Heat Goes On At Tiny Shelters In The Hill
by | Jan 15, 2024 11:55 am | Comments (18)
The heat’s turned on inside six tiny emergency shelters outside Amistad House.
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The Hill
Huggy Bear Hits The Halls
by | Jan 12, 2024 1:26 pm | Comments (10)
Maya McFadden Photo
Huggins helps a Cross student scan in for a summer job.
Ronald Huggins made his way through the Wilbur Cross High School hallways greeting students with handshakes and a “What’s up bro?”
And a pitch to enter the summer jobs pipeline.
New Haven Crew Gets Indie Movie Rolling
by | Jan 11, 2024 10:29 am | Comments (1)
Lisa Reisman Photo
Executive producer Jeff Bell with actors Ethan Timothy and Ernest Richard.
Jeff Bell wanted animosity.
“I want to feel it,” he told actor Ernest Richard. “I want it coming out of your pores. I want you to be showing him ‘I can’t stand you. You’re just a social media punk out for likes and girls.’”
The scene was a clandestine meeting in a dank, dimly lit basement reached by a flight of rickety stairs from Madeline’s Empanaderia on Spring Street. Ernest Richard was District Attorney Calvin Tubbs. His object of scorn: Tim the Truthteller, the social media influencer played by Ethan Timothy.
Pause Urged On Union Station Rezoning
by | Jan 2, 2024 3:10 pm | Comments (47)
Union Station Partnership / Patriquin Architects image
A rendering of what a denser development (at left) could look like on the current "east lot" next to Union Station.
A Union Station rezoning proposal got a thumbs down — for now — from City Plan commissioners, amid concerns that it might not make sense to build so many new apartments next door to an active railyard.
City, Activists Ask State To OK Tiny Homes. For Now
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.
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On Orchard, Shelter Night Ends, Then School Day Begins
by | Dec 5, 2023 1:03 pm | Comments (4)
Maya McFadden Photos
Orchard St. shelter client Tony Briggs: "Whether it's mats, pads, or the floor, it's better than freezing your ass off."
Career student Aleika Pizarro: The new shelter is "actually a good thing."
Just before sunrise, Tony Briggs stepped out of the city’s newest overnight “warming center” at a former school on Orchard Street — roughly half an hour before Career High School senior Aleika Pizarro arrived early for classes right across the street.
Briggs left the shelter grateful for a warm place to spend a cold New Haven night. Pizarro arrived at school with compassion and understanding that all city dwellers deserve a safe place to lay their heads.
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Medical Debt Book Talk Reckons With Aggressive Collection's Consequences
by | Dec 5, 2023 12:19 pm | Comments (7)
May 2001 article in the New Haven Advocate.
On May 31, 2001, an article, headlined “The Predator on the Hill,” appeared in the now-defunct New Haven Advocate. The predator: Yale-New Haven Hospital.
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3 Shifts, 3 Gun Arrests In The Hill
by | Dec 4, 2023 8:34 am | Comments (16)
Thomas Breen photo
Officers Dan Smith and Paul Prusinski.
On a recent Thursday morning, Hill beat cops Paul Prusinski and Daniel Smith followed up with a car that had been parked for an hour outside of a known drug-dealing hotspot — and wound up making a gun arrest.
The following Tuesday, the pair followed up with a car connected to a previous robbery and shooting — and wound up making a gun arrest.
Just one day later, they followed up with still another car that had been hanging around still another drug-dealing hotspot — and wound up making still another gun arrest.
Ex-School Reopens As Winter Overnight Shelter
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.
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Flood Closes Adult Ed Building
by | Nov 29, 2023 3:38 pm | Comments (9)
Thomas Breen photo
"School Closed," for now, at 540 Ella T. Grasso.
A flood resulting from a failed HVAC valve and gasket has ended on-site and in-person programming at the city’s Adult & Continuing Education Center in the Hill for the remainder of the calendar year.
Church Street South Futures Floated
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.
It's Official: City Buys Ex-Hotel For $6.9M; Housing Authority Buys Ex-Church Street South For $21M
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.
Literacy Workshop "Elevates" Early Childhood Educators
by | Nov 22, 2023 8:40 am | Comments (0)
ASHER JOSEPH PHOTO
Maxine Harris and her student sound out "seahorse."
“Mr. and Mrs… Sandwich?” puzzled a first-grader over a vibrant book in the basement of the Wilson Branch Library.
“Oh, Mr. and Mrs. Seahorse!” she corrected herself, before flipping to the next page of Eric Carle’s Mister Seahorse.
