Town-Gown Revisited

When decision time came this week about whether to allow a youth homeless facility to open on Grand Avenue, neighbors and policymakers had a lot to say on the subject. DT did too.

It’s worth hearing what DT has to say — not just about what it’s like encountering homelessness while coming of age in New Haven, but about how that figures into the way Yalies and townies interact.

You might be surprised at some of the nuances in DT’s tale.

DT’s is one of 14 first-person stories compiled in a powerful new book about New Haven’s Oldest Obsession — town-gown relations. Titled simply New Haven and Yale, it brings us directly into the lives of people who study at the university, work at the university, serve coffee to people at the university, live blocks but a world away form the university, get needed help from the university.

While people have written and spoken endless words about that relationship over the centuries, the book manages to shed a new, personal, challenging light on questions about how we can best live together in a small city with big-city virtues and challenges. And how we see each other.

Caroline Tanbee Smith and Elizabeth Larkin compiled the book. It’s the third self-published book Smith has put together. In the few years since her Yale graduation in 2014, Smith, originally from Kentucky, has settled here and assumed leadership positions that bring her smack into the town-gown sandbox: She chairs the Downtown Wooster Square Community Management team, for instance, and co-directs the Collab entrepreneur-development effort, which has successfully brought together community people and Yale people with start-up dreams.

I can think of no better way to start bridging the town-gown gap than providing free copies of this book to all New Haven public school students and all Yale students (in case any philanthropists out there are looking for a quick way to do good). In the mean time, below are two stories from the book, including DT’s. Below that you’ll find a video of a discussion I had with Smith about the book, and about town-gown relations, on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven” program. And click here to order the book. (Proceeds support the nonprofit Youth Continuum advisory board.) The 14 stories in these pages may frustrate, challenge, and move you — and make all of us more committed to being part of one New Haven that not only argues with each other, but understands each other, too.

DT has a home now

I grew up in New Jersey in a family that wasn’t my family. I was adopted into a white family. There’s nothing wrong with being adopted, but it was hard to be the only black person in the family. And I struggled with mental health issues as a kid, until I got into athletics. Sports gave me friends, a place I belonged. I went to college at Southern Connecticut State University on a football scholarship. As a student at Southern, there were a few Yale students doing internships, environmental events, save the world events. I ran into more Yale students at Toad’s Place, when I was at the club. It’s pretty obvious who goes to Yale. You can tell. With the guys, it’s about their hair. How neat and taken care of it is. Yale males sound softer than other men. With the ladies, it was a little tougher. The girls liked the same music — dancehall/ trap. Yale students go wild at the club, but New Haven just goes to house parties. New Haven and Yale party different. Yale students are outgoing at night. When I went out with New Haven people, it was about dominance. Who’s top dawg? Who looks the freshest? Who’s got the most juice?

The first time I ever got arrested was in my sophomore year of college. My girlfriend went to jail, while I was kicked out of my dorm. I just turned twenty and I was homeless. I was sleeping on the bleachers, trying to get my grades up, trying to make it to football practice. I tried so hard, and I picked up my grades, but I had so many absences due to court that it made it impossible to catch up. I was suspended for 11 days, but my mom couldn’t come get me because she was out of a job. My dad’s car broke down. I was stuck.

So I was staying with this girl and her family, looking for a job, when she stranded me with a dead phone a couple towns over. It took me two days to walk back. I showed up at her mom’s job to ask for help, and I guess I looked pretty bad, so her mom called the police on me. I got arrested and went to jail.

After I got out of jail, nothing was different. I was homeless, in jail clothes. I didn’t know where I was at. Anyone looking at me knew I was in jail, but they didn’t know what my charges were. I could have been a murderer. My ID was stolen. I had no money. If anything changed, it was the way I felt about Yale. When I was in school, I was going to the same places that Yale students went. It got harder to talk to them, because of the way I was looking. Even though I was the same age, I felt like they were older than me. They were what I was trying to be — at a good school, getting my life right. Students at Yale have their life perfectly set out. It made me feel more alone. You rarely see Yale students hanging out by themselves. They’re always with each other, going to class, going home.

I was homeless for seven months after I got out of jail. I was trying to make it to court, work, I had two jobs and I was so exhausted I passed out at work. I started smoking weed again to deal with the stress and have the stamina to be on the streets and not care. I got kicked out of a shelter I was staying at. The rules are stricter than you think. I was on the streets again, sleeping at the mall, in abandoned houses. I was back to one job, trying to save up my money. In the winter, I slept in an abandoned house wearing a leather jacket that reminded me of my childhood. I got it for my birthday, before I became homeless. Afterwards, that jacket was my shell. I rarely took it off, I felt like it was attached to me. The pockets are all messed up, but I still wear it because it was so representative of a time in my life. That spring, a few weeks after I got housing, I spoke at a panel on youth homelessness hosted at Yale. I wore that jacket to the panel because it made it easier to talk about it, it made it easier to remember where I was versus present day.

I got into a rapid rehousing program, but even that was tough. I’d look at apartments, meet landlords, but nothing was coming through. When my 21st birthday was a month away, I picked up the pace. An apartment came through. Now I’m in the house, and I don’t even go outside anymore. I can open my fridge, I can lock the front door, I can close the door to the bathroom, I can cook for myself.

