by | Jun 15, 2023 2:57 pm | Comments (33)
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Kishaun Jenkins: Celebrating "the coolest spot to be."
A Boston-based affordable housing developer has dropped its plans to buy a Kensington Street public park and construct 15 new apartments in its stead — prompting the Elicker administration to move to end a related years-long lawsuit on the grounds that the contested public greenspace will remain public and green.
by | Jun 15, 2023 12:16 pm | Comments (43)
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256 Shelton: Potential candidate for eminent domain?
A mayoral challenger embraced the idea of claiming blighted properties for city ownership by way of eminent domain, as part of a campaign push to use local government’s powers to support new housing and deter dangerous building decay.
by | Jun 8, 2023 12:20 pm | Comments (4)
Renderings of apartment buildings one step closer to rising, clockwise from top left: Strong School, Chapel & State, Munson & Henry, Miller Street.
Alders paved the way for 212 more affordable apartments to materialize in four different neighborhoods — including at the former Strong School on Grand Avenue — along with two education initiatives for hundreds of kids and adults.
Continue reading ‘Strong School, Housing Deals Win Final OKs’
by | Jun 7, 2023 11:56 am | Comments (7)
Nora Grace-Flood file photo
Big changes -- and six-month closure -- coming to State St. drop-in center (pictured).
A commercial kitchen and health clinic are coming to State Street’s Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen next year — as the long-time homelessness services provider prepares to temporarily relocate so that it can build out its latest location to better support a growing number of people facing housing and income insecurity.
Continue reading ‘DESK Preps For Temp Relocation, Major Renovations’
by | Jun 5, 2023 2:47 pm | Comments (13)
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Judge Spader and Inspector Ortiz: "What should I tell them to do?"
Judge Walter Spader, Jr. had had enough with the lawyers arguing before him.
So, black robes swishing above his brightly hued checkered button-down shirt, he stepped down from his judicial bench to interview a key witness himself.
by | Jun 5, 2023 9:18 am | Comments (13)
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Elicker (right) catches up with nico w. okoro and family before forum's start ...
... as Abdussabur (right) greets Frank Cochran and Stephanie FitzGerald.
More emergency beds. A zoning overhaul. A freeze on taxes. A move away from being the “methadone capital of Connecticut.”
The four Democrats seeking New Haven’s top elected office pitched those proposals when pressed during a mayoral candidate forum on what to do about the city’s lack of affordable housing and rising tide of homelessness.
Continue reading ‘Debate Portrays Housing As Politics Problem’
by and | Jun 2, 2023 1:45 pm | Comments (7)
Thomas Breen file photo
Emergency workers on scene of partial building collapse.
Fire Chief Alston (center): "That building is still in a dangerous state."
Eight construction workers were injured, two critically, before firefighters rescued them Friday from a partial building collapse.
Continue reading ‘8 Workers Injured In Partial Building Collapse’
by | May 26, 2023 10:32 am | Comments (3)
From Union Avenue to West Street, from Highland to Fitch, people needed to find new homes, for different reasons.
by | May 19, 2023 3:32 pm | Comments (32)
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Doug Hausladen: “At the end of the day, without any houses for people to go to, nothing is changing.”
With more and more people arriving at Union Station not to catch a train but in search of shelter, the transit hub’s management is working on ways to redirect people to the right resources — while questioning how much change they can create in the face of a fundamental housing shortage.
Continue reading ‘Parking Chief: Homelessness At Union Station Is A Housing Problem’
by | May 19, 2023 3:30 pm | Comments (38)
Nora Grace-Flood photos
Abdussabur and Fernandez shake hands before the ambulance heads out.
Shafiq Abdussabur pulled up to Union Station to make his latest campaign pitch — and found himself calling an ambulance for a man seeking shelter inside the train stop rather than crusading for votes.
by | May 19, 2023 12:49 pm | Comments (12)
Wait a minute. That's not a 74-year-old man, right? Video surveillance footage of "State Marshall Brian Hobart" delivering an eviction notice in February at 167 West St.
State Marshal Brian Hobart showed up to a West Street three-family house on Feb. 23 to deliver an eviction notice to a family of renters with an expired lease.
At least, that’s what Hobart attested had happened in a court-filed document.
Surveillance images from a first-floor camera at that Hill property tell a different story.
Continue reading ‘Eviction Notice Served -- By Whom, Exactly?’
by | May 18, 2023 11:16 am | Comments (9)
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Felicia Howard and Faydre Phillips: "We just want to move and have a clean place to live and a landlord that fixes" what needs to be fixed.
Another roach down, plenty more to go.
Felicia Howard pointed a spray bottle at yet another cockroach crawling above her kitchen stove — and tried to snuff out a pest that has plagued a dilapidated Newhallville apartment from which an out-of-state landlord is trying to evict her and her daughter for no fault of their own.
Continue reading ‘Investor Tries Evictions First, Repairs Later’
by | May 17, 2023 9:04 am | Comments (14)
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Co-op demo, apartment construction in the works on Howard.
A rendering of the to-be-redeveloped ex-Hill Co-Op.
The Board of Alders approved two tax breaks for two different affordable housing projects across town — including at a former Hill co-op, which will see 32 apartments knocked down and 64 built up as part of a first phase of redevelopment.
