Mayor Elicker speaking to a voter through a Ring camera intercom in the Hill.
Marisol Pagan and Jose Lugo stood on the sidewalk beside Trowbridge Square’s wrought iron fence as they urged Mayor Justin Elicker to do something about the marked increase in homeless people staying, and publicly urinating, in the Hill public park.
On the other side of that fence, Greg Abraham took a break from sipping on a can of paper bag-held beer to pace out for the mayor just how small his last apartment was — and to explain how he couldn’t afford the room’s rising rent, and is now spending his nights at a Grand Avenue shelter.
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Nora Grace-Flood |
Aug 3, 2023 10:24 am
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A rendering of Long Wharf's hoped-for post-rezoning future.
A plan to bring more retail, restaurants, walkability, and form-based thinking to a flood-prone, highway-adjacent industrial district hit a roadblock — as reviewers raised concerns that a Long Wharf rezoning proposal designed to promote mixed-use development might actually hinder growth.
1476 Chapel tenant Shaquita Alston (right) with sister Katina Kitchens: "Why keep selling it if it needs to be torn down?"
An affiliate of Ocean Management has sold a 20-unit West River apartment complex, which is home to a newly formed tenants union, for $2.44 million — as the local megalandlord continues to unload rental properties at prices well above what it paid to buy them over the past decade.
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Laura Glesby and Thomas Breen |
Aug 1, 2023 10:25 am
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The Foxon Boulevard hotel might soon become a homeless shelter.
The Days Inn hotel on Foxon Boulevard will become New Haven’s first non-congregate homeless shelter to serve both individuals and families by this upcoming winter, if an Elicker administration proposal comes to fruition.
Karen DuBois-Walton: "Every night I go to bed concerned" about the housing crisis.
Pre-approve certain building plans. Eliminate parking minimums. Support single-room apartments. Implement a land tax.
The Housing Authority of New Haven and its nonprofit affiliates recommended those city-level policies and others while delivering a message to City Hall: when it comes to the housing crisis, “we can’t count on the state.”
A man was stabbed in the neck outside of a State Street soup kitchen, and an arrest warrant is under review by the state for the individual who attacked him.
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Thomas Breen |
Jul 24, 2023 12:53 pm
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Omar Kh with Mohamad Hamasa on Saturday: Looking to flip or rent.
Three months after prevailing at a West Hills foreclosure auction for a house he had planned to move his family into — but which he now intends to rent or flip — Omar Kh came back to New Haven to help a close friend and fellow New Yorker try to get his own foot in the door of investing in rundown, tax-foreclosed local real estate.
The city’s non-cop crisis crew will now be on call for twice as many hours a day, remain reachable through the night, and respond directly to emergencies without police or fire intervening first.
LCI housing code inspections up for mayoral debate.
Tenant advocate, Fair Haven resident, and grandmother Camilla Crowell arrived at a housing-themed mayoral debate with an inkling that she might vote for Justin Elicker.
Two and a half hours later, she had learned something she liked about nearly every candidate. “I think I got more options now.”
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Kelly Fitzgerald, Margaret Middleton, Jennifer Paradis, Jim Pettinelli, Steve Werlin, Susan Compton Agamy, Mary Guerrera, & Karen DuBois-Walton |
Jul 14, 2023 12:51 pm
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A 78-year-old leaving Union Station for a homeless shelter Monday night.
As the crisis of homelessness grows in our community, so do the number of people sleeping in places that aren’t meant for habitation — under bridges, in woods and parks, and in other public places like train stations. The estimated number of unsheltered people in Greater New Haven has grown from 76 households to 128 at this time last year, an increase of 68 percent. As a result, as many as 60 people per night have sought emergency refuge in Union Station over the last six months.
Ronnie heading to a homeless shelter, with COMPASS's help.
The city’s non-cop crisis response crew pulled up to Union Station Monday night to assist a 78-year-old man into a van headed towards a newly opened homeless shelter in the Hill.
