Childcare Center Eyes 4 New Houses

A local affordable childcare nonprofit is looking to take on the role of housing developer — as it moves forward with plans to expand its current rent-free-shelter options for teachers, by building four new houses in Fair Haven Heights.

That nonprofit is the Friends Center for Children, a quickly growing East Grand Avenue-headquartered program that provides care for children between the ages of three months and five years old at sliding-scale costs based on their families’ incomes.

According to a zoning-relief application currently before the Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA), the Friends Center is in the early stages of a plan to turn two donated lots of land on Eldridge and Howard Streets into four single-family homes with three bedrooms each. Those four to-be-built new houses would then be made available to Friends Center teachers rent-free (the occupants would be responsible for covering the costs of utilities). 

The proposal marks the next phase in an initiative to build housing for a growing teacher base employed by the nonprofit, building off of the Friends Center’s current offering of studio and family housing on Howard and Front Streets for four of its teachers.

In a recent phone interview with the Independent and at a recent BZA meeting about the new-construction project, Friends Center Executive Director Allyx Schiavone described her nonprofit’s housing-for-teachers effort as a means of ​“disrupting systems of structural oppression to create space for unhoused women.”

Virtually all of the center’s workers, like the rest of the state and country, are women, and a vast majority of the teachers and staff are Black and brown women.

“We do a really bad job of providing livable wages,” to childcare workers, Schiavone said generally of the childcare industry and systemic pressures surrounding it. The Friends Center ​“is committed to breaking that cycle and ensuring our educators are earning a wage they deserve and they can live on.” It’s also committed to making sure those workers have safe, stable, affordable places to live.

Schiavone pitched the early stages of the new four-home development to the BZA on Jan. 17 as part of a request for zoning relief related to front yard parking and the creation of flag lots in the area. The specific zoning relief Schiavone’s nonprofit is asking for includes ​“special exceptions to permit the development of a corridor/flag lot and to allow off-street parking within the required front yard” in a residential zone at 40 Eldridge St., according to the BZA agenda.

The organization already has the right to build on 73 Howard St., which is next door to existing Friends Center housing at 53 Howard. 

The requested zoning relief, if approved, would allow the Friends Center to build a driveway through 73 Howard, just off the property line of the neighboring 109 Howard St., which belongs to another owner. 

That driveway would then provide access to a future home at 73 Howard as well as to two additional future homes that would be built behind 73 and 53 Howard. 

The requested relief would also allow the nonprofit to turn 40 Eldridge, which is currently a forested piece of property behind those two street-facing parcels, into three smaller pieces of property which would each become home to a three-bedroom house. 

The Friends Center’s zoning application says that the ​“proposed curb cut for the corridor would be placed 25’ west of the property line shared with 109 Howard Street, and the corridor would bend away from the 109 Howard Street dwelling, as it is located extremely close to the property line.” Two of the three newly proposed homes on Eldridge would be accessed by that new corridor at 73 Howard St. while a fourth and final home would be served by an existing driveway leading up to the current 53 Howard St. house.

The map at the top of this article shows the position of each of those planned new 900-square-foot homes, which would all be oriented towards one another with a common green space in between. 

The anticipated corridor, really a paved driveway, runs to the far right of that map, featuring two parking spaces for each of the three far eastern properties while an existing driveway at 53 Howard would be expanded to allow for four parking spots to accommodate both the existing home and a new house to its rear.

Only one other entryway currently exists to the property at 40 Eldridge St., a steep driveway that currently leads to another home with the lot of woods to the immediate right. The difficult topography of that driveway and land, the zoning application states, makes it unusable for the upcoming development.

Two off-street parking spaces are required per zoning ordinance for each home. The Friends Center is requesting that an exception be made to allow for those parking spots to be located in the front yards of some of the homes.

In all, the area the Friends Center would be developing totals 59,258 square feet and provides an average of 19,753 square feet for each new home. Zoning requirements mandate a minimum of 4,000 square feet per home.

The circular orientation of each home, revolving around a shared ​“green space,” is intended to create a space for teachers to congregate and allow their children to play with one another, Schiavone said. ​“The green space may not actually be green,” Schiavone clarified. ​“It may be forested,” she said, urging the center’s focus on upholding the natural topography and landscaping of the hilly, tree-laden area. Those details will be fleshed out during site plan review, she said, but the intention is to ​“create an inward facing space” where teachers can congregate and their children can play. ​“We are a nature based, preservation based organization,” she said.

The zoning relief application further states, ​“All the proposed buildings would be architecturally compatible with the existing neighborhood architecture and the topography would allow the proposed buildings to situate themselves discretely, buffered from (and respectful of) the current neighborhood fabric. Further, the design intends to preserve the magnificent oak trees on the site as heritage trees.”

New Housing For Teachers W/ Families

Schiavone offered further insight into the importance of affordable teacher housing during her presentation to the BZA and during a recent phone interview with the Independent.

The Friends Center operates on a sliding scale system, such that if a family has no income, they do not have to pay for care; 88 percent of the families who send their children to the Friends Center are receiving financial aid. Because the nonprofit is committed to not raising tuition for families and often runs at a deficit as family’s financial status changes month to month, ​“it is often childcare providers who bear the brunt of that burden.”

