Mehul Dalal this week at the West River Tent City.
Among the most difficult choices city officials need to make relate to clearance of encampments. There are no immediate or easy solutions to homelessness. The outreach teams which comprise of city staff in my department and established agencies are experts in engaging, building relationships, and connecting with unhoused individuals. They (and we all must) recognize the right of individuals to not engage with services if they are not ready – this is a core principle of “meeting people where they are.” We aspire to lead with compassion, honoring the dignity of individuals who are often in highest times of need. Yet when conditions warrant, helping people transition from encampments, particularly when the encampments are found to be as hazardous as the one we cleared this week at the West River Memorial Park is consistent with a compassionate approach.
by
Maya McFadden |
Mar 17, 2023 9:11 am
|
Comments
(6)
Maya McFadden File Photo
Katelyn Giusti: "Thank you for your thinking."
“Secure your thinking caps tightly,” Barnard teacher Katelyn Giusti advised her classroom full of kindergartners — as they prepared to dive into a chimpanzee-focused reading assignment and test out a new school district approach to literacy.
by
Nora Grace-Flood and Paul Bass |
Mar 16, 2023 9:10 am
|
Comments
(59)
Nora Grace-Flood Photos
Cops swarm into Tent City, under supervision of Sgt Justin Cole (center right) and Lt. Nicholas Marcusio (walking away at right).
Last to leave: Paul C packs up after police evict him Thursday from Tent City.
Police swarmed onto the tent city off the Boulevard early Thursday morning to clear the holdout campers and bulldoze the site — and make sure the press and public couldn’t watch what they were doing.
by
Nora Grace-Flood |
Mar 15, 2023 4:39 pm
|
Comments
(27)
Nora Grace-Flood photo
Organizers help Suki Godek, center, move her things out of Tent City.
The residents of a West River encampment loaded their belongings into backpacks and U‑Hauls Wednesday to comply with a public eviction notice from the Elicker Administration — as organizers pitched new tents to protest a pending, forcible clear-out of the site.
by
Nora Grace-Flood |
Mar 3, 2023 7:11 pm
|
Comments
(21)
Nora Grace-Flood photos
Tent City resident Victor peers into the prefab shower to say good-bye.
The crew of volunteers at tent city Friday.
Marcus Williams tied up a load of litter in a black bag and dumped it beside a brand new shower shed and a well-used grill — growing a pile of “garbage” the city demanded be disposed of this week as part of an ultimatum to a self-governed encampment off the West River to clean up or move out.
People living outdoors in the so-called “Tent City” complied with the order, and will be able to stay for now, even as they push back on the city’s threatening to trash belongings they see as necessary to survive.
by
Allan Appel |
Feb 27, 2023 10:45 am
|
Comments
(0)
Paul Zalonski and Jayne Ryzewski on Sunday.
Even if the war in Ukraine ends tomorrow, which it will not, there will remain an urgent need to rebuild the Eastern European country’s Russian-destroyed economy and infrastructure and to repatriate its citizens.
A 2019 rendering of the proposed Miller Street development.
Alders signed off on more tax relief — for fewer below-market-rent apartments — for a developer team planning to build a 56-unit majority-affordable housing complex atop a long-vacant lot in West River.
by
Thomas Breen |
Feb 22, 2023 4:04 pm
|
Comments
(4)
Thomas Breen photos
Royale Gibbs: Before painted intersection, car flew into island and flipped in roadway.
Painted pavement around the Derby-Norton-George intersection.
Royale Gibbs remembers well when a car speeding up Derby Avenue rammed into a tree and flipped over a triangular island and into the middle of the street.
That was before the city, in a quick-fix effort to slow down traffic, painted the pavement around the island cerulean blue and put up a bevy of short plastic delineators.
“I remember this spot. This is definitely safer” now, he said.
by
Nora Grace-Flood |
Jan 10, 2023 9:05 am
|
Comments
(25)
Nora Grace-Flood photo
Nestor "grilling" eggs: “I don’t make so many plans. I live in the moment."
Nestor hooked a tank of propane to a silver grill he had recently rehabbed — and started counting each second to see how long it would take to boil two eggs on the outdoor device, showcasing the living arrangement he set up himself to survive as comfortably as he can at a West River homeless encampment.
Members of two species gather to cut the ribbon at the new Cambria Hotel on Route 34.
New Haven closed out the year with two of three planned new hotels getting past the finish line and opening to the public with a festive holiday party.
Two customers were already in the barber chairs with two more waiting not long after Aaron Polanco opened the doors Thursday morning at the male side of Morena Salon and Barber Shop.
by
Nora Grace-Flood |
Dec 1, 2022 1:14 pm
|
Comments
(5)
Nora Grace-Flood photo
Tent City starts morning with hot coffee, eggs and potatoes.
A West River encampment woke up to hot food and coffee after another crew of individuals experiencing homelessness arrived with frittatas and potatoes — plus the promise of second helpings and opportunities to grow solidarity across Greater New Haven’s unhoused populations.
The Mandy-owned nine-unit house on Sherman Avenue.
After half a decade of roaming between abusive homes and strangers’ couches, Asia Harris moved into her first-ever apartment and purchased a dresser from Goodwill for $20. “Nobody bought it for me,” she said. “I bought it my own self.”
Three years and one eviction notice later, Harris threw out the dresser. It was too heavy to sell for rent money and it no longer felt like her own.
by
Nora Grace-Flood |
Nov 17, 2022 4:17 pm
|
Comments
(19)
SEBASTIAN MEDINA-TAYAC file photo
So long, linen. Hello, housing? New England Linen workers inside the plant in 2015.
An Avon-based housing developer won a key approval to clean up the blighted remains of a former West River laundry service — and to convert that no-longer commercial space into 64 new below-market-rent apartments.
by
Allan Appel |
Nov 11, 2022 9:55 am
|
Comments
(1)
Allan Appel photo
Carl Harvey with one of the three vehicles the group hopes to ship next month.
As a young nurse training at Walter Reed Medical Center during the Vietnam War, Jane Ryzewski knows firsthand how much care and how many supplies are needed to help injured soldiers.
Which is why she joined three dozen fellow volunteers at the Ukrainian Catholic Church on George Street to organize and prepare to ship out an ever-growing assemblage of medical supplies and winter clothing to the front lines of another international conflict that is now in its ninth month.
by
Thomas Breen |
Sep 16, 2022 1:34 pm
|
Comments
(6)
Thomas Breen photo
15 Brown St., now OK'd for a new 2-family house.
Three different vacant lots in Wooster Square, West River, and Upper State Street should soon sprout new two-family houses, thanks to approvals granted by the Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA).
YNHH leaders and city officials break out their shovels.
Yale New Haven Hospital ceremoniously started construction Wednesday on a long-awaited, $838 million neurosciences center in the Dwight neighborhood, celebrating the forthcoming addition as “transformative” for patients with brain-related illnesses.
Sign posted at site of future neuroscience center.
After more than two years of pandemic-induced delays, Yale New Haven Hospital has revived its neuroscience center development plans — with construction vehicles now on site at the southern end of the St. Raphael’s campus, and local building permits pulled for hundreds of millions of dollars worth of medical-center-expansion work soon to come.
