by | Aug 27, 2024 9:35 am | Comments (24)
Laura Glesby File Photo
The building proposed for 34 Level St.
A plan to build 50 new affordable apartments for seniors in West Rock took a key step forward, as alders endorsed a 39-year tax-break deal for the housing authority development to-be.
Continue reading ‘Affordable Senior Housing Tax Break Advances’
by | Aug 19, 2024 3:37 pm | Comments (3)
Thomas Breen file photo
67 Winchester: Now approved for expansion.
A plan to build new bedrooms atop a derelict Winchester Avenue home’s backyard won approval the second time around — after calls for more, quality housing beat out concerns about neighborhood change.
by | Aug 19, 2024 2:14 pm | Comments (7)
Thomas Breen photo
402 Crown St.: 2 apartments, coming up?
A vacant former Crown Street car rental center is slated to become two new apartments — after the landlord’s attorney explained that now is not the best financial time to knock down the commercial structure and build a big new building in its stead.
by | Aug 12, 2024 1:52 pm | Comments (5)
Maya McFadden Photo
Edgewood neighbors Charlie Nixon and Julie Jaus meet with Alder Hamilton (second from right): When do we have to go?
Edgewood tenants turned to their neighborhood alder for help from potential mass evictions precipitated by the sell-off of rental properties owned by nonprofits controlled by incarcerated sex offender Rabbi Daniel Greer.
by | Aug 9, 2024 2:30 pm | Comments (6)
Laura Glesby Photo
Abdul Osmanu, Steve Winter, and Tarolyn Moore after the debate.
“Like Abdul just said…”
“I do kind of agree with Steve…”
“Tarolyn’s exactly right…”
“My answer was what he said!”
Phrases like these were heard frequently at a political debate on Thursday evening, where three state representative candidates agreed more than they disagreed on issues such as tenants’ rights, income inequality, teacher pay, and the role of deep listening in politics.
Continue reading ‘State Rep Candidates Debate ... & Largely Agree’
by | Aug 7, 2024 1:27 pm | Comments (24)
Laura Glesby photos
Kiki Moreno and Fernando Morales: Formerly homeless, currently calling for better shelter hours.
Upon This Rock to revive the Grand Avenue shelter.
One of the city’s go-to homeless shelter contractors is slated to revive a shuttered 65-bed facility on Grand Avenue, with case management and healthcare services on site.
Alders voted to allocate $500,000 toward that effort — part of just over $1 million approved on Monday evening for helping people with nowhere else to go.
by | Aug 5, 2024 12:35 pm | Comments (8)
Allan Appel Photo
The Strong School.
The plan to turn the vacant old Strong School at 69 Grand Ave. into 58 affordable, artist and LGBTQ-friendly apartments is moving ahead, if a little more slowly than anticipated.
Continue reading ‘Strong School Redevelopment Project Moves Along’
by | Aug 2, 2024 5:34 pm | Comments (18)
Laura Glesby Photos
New LCI head Liam Brennan and former LCI head, new housing development czar Arlevia Samuel.
Former mayoral challenger Liam Brennan will have the chance to enact the “philosophy sea change” he called for last year in the Livable City Initiative (LCI) — as the department’s new director starting Monday.
Meanwhile, current LCI Director Arlevia Samuel is moving to a new position in the city focused on spurring affordable housing development.
Continue reading ‘Elicker Taps Former Foe Brennan To Refocus LCI’
by | Jul 31, 2024 1:16 pm | Comments (70)
Laura Glesby Photo
The apartment-less Grand Ave. property on Tuesday.
(Updated) A lawsuit by a pair of Wooster Square neighbors concerned about backyard shade is jeopardizing plans to transform a series of abandoned Grand Avenue commercial buildings into 112 new places to live.
by | Jul 30, 2024 3:37 pm | Comments (100)
Thomas Breen photos
Here comes the neighborhood: Potential buildings to come (in white) to transform the Ninth Square. (Cafe 9 is at center near bottom.)
Housing authority head Karen DuBois-Walton: "We need to be building more housing. That is how we move forward."
Builders are ready to un-pave parking lots — and erect hundreds of new mixed-income apartments downtown.
Two dozen officials announced that news Tuesday afternoon alongside developers during a press conference heralding newly inked agreements to redevelop a car-centric stretch of State and George streets.
by | Jul 29, 2024 10:15 am | Comments (25)
Thomas Breen photo
Sale pending at Greer nonprofit-owned 193 Maple St.
Arthur Delot-Vilain photo
Nixon, Oliver, and Jaus: Putting up a fight.
Blindsided.
That’s the word tenants are using to describe how they feel as incarcerated sex offender Rabbi Daniel Greer’s nonprofits seek to sell off a host of multi-family houses in the Edgewood neighborhood — leaving those renters worried about potential orders to move, and prompting them to start organizing to protect their positions at a time of uncertainty.
by | Jul 26, 2024 3:42 pm | Comments (9)
Laura Glesby Photo
Serena Neal-Sanjurjo: "Change will come" in housing market.
Rosette Village protesters at City Hall announcement.
A former city housing official will spearhead new efforts to convert blighted properties into affordable housing through a quasi-public land bank.
by | Jul 23, 2024 2:49 pm | Comments (10)
Jabez Choi Photo
Norman Feitelson: "We're getting there."
