by | Feb 4, 2025 4:12 pm | Comments (2)
Maya McFadden photo
Nunez (right) leads the way: "Like sports, the arts save kids."
“Get out your heads and get into your bodies!” Hillhouse High School dance teacher Millette Nunez instructed her students, as each of them danced to the upbeat rhythm of Afro-Caribbean guitar and drums.
by | Feb 3, 2025 1:29 pm | Comments (16)
Brian Slattery Photos
Zrelak: "What you flush down the toilet, dump down the drain, this is where it ends up."
Yuck: "Raggy material," like wipes and tampons, that ends up in the dumpster.
Gary Zrelak, director of operations for the Greater New Haven Water Pollution Control Authority, wielded a several-foot-long plastic pipe with a valve at the end, which he nicknamed the “sludge judge.”
He was on a catwalk over the water draining out of the last of three enormous tanks at the East Shore Water Pollution Abatement Facility, taking a core sample of the 14-foot-deep pool.
As he expected, below the surface, the water was still brown, tinted with matter that was settling slowly to the bottom of the pool. But the top three feet of water were clear — almost ready to be released into the New Haven Harbor on a cold winter day.
The tank — and the two preceding it, and the entire facility that runs them — “is connected to everyone, every household and commercial building” in a substantial part of the greater New Haven area, Zrelak said. “They have a toilet, they’re coming here.”
by | Jan 31, 2025 11:44 am | Comments (8)
Thomas Breen file photo
Community resilience director Kemp: "I want us to reframe how we think about the victims."
In response to impending Trump administration cuts to Medicaid, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro brought together local healthcare providers, city officials, gun violence survivors, and researchers to hear about how an about-face in federal policy might affect New Haven’s anti-violence public health interventions.
Continue reading ‘Confab Seeks "Holistic" Rx To Gun Violence’
by | Jan 27, 2025 3:11 pm | Comments (6)
Zachary Groz Photo
200 execs at 100 College, for "legislative breakfast."
Bracing for a federal funding drought and higher state costs for Medicare and Medicaid, Gov. Ned Lamont urged pharma executives to work with Hartford on cutting the cost of prescription drugs Monday morning at a gathering held by the life sciences lobbying group BioCT.
by | Jan 21, 2025 4:33 pm | Comments (14)
Thomas Breen photos
Sodas and energy drinks, not allowed ...
... cigarettes and vaping products, still allowed, at 864 Whalley.
A “Not For Sale” sign remains taped to the top of a beverage case filled with Monster energy drinks, Powerade and Diet Coke at the Grab n’ Go Market in Westville Village — where city zoners recently rejected Mohammed Ababneh’s bid to sell soda and prepackaged food in addition to vaping products and cigarettes.
by | Jan 14, 2025 1:07 pm | Comments (4)
Nora Grace-Flood File Photo
COMPASS crew member Nanette Campbell on a call.
Is COMPASS a Yale-backed public relations stunt — or a good faith and effective effort to improve crisis response services all across New Haven?
Alders sought answers to those questions, and received testimony and data bolstering the program’s cause, as they advanced a plan to extend the police-alternative pilot for another year.
Continue reading ‘Crisis-Response Pilot Seeks 1-Year Extension’
by | Dec 20, 2024 12:05 pm | Comments (4)
Yale New Haven Health announced on Friday a five-year, $500,000 unrestricted gift to Cornell Scott-Hill Health Center, in support of the health center’s Recovery and Wellness Center and “advancing health equity.”
by | Dec 17, 2024 11:37 am | Comments (7)
Nora Grace-Flood file photo
Health Director Bond: RFP error corrected.
More than 20 representatives from nonprofits that help people living with HIV/AIDS sent a letter to the mayor criticizing the city for changing how it handles a federal grant program — and warning the Elicker administration against “dismantling” a system of care they say works just fine.
The Health Department has responded by correcting an error regarding who is eligible to apply for these funds, and by arguing that centralizing oversight with city government is necessary to bring this program into compliance with federal requirements.
Continue reading ‘HIV/AIDS Program Mistake, Change Spark Pushback’
by | Dec 16, 2024 10:05 am | Comments (10)
Zachary Groz photo
LCI's Brennan: Looking for tools to assess mold's impact.
Daniella Herget has lived in New Haven her entire adult life and loves the city, but now she’s seriously considering leaving for good.
Every apartment she’s lived in, she said, has had the same issues: poor conditions that exacerbate her asthma, and landlords who refuse to repair them.
by | Dec 9, 2024 12:51 pm | Comments (23)
City Plan Department map
Under proposed zoning update, new smoke shops wouldn't be allowed to open within the orange circles, which describe a 3,000-foot radius for each existing licensed tobacco retailer.
Would barring new smoke shops from opening within 1,000 feet of schools, parks, and places of worship do enough to protect neighbors from those retailers’ harmful wares?
Would imposing a 3,000-foot buffer between new and existing tobacco sellers only serve to protect existing stores’ “monopolies” on their blocks?
And, taken together, would these two distance restrictions effectively impose a citywide ban — when the law’s sponsors simply want to limit, but not outlaw, new shops from popping up?
Continue reading ‘No Smoke Shops Here. No Smoke Shops There’
by | Dec 9, 2024 9:54 am | Comments (7)
Lisa Reisman photo
The Newhall Neighborhood Association team at Hamden Town Hall.
They talked about their homes sinking into contaminated soil, the walls cracking, their myriad of health issues.
They wore shirts the color of cement to dramatize their plea: Fix our foundations first.
Continue reading ‘Newhall To Hamden: Focus On "Foundations First"’
by | Dec 5, 2024 10:18 am | Comments (9)
Zachary Groz photo
Beam me up, YNHH.
