by | Jan 16, 2024 2:51 pm | Comments (7)
Laura Glesby File Photo
Ocean Management's Shmuel Aizenberg with attorney Gerry Giaimo: Ready to "turn a new leaf."
Megalandlord Shmuel Aizenberg took a second stab at scrubbing his potential criminal record clean — and won a second chance.
by | Jan 15, 2024 11:55 am | Comments (18)
The heat’s turned on inside six tiny emergency shelters outside Amistad House.
Continue reading ‘Heat Goes On At Tiny Shelters In The Hill’
by | Jan 12, 2024 2:54 pm | Comments (24)
Edgar Becerra in court: "I just want everyone to know the name of this company and all the injustices they did."
Construction boss-landlord Mark DeFrancesco, right, in court with lawyer Josh Brown.
Edgar Becerra fell off a 30-foot ladder — then landed in court this week fighting to stay in the country against a boss who first fired him then moved to evict him.
Continue reading ‘Landlord-Boss Boots Injured Migrant Worker’
by | Jan 12, 2024 11:32 am | Comments (49)
Nora Grace-Flood Photo
City Plan chief Laura Brown Thursday night: Help us chart city's future.
The city invited the public to a launch party for a once-in-a-decade rewrite of New Haven’s primary land use document — and the community showed up.
by | Jan 10, 2024 4:32 pm | Comments (8)
Nora Grace-Flood Photo
Home for now: Jimenez with Marlee at the former Days Inn.
In less than a month of staying at New Haven’s newly opened hotel-turned-homeless shelter, Debra Jimenez got a new job and has started hunting for an affordable apartment for her partner and three pets while staying on track to earn her second master’s degree come spring.
Continue reading ‘People, Partners, Pets Settle At Ex-Hotel’
by | Jan 10, 2024 11:28 am | Comments (21)
The proposed four-home site plan for 252 Davenport Ave.
An empty sliver lot on Davenport Avenue could serve as the future home for four veterans in need of housing support — if a nonprofit’s plea for zoning peace is granted.
by | Jan 9, 2024 3:59 pm | Comments (10)
The city ordered six people to clear out of a four-tent encampment in Edgewood Park after working with them to find indoor places to stay.
by | Jan 4, 2024 4:19 pm | Comments (36)
Maybe this'll work: City Plan Director Laura Brown, Housing Authority chief Karen DuBois-Walton, and Congressional staffer Lou Mangini at Thursday's presser.
The Elicker administration is looking to update a law aimed at encouraging people to develop “mother-in-law” apartments — so that someone will actually build them and create needed new housing.
by | Jan 3, 2024 3:23 pm | Comments (7)
Amistad House leader Jacob Miller with electrician John Rienzo from L & M Electric Wednesday afternoon.
An electrician arrived at Amistad House Wednesday afternoon to decide where to start digging trenches — and get the people living in a backyard homeless encampment out of the trenches by turning on heating and lighting.
by | Jan 1, 2024 8:57 am | Comments (47)
Twining / L&M designs
Design for "Winchester Green" apartments and retail on a vacant lot within Science Park, complete with a new interior street grid.
The money’s in. So the next apartment complex slated for a fast-changing stretch of the Dixwell-Newhallville border is ready to rise.
Continue reading ‘$90M In Hand To Start Building "Winchester Green"’
by | Dec 22, 2023 12:53 pm | Comments (75)
Nora Grace-Flood photo
Yale claims its "campus custom" is to reserve housing for university "affiliates" – including at 57 Broadway.
Tenant Lewis Nelken’s new landlord sent him unwelcome news this December: He can renew his apartment lease on Broadway for another year, but, after that lease runs out, he has to move. Just because he doesn’t work or study at Yale.
That’s the new rule for living in a stretch of downtown that Yale has continued gobbling up this year.
by | Dec 22, 2023 11:16 am | Comments (8)
Nora Grace-Flood / Thomas Breen file photos
2023's housing market movers and shakers, and departers: Housing authority's Karen DuBois-Walton, Mandy Management's Yudi Gurevitch, Ocean Management's Shmuel Aizenberg (with attorney Gerald Giamo).
One of New Haven’s largest landlords of low-income housing sold off 65 rental properties this year, was dragged again and again into court, and grappled with new tenants unions.
Another invested in expanding its real estate empire and improving its business and reputation under a second generation of leadership.
A third doubled down on constructing lots more affordable housing — and swooped in to save long-stalled developments that it will now have to convert into new places to live.
Continue reading ‘In 2023, Ocean Got Out, Mandy Got Better, & HANH Got More Ambitious’
by | Dec 20, 2023 5:24 pm | Comments (37)
Nora Grace-Flood photo
Shelter staff and helpers Danielle Robertson, Deshaya George, and John Labieniec.
There’s room at the former Days Inn on Foxon Boulevard this holiday season.
by | Dec 20, 2023 11:58 am | Comments (5)
Laura Glesby photo
Commissioners William Kilpatrick, Alberta Witherspoon, and Elmer Rivera at Tuesday's meeting.