“The system does not work,” she stated. ​“The question is how do we increase salaries without increasing our operational gap?” Schiavone continued. ​“We had the idea of creating free housing, which is how the teacher housing initiative came to be.” A survey distributed years back to the Friends Center’s teachers saw that the top expense for every individual was monthly rent — and at the time, according to Schiavone, only one teacher employed by the organization was a homeowner. Another teacher on staff was experiencing homelessness, Schiavone said. 

The Friends Center currently has 30 teachers on payroll and has capacity to serve 116 children. They have recently purchased new properties that will be used to expand their campus across New Haven, with the goal of building capacity for up to 300 students. ​“When we’re done expanding we should have around 80 teachers,” Schiavone said, and the aim is to provide at least 25 percent of those teachers with rent-free housing on top of their salaries.

The Friends Center is working on purchasing more land alongside donors who help pay for such acquisitions to develop more teacher housing. Those who live in housing provided by the center are also paired with financial literacy mentors, who ​“help the teachers think about their long term financial goals with the ultimate goal of creating opportunity for homeownership,” Schiavone said. For example, that could mean figuring out a plan to put aside enough money when possible to save for a downpayment on a house.

In the meantime, she said, ​“our goal is to create housing stock that represents the life stages of education workers; some are single, some are coupled, some are single moms, some are coupled families,” she said. This newest project would focus on creating housing for teachers with families, whereas the nonprofit has so far primarily invested in studio apartments.

What About Property Values, Radon & Cigarettes?

An initial public hearing on the Friends Center’s requested zoning relief for the project that was held by the BZA in mid-January yielded praise from as well as pushback from neighbors of the proposed development. 

Ben Trachten, an attorney who often represents applications in front of the BZA, spoke up as a member of the public to support the project. ​“Allowing flag and quarter lots is anticipated in these zones with larger tracts of land,” he stated. ​“This promotes very low density development in a neighborhood where that is the norm,” he added, complimenting not only the overarching goal of the project but its commitment to ​“architectural compatibility” and landscaping that would maintain the life of extant oak trees in the area.

Edmund Duenkel was the most outspoken opposer. ​“I just want to be clear that our opposition tonight,” he said on behalf of a group of four neighbors, ​“has absolutely nothing to do with the proponents for this project. It’s all about the use of the land.”

“Our opposition has everything to do with protecting our property values, protecting our quality of life and protecting the character of this neighborhood.”

He argued that there was not enough space across the two plots donated to the Friends Center to build four new homes. ​“You’re proposing to build houses behind houses. The end result would leave our neighborhood severely clustered.” He also wondered aloud about details of the project that would be more likely to come up during an official site plan review of the project, such as trash pick up and emergency access to the properties.

Then he claimed that the new residents would bring cigarette smoke to the area that would breathe cancer directly into what he imagined as an overly crowded community. ​“The flagpole lots would be the equivalent of giving us cartons of cigarettes and barrels of radon,” he asserted. ​“Smoking causes cancer. Radon in our basements also causes cancer.”

As a final plea, he said, the new homes ​“will infringe on the privacy and quality of life enjoyed from the yards of the residents.

“The charm and value of the property is the size of our large lots and the privacy they afford us,” another neighbor, Luis E. Duran, agreed. ​“We’re gonna be losing our privacy,” he said, adding that he had just finished installing a concrete deck with new retaining walls behind his home that he worried would be disrupted by new neighbors. ​“We moved here in 2019, a young couple of 30 years old. We plan to live here until the end of our lives.”

Fair Haven Heights Alder Rosa Ferraro-Santana pitched in to seemingly support Duenkel and Duran.

“The Friends Center did speak to me about this project. I think it’s a good project. I’m not sure I like the idea of flag lots being behind other portions of the lot.”

“Flag lots have always been a problem in the community,” she said. ​“I’m not in favor or opposed,” to the overall plan, she said. ​“I think the project has merits in that it’s a wonderful opportunity for teachers to live rent free, however I do not like the idea of the flag lots the way they’re being proposed.” 

Ferraro-Santana did not offer any further clarity on her opinion.

The matter was then referred to the City Plan Commission for review before sending the request back to the BZA for a final vote.

During a Jan. 25 City Plan Commission meeting, Commissioner and Westville Alder Adam Marchand said that he heard from Ferraro-Santana that certain neighbors felt like there had been insufficient opportunity to voice skepticism of the project.

“It’s my practice to give a lot of weight to what my colleagues on the Board of Alders say because they have an important representational role,” he told his fellow commissioners. He made a motion passed unanimously to recommend the BZA either reopen another public hearing on the matter or urge the applicant themselves to hold another community meeting.

The BZA has yet to take a final vote on the zoning relief application, which will determine whether the housing project has the zoning relief needed to bring a site plan before the City Plan Commission for further review.

Schiavone later told the Independent that the Friends Center has already hosted two community meetings, one with the Quinnipiac Community Management Team and another at the request of Alder Ferraro-Santana to make space for individuals who could not attend the first meeting to speak with the developers.

“We sent out over 70 letters to everyone who lives nearby,” she said, to solicit feedback, provide information about those two community meetings, and provide contact information for the center.

Ultimately, Schiavone said, the Friends Center hopes to work in tandem with the community she said, and ​“welcomes” all opinions and voices.