At the same time, at least six others watched from a nearby stretch of sidewalk where they prepared to spend the night — all while state and local leadership sought to crack down against a growing number of individuals without housing seeking refuge at the transit hub.
Why’s the rent so damn high? And what on earth should the mayor do about it?
Those questions might be asked — maybe not in those exact words — at a mayoral candidate forum that the Room for All coalition will be hosting on Thursday at 5:30 p.m. at Albertus Magnus College’s Hubert Campus Center at 831 Winchester Ave.
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Mia Cortés Castro |
Jul 10, 2023 11:16 am
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Daniel Marca (right) and fam: "We really just wanted a home in which our family can grow up and live for a long time.”
Looking forward to new memories to be made as new homeowners in the Hill, Daniel Marca and María González and their two young children explored the perimeter of an empty and partially boarded up house on Tyler Street that they won after ending on top of a crowded tax foreclosure auction.
Columbus House CEO Margaret Middleton: "Unsheltered homelessness is absolutely a crisis in our community."
Some of the 50 new emergency beds at 209 Terminal Ln.
Fifty new emergency shelter beds came online in the Hill Friday to help provide a safe, clean, indoors place to sleep for the city’s — and the region’s — rising number of people without a home.
Ronisha Baskin and her four-year-old, crashing with grandma in Waterbury.
Ronisha Baskin didn’t know how to tell her 14-year-old daughter that the Housing Authority of New Haven had evicted them. “I didn’t even know what to say.” She could not find the words to explain that a lack of housing options would force them to split up across different cities.
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Thomas Breen and Mia Cortés Castro |
Jun 27, 2023 6:46 pm
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Ocean renters on Whitney Ave Tuesday afternoon.
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Ocean's Shmuel Aizenberg and attorney Ian Gottlieb in court Tuesday morning.
Renters at a West River apartment complex gathered at City Hall to form New Haven’s second officially recognized tenants union — and then rallied outside of Ocean Management’s offices to demand collective bargaining around rents and maintenance — on the very same day that their landlord showed up in court to be prosecuted for six new housing-code-violation cases.
Fair Rent Commission Director Wildaliz Bermúdez (right): "Tenants report there is evidence of advanced mold behind bathroom walls" at 234 Fillmore.
Fair Rent commissioners dropped a Fillmore Street tenant’s rent down to $1 per month in a bid to pressure her landlord to speed up repairs to a dangerously unhealthy property with water-damaged ceilings and walls and allegedly beset with mold.
Joel Davis (right) at Columbus House: "We all just want to feel safe.”
Pencils scratched against paper and voices intertwined as clients and staff at Columbus House came together in the shelter’s sleeping quarters to reimagine its Ella T. Grasso Boulevard location — which is projected to add as many as 96 single rooms in a construction project to begin later this year.
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Mia Cortés Castro |
Jun 21, 2023 9:07 am
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Gregg Wies & Gardner design rendering
The proposed new apartment building at 873-897 Grand.
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873-887 Grand as it looks today.
A New York-based landlord plans to knock down two vacant Grand Avenue commercial buildings and build 112 new apartments in their stead on the northern end of Wooster Square.
David Gregor: Waiting on what's next, on State Street.
Beneath a canopy of tree cover on a State Street triangular mini-park, David Gregor sat in the shade, popped in his earphones, listened to Rascal Flatts, and waited for the Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen (DESK) drop-in center across the street to open — so he could grab one more coffee before pushing forward in his bid to find a stable place to live and get his life back on track.
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Thomas Breen |
Jun 19, 2023 1:18 pm
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Fajardo (center) after winning out at Saturday's 30-round auction.
126 Townsend Ter.
With his trusty Scag lawnmower sitting quietly behind his truck, an East Haven landscaper won the opportunity to cut the high grass of an abandoned East Shore home — which he’ll soon own after prevailing at a foreclosure sale.