The housing authority took one big step towards building 40 new mixed-income apartments and ground-floor retail space by the Quinnipiac River, as its board voted to spend $1.42 million to purchase an East Grand Avenue lot and nearby pizzeria.
by | Dec 19, 2023 1:14 pm | Comments (25)
Sam Gurwitt file photo
Derrick Draughn: "It's not about the money. I just choose not to pay it until I feel like it."
A highway-adjacent vacant lot on the northern edge of Wooster Square wasn’t sold at a foreclosure auction on Saturday.
It almost was. But for the third time in a decade, the property’s owner retained control after paying off years of back taxes just in time — and kept alive a dream of building on the site himself, or selling it to someone who will.
Continue reading ‘Empty Lot Owner Dodges Foreclosure. Again’
by | Dec 18, 2023 2:12 pm | Comments (31)
Thomas Breen photo
Ziggy's at 36 E. Grand: Lives to bake and slice another day.
The housing authority plans to purchase a vacant lot on the Quinnipiac River and a nearby pizzeria to build a mixed-income, mixed-use development with between 40 and 50 apartments.
by | Dec 15, 2023 5:34 pm | Comments (17)
Nora Grace-Flood file photo
The "tiny homes" currently standing in 203 Rosette's backyard.
The city has joined forces with human rights activists in the Hill to try to convince the state to recognize prefabricated shelters in a Rosette Street backyard as “single-family homes” — at least, sort of — so that the heat and the lights can be turned on as winter approaches.
Continue reading ‘City, Activists Ask State To OK Tiny Homes. For Now’
by | Dec 13, 2023 3:22 pm | Comments (32)
Laura Glesby photo
Carl Ferris at Ninth Square community meeting: "Feces all over the place" in portable restrooms on the Green. "It all gets blamed on homeless people."
Formerly unhoused activists, Ninth Square business owners, and city officials agree: New Haven needs a downtown public restroom that actually gets cleaned.
by | Dec 8, 2023 1:03 pm | Comments (21)
Thomas Breen photo
The now-removed asbestos hazard sign, which was up at 16 Miller on Nov. 29.
The asbestos hazard signs have come down — and 56 new affordable homes are going up, now that a nonprofit development duo has officially acquired and begun construction at a cleaned-up, long-vacant strip of Route 34 land.
Continue reading ‘Construction Begins On Curtis Cofield II Estates’
by | Dec 1, 2023 3:46 pm | Comments (11)
Thomas Breen photo
Inside the new warming center at the former Strong School on Orchard.
Forty-seven sleeping mats laid out in a shuttered school’s auditorium are now available to lie down on at night for those without a home, as the city opened a new overnight “warming center” at the former Strong School on Orchard Street.
Continue reading ‘Ex-School Reopens As Winter Overnight Shelter’
by | Nov 28, 2023 5:13 pm | Comments (21)
Laura Glesby photo
Hill residents Thomasine Shaw, former Hill Alder Dolores Colon, and former Newhallville Alder Delphine Clyburn.
A plan to rebuild at the site of the old Church Street South apartments will bring a new start not only for the neighbors still living in the Hill, but also for the people who lived there until hazardous conditions forced them out.
by | Nov 28, 2023 12:21 pm | Comments (12)
Thomas Breen photo
490 Prospect St.: Now owned by Mandy, leased by Albertus.
Tapping “the current advantageous real estate market,” Albertus Magnus College has sold 20 units of student housing and related office and meeting space for $7.4 million to an affiliate of Mandy Management — and has entered into a long-term lease with the local megalandlord to preserve the property for school use.
Continue reading ‘Mandy Buys Albertus Student Housing For $7.4M’
by and | Nov 27, 2023 4:32 pm | Comments (16)
Thomas Breen file photos
270 Foxon Blvd., newly acquired by the city ...
... ex-Church Street South land, newly bought by the housing authority.
The city has officially purchased a Foxon Boulevard hotel for $6.9 million, and is now busy converting it into a non-congregate homeless shelter that the Elicker administration said it hopes to open before Christmas.
And the housing authority has closed on its $21 million acquisition of more than eight acres of Union Station-facing vacant land that used to house the Church Street South apartment complex, and is about to embark on a year-long planning process to determine how best to transform that empty expanse.
by | Nov 20, 2023 4:23 pm | Comments (19)
Thomas Breen file photo
Columbus House CEO Margaret Middleton: Bracing for “silver tsunami of people experiencing homelessness.”
A leading provider of local homelessness services is tearing down its one-story office space — and building 80 bedrooms in its place in order to better accommodate a changing landscape of unhoused New Haveners.
Continue reading ‘Columbus House To Build New 80-Room Shelter’
by | Nov 20, 2023 9:10 am | Comments (21)
Church to Elicker: "Turn on the heat"
Sixty tiny-home supporters at a church in North Branford lifted their voices in song. It was about electricity and housing affordability, and aimed at New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker.
Continue reading ‘Suburban Fundraisers Sing For Hill's Tiny Homes’