Continue reading ‘Ex-Hill Co-op, McConaughy Tax Breaks OK'd’
by | May 15, 2023 1:35 pm | Comments (33)
Lisa Reisman photos
Tent City exiles Suki and Todd Godek ...
... at Saturday's Hill housing fundraiser in Guilford.
It might seem incongruous for a wealthy shoreline suburban community to pull out all the stops for a radical Catholic homelessness rights activist from the Hill.
Not at all, said Mark Colville, leader of the Amistad Catholic Worker House, as roughly 100 attendees enjoyed vegetable terrine and fruit salad drizzled with raspberry rose at a “Breaking Bread” fundraiser in the brightly lit basement of Guilford First Congregational Church.
Continue reading ‘City Housing Plight Brought To The 'Burbs’
by | May 15, 2023 11:45 am | Comments (4)
Thomas Breen photos
FAD Mechanical's Henry Smith III and Lawrence Jay McLaurin (center), with State Sen. Paul Cicarella and Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz, honored as the Minority-Owned Small Biz of the Year ...
... for their plumbing and HVAC work on new apartment buildings like 9 Tower Ln.'s "Pierpont."
Two city-raised HVAC contractors took a step out of the shadows of New Haven’s building boom and into the limelight to be honored for their ground-up-construction plumbing work — including at hundreds of new Yale medical campus-adjacent apartments that continue to spring up across the Hill.
by | May 11, 2023 2:03 pm | Comments (18)
Thomas Breen file photo
"Mass timber" apartments underway at Dixwell-Munson-Orchard.
Beulah's Darrel Brooks (right) celebrating the ongoing development with his father, and faith-based developer visionary, Theodore.
As a crane lowered wood panels made from Central European trees, officials celebrated 69 new “mass timber” apartments taking root in a long vacant lot — and envisioned a construction-industry revolution where carbon-capturing materials can be grown and processed closer to home.
by | May 8, 2023 2:53 pm | Comments (3)
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The Harding Pl. apartment building where Jacqueline Frett (pictured below) once lived.
Frett at her former kitchen table on Harding Place: "When you don’t have a stable home and household, it’s hard to maintain something outside."
Two years after an eviction lawsuit left Jacqueline Frett and her four kids with no place to live in New Haven, the 35-year-old former Harding Place tenant and her family are now trying to make their way back to the city they once called home.
Continue reading ‘Eviction Fallout Follows Ex-Newhallville Family’
by | May 4, 2023 8:52 am | Comments (5)
Rendering of redeveloped Strong School.
Thomas Breen photo
Pennrose Senior Developer Karmen Cheung before the Board of Alders.
A national affordable housing developer’s bid to convert the long-vacant former Strong School on Grand Avenue into at least 50 new apartments took another big step forward, as alders endorsed rezoning and selling the city-owned property for $500,000.
by | May 2, 2023 3:39 pm | Comments (11)
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Missing "I" -- and $235,000 in back taxes and interest.
The current “redevelopers” of an old Hamilton Street clock factory are now looking to sell rather than rebuild the derelict industrial property, according to a new court-filed agreement.
by | May 2, 2023 2:08 pm | Comments (2)
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Landlord Raphael Badouch and attorney Jeffrey Weisman in court on Tuesday.
A state judge turned down a New Jersey landlord’s bid to evict a nonpaying West Hazel Street tenant after finding that her apartment’s persistent housing code violations justified the temporary withholding of rent.
by | May 2, 2023 9:15 am | Comments (36)
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Paul Boudreau and Greta Blau, left, founders of the first tenants' union in Hamden.
Unidad Latina En Accion Founder and May Day organizer John Lugo drives an Elicker scarecrow around town.
Hundreds of activists took to the streets to commemorate International Workers’ Day — and to celebrate local strides taken to solidify people power not just across jobs, but within New Haven apartments, homeless encampments, and shelters.
by | Apr 26, 2023 3:27 pm | Comments (8)
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Landlord attorney Eliana Schachter and property manager Arie Yehonatan Richenberg in eviction court: "I want to do my job."
Raphael Badouch got his day in housing court Tuesday in his company’s effort to evict a nonpaying tenant. He didn’t personally show up.
Raphael Badouch also had a day scheduled in housing court on April 11, to be arraigned in a separate case involving 24 code violations at the same property. He didn’t show up then, either.
That led the judge to ask: Where in the world was Raphael Badouch?
Continue reading ‘Landlord's Court No-Show Debated In Eviction’
by | Apr 26, 2023 12:25 pm | Comments (3)
Liz Grace photo
486 Middletown Ave., soon to become senior housing?
A sketch of the anticipated seven-unit complex.
A local engineer won city permission to build seven apartments in Quinnipiac Meadows for seniors hoping to spend their final years in their own homes.
by | Apr 25, 2023 5:02 pm | Comments (3)
CHRO Director Hughes: To be deposed in CHRO-filed court case.
A state judge approved the deposition of Connecticut’s top anti-discrimination official in a court case involving an emotional support dog — following a debate around if a state agency head should be dragged into a lawsuit she may know nothing about.
by | Apr 24, 2023 11:55 am | Comments (10)
A rendering of the future Grand Avenue Development.
The current Strong School building at 69 Grand Ave.
A plan to redevelop Fair Haven’s long-vacant former Strong School is two steps closer to fruition after the City Plan Commission favorably recommended requests by the city to rezone and sell the land to a national affordable housing developer.