Nobody thinks this is perfect, but I think the New Haven-Yale relationship could improve if people talked to each other and were more real with each other. Every problem can be solved with the right people.

Josh works at Yale

Growing up in Coventry, Connecticut in the rural northeast, the only college I really knew was UConn, and we bled blue from a young age. We worshipped the men’s and women’s basketball teams and celebrated their triumphs as a community.

I knew what Yale was. Some fancy-pants Ivy League school down… somewhere else.. in Connecticut. But it didn’t affect me. I wasn’t the kind of student who would get into a place like Yale. So I went to UConn. I graduated with a degree in Computer Science & Engineering, and I went to work.

But it turns out that there isn’t a lot of engineering work in rural northeast Connecticut. Weird, right?

So I slowly migrated south. I ended up with a job in Wallingford, and I moved to North Haven. I didn’t know anybody. I visited New Haven once or twice — it seemed to have cool bars, but I didn’t really get it.

Around this time, my sister convinced me I should give New Haven a shot. Find some roommates, save money for a house. Try it out.

So I did, and it changed my life forever.

I lived with two Yale postgraduate students in East Rock. This was my first real introduction to Yale. These professional students, who may or may not someday graduate, and seemed to live like paupers, eating sardines out of the can and making pasta with ketchup (this is apparently something Peruvians do?).

I began to explore my new city. The bars in East Rock. I made my first friend at JP Dempsey’s. We played Dance Dance Revolution. The girl I just made out with puked. Well, you can’t win them all.

A friend recommended joining a kickball league. This is the most non-Yale thing there is in New Haven. It’s a playground for young professional co-eds ready to make bad choices on a Sunday afternoon. My people.

It was there that I made my best New Haven friends. People who I consider my absolute closest friends. People who grew up in New Haven, who knew it well. Who could explain it to me.

Yale was just some far off place I wasn’t allowed in. Towering Gothic structures with sealed gates. I knew a few people who actually graduated from Yale — I guess they’re Yalies? But they weren’t what I expected.

They didn’t wear bow ties. Or elbow pads. Or talk funny.

They were like me. Young professionals trying to carve something out in their new city.

A friend invited me to a party at Mory’s. I had never been. There were about six a Capella groups. No kidding. People sang songs and drank out of chalices. It was hilarious.

But I drank their champagne. And I secretly knew… I was a UConn kid. I’ll never be a Yale kid.

A year later, I found myself looking for a job. And where better to look than the city I’d fallen in love with: New Haven. I had come to love running through the streets. Or programming with my friends at Koffee. Or hanging out at Prime 16’s happy hour. Or dancing at Bar.

So I did my damnedest to get a job at Yale. And after 3 or 4 attempts, I found myself hired at the Yale School of Architecture. I don’t know anything about Architecture. But it’s a cool building, and a great place to work.

I guess that makes me a part of the Yale community, but it doesn’t always feel like it. I’m not allowed at GYPSCY. I didn’t go to Yale. I don’t know the traditions and honestly don’t really care to.

They’re an employer. A tremendous, generous, great employer, willing to pay me to buy a house in New Haven, and to cover the medical bills incurred while trying to fix up a house in New Haven. But an employer nonetheless.

Still, I find myself more and more connected to Yale. Because Yale and New Haven are inexorably linked. Whether I see students at Rudy’s, or curse the EXPLO kids filling up the Payne Whitney Gym ( the cheapest gym out there), or going to a Yale Staff Appreciation Day which had the most comically unappealing vegetarian options I’ve seen in my life… I’m connected to it now.

Yale helped me buy my house in the Edgewood area of New Haven. I never could’ve done it without them. (Or perhaps wouldn’t have.). They treat me very well, and I try to help the students have the best experience they can.

But in a way, it still feels adversarial to me. I’m not really a Yalie. I’m support staff. A townie in Yale clothing. The gates remain mostly locked to me.

I still hope for the best. Yale’s new Residential College is amazing. Their developments, including bringing in an L.L. Bean, while clearly catering to the upper-middle-class white crowd, are, nonetheless, positive developments for the city.

New Haven continues to grow as well. The new Edgewood bike lane is tremendously exciting. The development in Long Wharf is also exciting — including the partially Yale-owned Canal Boathouse.

Yet there are times when all come together. Following the callous travel ban by our new President, both townies and gownies came together to protest and fight back. We were connected in our shared values.

New Haven has a long way to go. And I think Yale could do a better job helping out — the city struggles with taxes and its public schools are problematic at best. Yet there is the New Haven Promise, which gives free tuition at schools for those who graduate from New Haven Public Schools.

In some ways, the Yale Art Gallery is sort of the ultimate shared space. It is, at its core, a Yale space. But it is free to all. It is wonderful. Filled with classics both old and new, there is something for everyone. And I do mean everyone.

In a way, it is the ideal connection between Yale and the city. It is beautiful and open. It couldn’t exist without the symbiosis of both Yale and New Haven.

As Connecticut struggles to grow and adapt, New Haven is at its cultural center. And that is part of Yale. This is my city. And I love it, in spite of its flaws. And while I may not share that same love for Yale (Go UConn!), I will always be grateful for everything it has done for me, and my city. 

The book’s authors are listed by only their first names, though Josh (Levinson) wants you to know you a wonderful New Haven blog he publishes called Between Two Rocks.

Click on the Facebook Live video below to listen to the full ​“Dateline New Haven” interview with Smith.