High in the sky, two crewmen from CT Ironworkers Local No. 15 & 424 waited for a crane to haul in an enormous beam.
The workers started as motionless dots against the deep blue backdrop. As the beam neared, they went into action, harnessing each side and battling the wind to get the slab to click into place.
When it finally did, the external structure of the Adams Neurosciences Center at Yale New Haven Hospital was officially complete — eight years after concept, and two after groundbreaking.
by | Nov 26, 2024 1:14 pm | Comments (19)
Laura Glesby file photo
APT's Lynn Madden: Working thru MOU.
Although a long journey still lies ahead, a new Long Wharf home for APT Foundation’s substance-use treatment program is slowly moving ahead.
by | Nov 21, 2024 9:55 am | Comments (12)
Nathaniel Rosenberg photos
Alders Smith and Hubbard examine Narcan nasal sprays.
Every New Haven police officer may soon carry overdose-reversing medication — in a donated pouch on their uniform’s vest.
by | Nov 14, 2024 10:16 am | Comments (1)
Lisa Reisman photo
Aerialist Ky Adams represents mothers and their children soaring.
From a table crammed with leaflets in the gymnasium at the Dixwell Community “Q” House, Sharnasia Booker watched a circus artist perform gravity-defying stunts on an aerial hoop, seemingly leaping through the air and taking flight — a representation of what young mothers and their children can do with the right support.
by | Oct 29, 2024 8:44 am | Comments (29)
Laura Glesby photo
Mist Tobacco and Convenience owner Farooq Alwajih (pictured in his other business, Audubon Market): “I personally hate smoke shops.”
New Haven could soon see restrictions on new smoke shops — limiting where they can locate and prohibiting window displays full of smoking accessories.
by | Oct 17, 2024 1:47 pm | Comments (25)
Thomas Breen file photo
Get ready to get regulated?
The long-awaited ordinance-in-progress will treat smoke shops similarly to liquor stores with requirements like they not be located near schools and churches or too close to each other.
But there will also likely be a lot more detail.
by | Oct 8, 2024 1:37 pm | Comments (6)
Jabez Choi photo
Grand Pharmacy now open.
Where once was pizza is now low-cost prescription medication — and the latest expansion of a Fair Haven-anchoring community health hub.
by | Oct 2, 2024 10:57 am | Comments (10)
Showing up: Street medicine outreachers Phil Costello, Emma Lo, Claudette Kidd at WNHH FM.
Teens have started jumping out of cars and attacking homeless people sleeping on the street in Fair Haven, according to a veteran street outreach worker.
Continue reading ‘Street Attacks On Homeless Reported On Rise’
by | Sep 25, 2024 3:42 pm | Comments (18)
Thomas Breen file photo
Community Resilience Director Tirzah Kemp: COMPASS provides an "empathetic, compassionate, humane, and trauma-informed approach to care."
COMPASS data
COMPASS calls, by the #s, as presented in August report.
The city’s non-cop crisis response team will now be on call until 3 a.m. each day — with double the staffers working during the peak hours of 7 to midnight — as the Elicker administration again expands its effort to send social workers and not police to certain 911 calls about homelessness, mental health, and substance abuse.
by | Sep 20, 2024 3:51 pm | Comments (71)
Laura Glesby photo
Myra Smith: "I feel powerless when it comes to this population."
Myra Smith walked into the Wilson Library Branch with her mind made up about supervised substance use centers: “It is NOT coming to the Hill. It’s not.”
She left with more openness to the concept as a way to address the opioid crisis that has overwhelmed her neighborhood. “I’m not saying I’m totally against it. This sounds wonderful,” she said — as long as it’s implemented with care for the surrounding community.
by | Sep 11, 2024 9:49 am | Comments (12)
Thomas Breen file photo
English Station: Oh the potential, oh the decay.
A derelict power plant. A neighborhood school. A vibrant community history of hardship and resilience. And the ticking clock of climate change.
All these elements came together in the first of a series of walking tours — a collaboration among several public and nonprofit entities put together by Anstress Farwell, president of the New Haven Urban Design League — focusing on the decommissioned and toxic English Station power plant and the Mill River District in Fair Haven.
Continue reading ‘English Station Looms Over Fair Haven Walk’
by | Sep 10, 2024 9:16 am | Comments (1)
We first see Duane Luckow backlit. He’s filming himself with his phone. “Hey everybody, can you see me?” he asks. We can’t. But then he turns into the light, and there’s his face, looking concerned. “I’m going to give you a little tour of this place,” he says. He shows us a bedroom, clean, well-lit, and very institutional. There’s a teddy bear on the bed. “I’m not supposed to be filming this,” he says, but gives us a view out the window, of a courtyard garden. “That’s the only thing I have hope for,” he says, “that someday I’ll get out of this place.”
Continue reading ‘Film Charts Hardship Of Being A Schizophrenic Brother's Keeper’
by | Sep 9, 2024 5:27 pm | Comments (13)
Laura Glesby photo
Soryorelis Henry, with husband Darcus: "I felt so alone."
Yale has reached a settlement with 93 fertility clinic patients who received saline instead of fentanyl during excruciating and often traumatizing procedures.
One of those patients, Soryorelis Henry, found herself “screaming and crying” in agony during an egg retrieval that was supposed to be pain-free — and heard the cries of other patients undergoing the same procedure from the waiting room.
by | Sep 9, 2024 8:48 am | Comments (5)
A New Haven Pride rendition of “Pink Pony Club.”
It was 3 p.m. on Saturday, and it had been raining for at least an hour. The New Haven Pride celebration, however, was in full swing.