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.
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Allan Appel |
Jul 16, 2024 11:38 am
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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.
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.”
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Arthur Delot-Vilain |
Jul 12, 2024 12:13 pm
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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.
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.
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?
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.
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Arthur Delot-Vilain |
Jul 2, 2024 1:50 pm
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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.
Krystopher Linderman, Zach Postle, and Jesse Goldblum at 1455 State.
An alarm blared through a Cedar Hill apartment building at 1 p.m. sharp on Monday — as United Illuminating (UI) turned off the power in the common areas because of an overdue electricity bill.
Tenants union members and city, state, and federal politicians were already on site for an “open house” to showcase how poorly the Ocean Management complex is maintained. The sudden onset of afternoon darkness only fueled their frustration with what they alleged to be landlord malpractice.
Liam Brennan’s elderly parents will be able to live just steps away from their grandchildren — while maintaining the independence of residing in their own detached home — now that the city’s zoning board has approved the conversion of the former mayoral candidate’s backyard garage into a two-story accessory dwelling unit (aka “ADU”).
The senior living community known as The Towers at Tower Lane will be receiving $20 million to improve conditions and reach broader environmental goals, thanks to HUD’s Green and Resilient Retrofit Program (GRRP).
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Arthur Delot-Vilain |
Jun 26, 2024 12:17 pm
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Emerson tenants Yvonne Byrd-Griffin, Stephanie Perez, and Alex Kolokotronis parse through a Verified Lockout Complaint form.
Tenants union members from a downtown apartment building walked their fight for renters’ rights over to City Hall — and then to state court — in a bid to push back on unwelcome news from their new landlord.
One hundred and forty new apartments across two New Haven affordable housing developments are ready to begin construction, according to a state announcement of financing agreements providing millions of dollars for local below-market rentals.
"IZ" affordable apartments approved, but not built, at 50 Fitch.
Two and a half years after the city adopted a law designed to require affordable housing to be built as part of New Haven’s market-rate construction boom, the city’s “Inclusionary Zoning” law hasn’t yet created a single new reduced-rent place to live.
Most of the 50 “IZ” affordable apartments approved so far appear to be indefinitely held up by the high cost of borrowing money — even as other, non-“IZ” affordable developments move ahead.
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Jabez Choi |
Jun 25, 2024 11:01 am
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Closing up, Tuesday morning: "We built power in our movement."
Paul Bass Photos
A tent encampment on the Green grew overnight — and then disbanded of its own accord Tuesday morning, with the group’s organizers heralding the outing as a success for drawing attention to the plight of homelessness.
Twelve tents popped up on the Green Monday evening — as part of a rescheduled overnight protest against past clearings of homeless encampments, and in support of the rights of the unhoused.
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Arthur Delot-Vilain |
Jun 24, 2024 4:15 pm
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University Row Homes auction winner Alex Opuszynski, with attorney Grant: Looking to "maximize the unit mix."
Housing authority's Karen DuBois-Walton, Shenae Draughn, and Jim Turcio, outbid by Opuszynski: “We would've invested in this -- made it affordable."
Two different landlords ended up on top of two adjacent tax foreclosure auctions — effectively closing the books on a decades-old co-op on Henry Street between Orchard and Dixwell.
Hill resident Aura Soto showed up with her two children to the latest planning meeting for the future of the former Church Street South site with concerns about neighborhood safety, and ideas about educational programs to “keep the kids busy and out of trouble.”
She left feeling optimistic. “With the help of the people,” Soto said, looking around at those gathered in the cafeteria of High School in the Community, “we will make it a better place.”
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Arthur Delot-Vilain |
Jun 20, 2024 3:33 pm
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University Row Homes resident Demeka Anderson: "We're the only ones that are sensing the urgency because it's our lives."
Thomas Breen photo
1 of 2 Henry St. auctions, scheduled for Saturday.
A row has broken out at row homes on Henry Street — leading to holes in the roof, allegations of mismanagement, ownership confusion, back-tax frustration, and two properties heading to the foreclosure auction block this weekend.
Eitan Hochster: Sale changes only "where the profits go."
A 37-unit East Rock apartment complex changed hands for $11.5 million — because a Long Island City lighting company’s land value kept rising while its manufacturing business kept slowing down.
How are those two real estate phenomena two states apart connected?
Through a federal tax deferral provision called Section 1031.
Jeanette Sykes, at the helm of new neighborhood dev corp.
A group of Newhallville residents has banded together to build affordable, owner-occupied housing — and expand awareness of neighborhood resources — by way of a revived community development corporation.
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Arthur Delot-Vilain |
Jun 19, 2024 12:13 pm
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Fixing the leak at Winters Run.
The members of a Fair Haven Heights condo association have voted to pay their entire $138,000-plus overdue water bill — and will now try to collect from the complex’s former property manager, whom they accuse of failing to promptly address the leak that left them in such a financial mess.
Emerson tenants Kolokotronis, Blau, Perez, and Hinds: Unionized, and ready to fight lease-non-renewal notices.
The new landlord of a leak-damaged downtown apartment complex has told the building’s unionized renters that their leases won’t be renewed — leaving some scrambling to figure out where they’ll live next as soon as this summer.
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Laura Glesby |
Jun 18, 2024 2:09 pm
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Waiting for a pie from Sally's on Wooster St. ...
... as, right around the corner, Mykala Grace grabs two iced teas for maximum hydration at DESK's drop-in center.
Two lines that never meet form around lunchtime on one Wooster Square block: one for Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen’s drop-in center, the other for the world-famous Sally’s pizzeria.
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Arthur Delot-Vilain |
Jun 18, 2024 9:30 am
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Derek Baker: 201 Munson "fit all the bills"
Derek Baker unloaded his U‑Haul truck after wrapping up the roughly 700-mile drive from metro Detroit to Munson Street, as he prepared to enter a new stage of his life studying MRIs and brain scans at Yale — while living out of a brand new luxury apartment complex in a development-rich stretch of Dixwell-Newhallville-Science Park.
