle while Goldenberg was talking, said it’s not that simple.
Jeff Culp, who rides his bike from East Haven to get treatment six days a week, said he agrees the clinic does not belong right next to a school. But if it were to close, clients, some of whom are homeless or unable to just get on buses to go elsewhere, would lose access, Culp said.
“It really saved my life,” and “for me, this is the most convenient location, said Culp. Were it to close ormove, “it’s got to be within walking distance,” he said.
About one-third of the 1,200 patients who get treatment at the Congress Avenue facility come from outside of New Haven, Elicker has said
Elicker said that as a city, “We can’t just snap our fingers and decide to shut down to a private entity. APT owns the building on Congress Avenue and the city does not have that legal authority.”
City officials “have been working for quite some time to help facilitate people having more access to treatment in a way that reduces any negative impact on the community,” Elicker said. “And that is the very proposal that is on the table to discontinue methadone treatment at the Congress Avenue facility and move it to Long Wharf.
“However, we’re doing this in a collaborative way with partners who do work that saves a lot of lives,” Elicker said.
He said APT purchased the Dixwell Avenue building “on their own,” not with the city’s assistance, and “I have personally had regular engagement with the New Haven-Hamden Strong group. ... Insinuating that therewas any lack of transparency is inappropriate.”
Overall, “we need to be providing more treatment for people and not less,” Elicker said.
“We need to be approaching this from a health perspective and not a criminal perspective. Being negative is not a productive way” to go about it, he said, pointing out that “700 New Haven residents use” the Congress Avenue facility.
APT Foundation CEO Lynn Madden said APT had made “a lot of attempts” to address people’s concerns, including the current discussion about a new facility, which she called “a really good solution for the community.”
Part of the problem is that the Congress Avenue facility “is in a very dense neighborhood,” she said. “... When we first opened there 22 years ago, the school wasn’t there, for example.”
The LongWharf plan, which still is not final, would relocate and consolidate health services provided by the APT Foundation, including drug treatment services, to a new facility at LongWharf. The facility, which APTwould pay to build, would likely be on property adjacent to the One Long Wharf building, where theAPT Foundation currently has its headquarters and provides health services in a total of 40,000 square feet of space.