Housing

And The Home-Buy Lottery Winner Is ...

by | Apr 24, 2024 3:04 pm | Comments (23)

Dereen Shirnekhi photos

The Teklehaimanot family (center) hears their name called at Tuesday's housing lottery.

Seven-year-old Meklit and five-year-old Bethlehem ran around the empty rooms of 455 Howard Ave., dodging the legs of parents and realtors and city workers. This two-family home would soon be theirs.

We always wanted a big house,” Meklit said, minutes after her father won the Livable City Initiative’s (LCI’s) latest affordable housing lottery. I always wanted this to happen.” 

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Judge OKs Migrant Workers' Eviction

by | Apr 17, 2024 2:07 pm | Comments (7)

Edgar Becerra and Josue Mauricio Arana in court.

Laura Glesby Photo

Edgar Becerra protests his former employer, MDF Painting and Power Washing, before the eviction proceedings.

A judge has ruled that Edgar Becerra and Josue Mauricio Arana must find a new place to live, ending an eviction case that sparked protests over alleged exploitation of migrant workers.

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LCI Could Grow & Split; Brennan To Consult

by | Apr 12, 2024 3:46 pm | Comments (35)

Thomas Breen File Photos

LCI's Javier Ortiz investigates conditions in a Vernon St. apartment.

Liam Brennan, hired by city to review LCI.

A former mayoral candidate has been tapped to guide future reforms to enhance housing code and blight enforcement at the Livable City Initiative (LCI), as the Board of Alders reviews a mayoral proposal to remove affordable housing development from that city agency’s work.

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Fatal Crash Victim Was Unhoused Activist

by | Apr 5, 2024 4:03 pm | Comments (41)

Thomas Breen Photo

Arthur Taylor at Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen's drop-in center in 2022.

Arthur Taylor brought the music — and an unflagging sense of urgency — to advocacy for the rights of unhoused people like himself.

He died at age 71 in a car crash this week while walking along an I‑91 travel lane, a few weeks after moving into the city’s new non-congregate shelter in a former hotel on Foxon Boulevard.

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More Luxury Apts. Open On Audubon

by | Apr 3, 2024 12:07 pm | Comments (38)

Thomas Breen photos

What's that, Spinnaker VP Frank Caico? Why it's ...

... more and more and more apartments on a rebuilt Audubon.

Another 60 high-end apartments are now available to rent on a transformed Audubon superblock.

Wait, hold on a second: Half of those newly opened residences have already been snapped up, by more and more people able to afford monthly prices of $2,500 and higher.

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Ground Broken On Housing, Not Highway

by | Mar 28, 2024 4:27 pm | Comments (22)

Thomas Breen photos

Ceremonial shovels, at the ready...

... for 56 new apartments in West River.

Officials joined West River neighbors to celebrate the government-backed construction of 56 new affordable apartments where Urban Renewal’s bulldozers once plowed through the Oak Street neighborhood six decades ago to make way for a mini-highway.

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"Winchester Green" Grows Into Construction Zone

by | Mar 21, 2024 3:46 pm | Comments (4)

From "mass-level instruments of death" to homes and community: Matt Pugliese, Alder Kim Edwards, Alder Troy Streater, Eric Steinberg, Alex Twining, Arlevia Samuel, David Silverstone, Jake Pine and Mayor Justin Elicker break ground on Winchester Green.

As excavators pushed dirt from side to side at 315 Winchester Ave., city officials and housing developers dug shovels into a picture-planned pile of rocks to symbolically break ground on the mixed-use development that will one day be called the Winchester Green.

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Rebuilder Retires

by | Mar 20, 2024 2:50 pm | Comments (2)

Allan Appel Photo

Hannah Sokal-Holmes with a photo of her children.

Hannah Sokal-Holmes is proud of the hundreds of units of public housing that she has helped redesign and modernize over more than two decades with the Housing Authority of New Haven.

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Housing Horrors Haunt Hearing

by | Mar 18, 2024 9:53 am | Comments (16)

Thomas Breen photo

More of him please: LCI's Javier Ortiz checks out Vernon Street apartments.

Children urinating into buckets. Mice and mushrooms emerging from floorboards. Showering at Planet Fitness!

The first public hearing on the mayor’s proposed new city budget elicited such horror stories — as members of the public came out en masse to push not just for more affordable housing, but for better government oversight of living standards across existing housing stock.

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Local Landlords, Unite! vs. Eviction Bill

by | Mar 14, 2024 4:03 pm | Comments (40)

File photos

Local landlords Shmuel Aizenberg (top left) and Mendy Edelkopf (bottom left), 2 of 20 signatories of form letter opposing state bill; tenant advocates Sinclair Williams (top right) and Sarah Giovanniello (bottom right, with Amy Eppler-Epstein), in support of bill.

I am a part of a group of landlords in the area who help each other out by discussing issues and providing support and guidance to each other,” wrote Ocean Management’s Shmuel Aizenberg. 

Mandy Management’s Adir Chen wrote that too. So did Julian Cardona and Menahem Edelkopf and Alejandro Soriano and Menahem Lebenhartz and more than a dozen fellow New Haven-area landlords and property managers. 

Each wrote” those same words in individually signed form letters seeking to persuade state legislators to protect their right to evict rent-paying tenants whose leases have expired.

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State Pressed On "Historic" Homelessness

by | Mar 8, 2024 11:15 am | Comments (11)

Nora Grace-Flood Photo

Rolling up a mattress before bulldozers come in to demolish a Lamberton Street homeless encampment.

As executive director of New Haven’s Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen (DESK) and drop-in center, Steve Werlin has seen firsthand the state’s historic” rise in homelessness. He told state legislators about that — to urge them to find extra money this year to help front-line agencies like his save lives and work toward solutions.

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Re-Entry Experience Sparks Housing Plan

by | Feb 29, 2024 4:19 pm | Comments (6)

Laura Glesby Photo

Ray Boyd at 43 Sylvan, planned transitional home for formerly incarcerated men like himself.

Ray Boyd knows what it’s like to come home after decades in prison without support or guidance on how to rebuild his life.

Two years later, he and his wife Jackie James are trying to provide a better homecoming for others — by transforming James’ childhood home into a transitional home for people re-entering society.

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