by | Oct 19, 2023 11:57 am | Comments (10)
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45 Church St.: Get ready to club.
Those looking to boogie in a vacant former bank may soon be in luck — now that a new nightclub called “The Vault” has received its final needed city approval to open in the marble-columned confines of the ex-Connecticut Savings Bank on Church Street.
by | Oct 18, 2023 2:00 pm | Comments (1)
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Majority Leader Furlow (center) at Monday's Board of Alders meeting.
The city’s top employees are set to make more money and hopefully see more job competition — now that the Board of Alders has approved salary range bumps and automatic cost of living adjustments for department heads, coordinators, and managers not covered by public-sector unions.
by | Oct 17, 2023 9:04 am | Comments (23)
Alder Marchand: "This facility will support people on their journeys towards being housed.”
The Board of Alders signed off on a new $3.5 million contract with a local nonprofit that will oversee the crisis bed program at a Foxon Boulevard hotel that is slated to be converted into a homeless shelter before winter hits.
Continue reading ‘$3.5M Hotel-To-Homeless Shelter Contract OK'd’
by | Oct 16, 2023 9:58 am | Comments (16)
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A "smart" MK5 meter and a "dumb" MK3 meter on display, as described by city traffic deputy Bijan Notghi.
Drivers may soon uncover new routes to pay for parking in New Haven — as the city looks into buying 1,400 new meters and 50 new kiosks with capacity to accept card taps and Apple Pay rather than just inserted credit cards and coins.
by | Oct 12, 2023 1:10 pm | Comments (25)
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City Director of Community Resilience Carlos Sosa-Lombardo (right), with Continuum's John Labieniec: “Our goal is to help as many unhoused community members as possible in advance of a harsh winter season.”
Case management, healthcare, meals and 112 crisis beds took a step closer to replacing the typical hotel rooms of the Days Inn on Foxon Boulevard — as alders moved ahead a proposed $3.5 million contract with a local homelessness services nonprofit that will oversee the conversion of that hotel into non-congregate shelter space.
Continue reading ‘Hotel-To-Homeless Shelter Contract Advances’
by | Oct 12, 2023 8:55 am | Comments (10)
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Fatou braids a client's hair, hopes for more landlord accountability.
A new layer of city regulation is coming to local hair, piercing, tattoo, and nail salons — sparking a debate over the burden of annual inspection fees, and prompting one African hair braider to hope that more leverage against neglectful commercial landlords is on the horizon.
by | Oct 10, 2023 1:54 pm | Comments (12)
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Bella Vista tenant Marie, at a busted elevator last December.
New Haven landlords could soon face stricter penalties for neglecting to fix broken elevators — as part of a city push to make sure disabled tenants aren’t left stranded in their apartments.
Continue reading ‘Going Up! Broken Elevator Crackdown Proposed’
by | Oct 9, 2023 8:55 am | Comments (35)
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Beaver Hills Alder Tom Ficklin (right), with city Environmental Health Director Rafael Ramos: New Haven should "not wait for anyone else and instead be a leader" on a menthol ban.
The city’s health director and a Beaver Hills alder are calling for a citywide ban on menthol cigarettes — while small business owners warned that such a prohibition could drive customers to look to other shops in other towns for not just smoking products, but also bread and milk and gas.
by | Oct 6, 2023 12:26 pm | Comments (29)
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Outside of Fair Haven School in September, amid school-closing heat.
The school district currently has 12 repair workers to cover 56 buildings — posing perhaps the largest roadblock to keeping schools open amid heat waves.
Continue reading ‘School Maintenance Rx: "We Need More Staff"’
by | Oct 5, 2023 4:29 pm | Comments (30)
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City inspector Javier Ortiz at a Vernon Street apartment in April.
Renting out unsafe homes could soon get a lot more expensive for landlords, if a proposed hike in housing code violation fines becomes a reality.
by | Oct 4, 2023 8:29 am | Comments (13)
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City Economic Development Officer Dean Mack: "We're moving away from the municipal option. We are right now focusing on more of a market-driven option."
New Haven is still trying to bridge the digital divide, and has turned to the private market to do the heavy lifting.
by | Oct 3, 2023 12:37 pm | Comments (10)
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Yale's Science Hill, soon to boom with new lab and classroom building.
Yale took three small steps forward in its plans to construct a football stadium-sized — at least in square footage — physical sciences and engineering building on university-owned property known as “Science Hill.”
Continue reading ‘Yale Steps Towards Major Science Development’
by | Oct 3, 2023 9:00 am | Comments (54)
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City Director of Community Resilience Carlos Sosa-Lombardo, with Community Services Administrator Eliza Halsey: This is a "game changer."
Thomas Breen file photo
Quinnipiac Meadows Alder Gerald Antunes: Not the right plan, not the right place.
The Board of Alders overwhelmingly approved the Elicker administration’s plans to spend $6.9 million in mostly federal funds to purchase the 56-room Days Inn hotel on Foxon Boulevard and convert it into a non-congregate homeless shelter.
by | Oct 2, 2023 12:39 pm | Comments (4)
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Health Equity Fellow Sophie Edelstein and Coordinator of Community Mental Health Initiatives Lorena Mitchell.
Male New Haveners are almost three times more likely to die by suicide — not “commit suicide” — than female city residents.
That’s according to a newly published City of New Haven Suicide Prevention Guide, which through a deep dive into data and a person-focused shift in language seeks to promote better mental health through understanding instead of stigma.