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Columbus House To Build New 80-Room Shelter
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.
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19-Year-Old Shot Dead In The Hill
by | Nov 20, 2023 2:36 pm | Comments (7)
A 19-year-old New Havener named Jovani Ortiz died on Monday from injuries he sustained after getting shot Sunday night on Downes Street in the Hill.
Suburban Fundraisers Sing For Hill's Tiny Homes
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.
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Sign Installed As Kimberly Park "Friends" Keep Cleaning
by | Nov 14, 2023 9:16 am | Comments (8)
Maya McFadden Photo
Hill youngsters and Crystal Fernandez install signage at Kimberly Park.
Ten-year-old Cristian Estrada and his brothers Joshua, 9, and Jeremiah, 5, took turns plunging a shovel into the dirt on Kimberly Avenue to bring more beauty to their neighborhood park — this time in the form of installing a Friends of Kimberly Park sign.
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Housing Authority To Buy Ex-Church Street South Site For $21M
by | Nov 13, 2023 10:21 pm | Comments (56)
Laura Glesby / Northland photos
Dealmakers: Housing authority's Karen DuBois-Walton and Northland's Larry Gottesdiener.
Thomas Breen photo
Future looks a bit brighter for Church St. South wasteland (pictured).
The city’s public housing authority has reached an agreement with the Massachusetts-based owners of the former Church Street South site to purchase the vacant expanse across from Union Station and build it up into a new mixed-income housing complex.
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Tiny Homes Hit With 2nd Violation Notice
by | Nov 1, 2023 4:26 pm | Comments (37)
Nora Grace-Flood Photo
Orlando Sanchez: Housed for now, as cold weather sets in.
The Elicker administration has sent a second letter demanding that six newly constructed mini-shelters be dismantled in a Hill backyard where 57-year-old Orlando Sanchez and roughly a half-dozen fellow unhoused people have moved in.
City Tells Tiny Home Builders To Cease And Desist
by | Oct 27, 2023 6:25 pm | Comments (53)
Nora Grace-Flood photo
Suki and Todd Godek, recently moved in to a Rosette St. tiny home.
The Elicker administration has sent a cease-and-desist letter to two activist homeowners in the Hill — telling them to take down the handful of tiny homes they’ve already constructed in their backyard, and to not build any more until they get the proper city approvals.
The property owners, meanwhile, are refusing to remove the newly built shelters, arguing that the privately owned land belongs to those finding refuge on it.
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New Clemente Principal Hired; 3 Veteran Teachers Retire
by | Oct 26, 2023 4:28 pm | Comments (14)
Maya McFadden photo
Incoming Roberto Clemente principal Adela Jorge.
A new principal is en route to Roberto Clemente Academy, thanks to the Board of Education’s appointment of longtime Waterbury administrator Adela Jorge to fill the shoes of the soon-to-retire Mia Edmonds-Duff.
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Ex-School To Become Winter Overnight Shelter
by | Oct 24, 2023 4:35 pm | Comments (21)
Thomas Breen photo
The ex-Strong School site at 130 Orchard.
The vacant former Strong School on Orchard Street in the Hill will reopen its doors to the public this winter as a 47-space warming center — thanks to a Board of Education vote in support of creating more cold-weather shelter options for the city’s homeless.
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6 Tiny Houses Built In Hill Backyard
by | Oct 24, 2023 12:21 pm | Comments (59)
Nora Grace-Flood photos
Amistad's Mark Colville, with tiny houses now ready for "economic refugees" at 203 Rosette St.
Nora Grace-Flood file photo
Just under a dozen tents have been cleared from a backyard homeless encampment on Rosette Street to make space for six new “tiny homes,” the latest local experiment in providing emergency shelter to those most in need.
Stalwart Hill Public Servant Dies
by | Oct 16, 2023 8:02 pm | Comments (4)
Thomas MacMillan file photo
Former Alder and State Rep. Andrea Jackson-Brooks.
Andrea Jackson-Brooks, a Hill alder and state representative whose decades-long career in politics earned her widespread admiration for her commitment to public service, passed away on Sunday. She was 79.
Housing Authority Lands $500K For Robert T. Wolfe, "Union Square" Planning
by | Oct 11, 2023 4:27 pm | Comments (5)
The city’s housing authority has been awarded $500,000 in federal funds to help plan for how best to revitalize the Robert T. Wolfe apartment complex and the surrounding community around Union Station.
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