When winds blow in from the Sound, windows sometimes pop open at the Towers senior complex. Now $20 million is blowing in to replace windows, roofs, and HVAC systems.
by | Jul 22, 2024 3:19 pm | Comments (8)
Arthur Delot-Vilain Photo
Housing Authority prez Karen DuBois-Walton: "A lot of possibilities now."
After losing out to another bidder at a previous foreclosure auction, the Housing Authority of New Haven (HANH) became the third part-owner of a former co-op’s homes in Dixwell.
by | Jul 22, 2024 9:50 am | Comments (47)
Spinnaker / Epimoni rendering
The latest design for 20-34 Fair St.
One hundred and sixty eight more apartments took a big step closer to coming to Wooster Square, after the project’s new co-development team won permission to modify a plan last approved in 2021.
by | Jul 18, 2024 6:43 pm | Comments (59)
Jabez Choi photo
Joel Nieves, next to his CPAP machine: “I feel safe right here."
Joel Nieves woke up in his tiny backyard home on Rosette Street Thursday morning and noticed the air was warm — too warm.
At 9:24 a.m., at the Elicker administration’s behest, United Illuminating (UI) shut off the power to six pre-fab shelters, including the one that Nieves has been living out of.
With the temperature rising and his air conditioner now off, Nieves immediately thought about his CPAP machine, which he uses to sleep at night.
by | Jul 17, 2024 2:55 pm | Comments (31)
Arthur Delot-Vilain photo
Emerson Tenants Union members RJ Hinds, Stephanie Perez, Alexander Kolokotronis, Yvonne Byrd-Griffin, and James Blau: On the losing end of Tuesday's Fair Rent rulings.
“Because.”
That was the key word in the Fair Rent Commission’s rejection of a host of tenants union retaliation complaints, on the grounds that the Emerson Apartments’ new landlord had done no legal wrong in not renewing their leases.
by | Jul 16, 2024 5:54 pm | Comments (49)
Jabez Choi photos
Tiny home resident Joel Nieves at Rosette St. press conference: “Mr. Mayor, I say to you, am I not human? ”
Nieves, Godek, and Colville return city's cease-and-desist letter to City Hall.
(Updated) As a group of unhoused activists on Rosette Street held a press conference denouncing the city’s bid to shut down their backyard tiny homes, a state marshal arrived with a cease-and-desist letter from the Elicker administration — ordering the group to vacate the “illegal” dwelling units in 24 hours.
by | Jul 16, 2024 11:38 am | Comments (8)
Allan Appel Photo
Friends Center's Executive Director Allyx Schiavone (center) with teachers Eric Gill and Justin Cross.
For financial reasons, Justin Cross lives with his mom and Ubers, an expense he can ill afford, all the way across town from the Hill to his early childhood education job in Fair Haven Heights.
Eric Gill commutes from Waterbury, where he shares a single room with a brother and a cousin in an uncle’s house, traveling 50 stressed round-trip miles, often arriving very late or very early, depending on traffic.
Both idealistic young men are about to receive a huge financial relief package: They will be moving into a pioneering “teachers village,” free rental housing in a verdant compound a five-minute walk from the Friends Center for Children’s school (no more commute!) on East Grand Avenue.
by | Jul 15, 2024 6:52 pm | Comments (19)
Nora Grace-Flood file photo
Four of the six tiny shelters at 203 Rosette.
The Elicker administration has asked United Illuminating to turn off the power at six backyard emergency shelters in the Hill now that a 180-day state permit has expired, rendering the tiny homes “illegal dwelling units.”
Continue reading ‘Electricity Standoff Looms For Tiny Shelters’
by | Jul 12, 2024 12:13 pm | Comments (28)
Arthur Delot-Vilain photos
Franklyn Gallo: RV is "better than living on the street."
The clock company's latest tenant.
Inside the nearby shed.
Housing has finally come to the old Hamilton Street clock factory — in the form of a parked RV occupied by a homeless former construction worker.
Time is ticking, however, for the temporary residents of the dilapidated industrial complex, now that the city’s housing authority has finalized an agreement to buy the blighted property out of tax foreclosure.
by | Jul 11, 2024 3:12 pm | Comments (52)
Thomas Breen file photo
67 Winchester expansion nixed.
Neighbors concerned about a built-up backyard bested a landlord looking to renovate and expand a dilapidated vacant house — as the zoning board sided with open space and sunlight over more, new small-scale housing.
Continue reading ‘Zoners Reject Bedrooms, Preserve Backyard’
by | Jul 10, 2024 12:18 pm | Comments (12)
Thomas Breen file photo
The recent decision by the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority (CHFA) to deny financing for Seabury Cooperative Housing’s capital improvement project raises a crucial question: Why would CHFA favor dissolving the limited equity cooperative model, which empowers its members, in favor of a tax credit property model that leaves members powerless to govern themselves?
Continue reading ‘Opinion: Keep Limited Equity Cooperatives Alive’
by | Jul 8, 2024 11:46 am | Comments (46)
420 Temple: Ready for the wrecking ball.
Yale is getting ready to knock down a six-story graduate student housing building on Temple Street to make way for a coming expansion to the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
by | Jul 2, 2024 1:50 pm | Comments (22)
Thomas Breen file photo
596-598 George St., to be sold to veterans housing nonprofit.
Alders signed off on selling a long-vacant, city-owned duplex next to Yale New Haven Hospital for $6,000 to a local veterans housing nonprofit that plans to rehab the property into six affordable rentals.