Continue reading ‘Suicide Prevention Guide Lays Grounds For Hope’
by | Sep 29, 2023 3:10 pm | Comments (19)
An overview of how the latest round of ESSER funds has been budgeted.
New Haven’s school system has spent over $37 million of the last batch of federal ESSER pandemic-relief funds — on everything from salaries to school supplies to HVAC upgrades — leaving $42.9 million still to spend by October of next year.
by | Sep 29, 2023 12:15 pm | Comments (5)
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Gormany and Matteson at Thursday's Finance meeting.
The Elicker administration won a key initial vote of support for its plan to increase pay for department heads, coordinators, and other non-unionized managers, as an aldermanic committee endorsed salary range bumps and cost of living adjustments in an effort to ward off even more City Hall vacancies.
by | Sep 28, 2023 4:54 pm | Comments (39)
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Half of the 18 Mill River St. property to be sold by the city to neighboring landlord Michael Smart.
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City Clerk Smart: Just providing parking for tenant, following sliver lot rules.
Should the standard sale of a small plot of unusable city land to adjacent property owners trigger an ethics review — if one of the potential buyers is a citywide elected official?
Members of two city commissions recently raised that question at two separate public meetings, even as both boards ultimately voted in favor of selling a vacant 1,887 square-foot lot on Mill River Street to a holding company controlled by City/Town Clerk Michael Smart without first consulting the Board of Ethics.
by | Sep 22, 2023 2:15 pm | Comments (16)
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The "sophisticated" plumbing over a fence into a neighbor's backyard on Clifton Street.
"Office manager" Yossi (or Joseph) Levitin, at Zoomed Fair Rent hearing.
A mysterious tube — carrying something out of a Clifton Street house’s sewage-flooding basement, through the backyard, over a neighbor’s fence, and out beside the Quinnipiac River, and installed without permits or permission from the riverbank property’s owner — led the Fair Rent Commission to drop two tenants’ monthly rents to $1 apiece.
It also put a convicted mortgage fraudster who is still involved in New Haven rental real estate back in the spotlight.
by | Sep 22, 2023 2:14 pm | Comments (16)
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Landlord lawyer Herb Reckmeyer (right): Why not move? Tenant Tia Cuthbertson: "Everybody deserves to live in a safe environment."
Tia Cuthbertson Photo
The mice in Cuthbertson's apartment.
The last time Tia Cuthbertson used her oven was over a year ago. She was preheating the appliance when she noticed a cloud of smoke — and found a charred mouse inside, burning alive.
Cuthbertson has now received a dramatic reprieve from the Fair Rent Commission, which lowered her rent to $1 per month until her megalandlord, Ocean Management, clears out the mice that have invaded her apartment and fixes other problems.
by | Sep 21, 2023 1:21 pm | Comments (20)
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Acting Director Rebecca Bombero: Consultant-led process "could lead to a reconfiguration" of parks-public works.
The Elicker administration is moving towards a potential un-merging of the parks and public works departments — or an entirely different parks-service setup altogether — by seeking a consultant to host community conversations around how City Hall should tend its public greenspaces.
Continue reading ‘City Steps Towards Parks Department Re-Redo’
by | Sep 20, 2023 9:11 am | Comments (15)
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Alder Adam Marchand: A land bank allows city housing initiatives to "compete."
Alders unanimously voted to form a land bank, issuing the final seal of approval on a long-brewing plan to create a quasi-public nonprofit designed to purchase blighted houses, rehabilitate them, and sell them at below-market prices to owner-occupants.
by | Sep 19, 2023 5:28 pm | Comments (34)
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Acting Controller Mike Gormany and Mayor Elicker: "Remarkable progress" on city's financial front.
Higher than expected property tax collections, building inspection revenue, interest rates, and city employee vacancies helped New Haven’s budget end last fiscal year more than $22 million in the black.
After the city sends roughly $15 million of that surplus towards a record police-misconduct settlement, that means the city can bank another $7 million-plus for a rainy day.
Continue reading ‘Surplus Reaches $22M — Minus $15M Settlement’
by | Sep 19, 2023 9:26 am | Comments (23)
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Protesters rally for Cox in June 2022.
New Haven will pay Richard “Randy” Cox the largest municipal settlement in a police misconduct case in this country’s history with the help of surplus budget funds — and no new borrowing — after official approval from the Board of Alders for how to cover the uninsured portion of a $45 million agreement.
by | Aug 31, 2023 8:11 am | Comments (10)
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Fair Rent Director Wildaliz Bermúdez meets Hope.
Fed up with waking up to the rancid stench of flooded sewage in her apartment building’s basement, Hope started knocking on some of her neighbors’ doors at 1275 – 1291 Quinnipiac Ave.
Within six weeks, Hope had joined with other organizers with the Connecticut Tenants Union to gather 21 signatures from residents of the building’s 20 units. They officially filed the paperwork to become New Haven’s third and fastest-to-form tenants union on Wednesday afternoon.
by | Aug 22, 2023 8:27 am | Comments (5)
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Newly sworn in police recruits John Brunetti, Aisaiah Rodriguez, William Massey-Simmons, and Eric Lopez on Monday.
Four police recruits with cops in their families and roots in the Greater New Haven area raised their right hands and swore to live up to the responsibilities of their profession — before heading off for training in Waterbury, and hoped-for careers in New Haven.