Amistad House leader Jacob Miller with electrician John Rienzo from L & M Electric Wednesday afternoon.
An electrician arrived at Amistad House Wednesday afternoon to decide where to start digging trenches — and get the people living in a backyard homeless encampment out of the trenches by turning on heating and lighting.
He arrived after state and local officials agreed on a new pathway to electrify six controversial “tiny homes” erected for those experiencing homelessness behind the nonprofit Amistad House at 203 Rosette St. in the Hill neighborhood.
Technically those prefabricated, one-room shelters remain non-compliant with local zoning laws. But city Building Official Bob Dillon has now issued Mark Colville and Luz Catarineau, the owners of Amistad House, a permit to install electric lines that will eventually deliver heating and cooling capacity to the structures.
Here’s the catch: Amistad House can’t actually turn on the electricity until they secure a building permit from the city and state.
In order to do that, the nonprofit must submit a site plan for the property, an application for relief from the Board of Zoning Appeals and a request for the homes to be recognized as “temporary structures” under the International Residential Building Code. The request would include a provision permitting special or atypical structures, such as special occasion tents, to stay standing for no more than 180 days.
Once the city and state both sign off on that building permit, an electrical permit can be issued so United Illuminating can turn on the power.
Dillon tentatively granted that electrical permit following a meeting with state officials and representatives of Amistad to discuss options for legalizing the irregular structures. The State Office of the Building Inspector confirmed that they attended that meeting and remain in communication with local officials to find a “workable solution” to allow the “temporary structures.”
A crew of volunteers worked last fall to purchase those shelters from a company called Pallet to offer emergency shelter to New Haveners experiencing homelessness — and to offer an inexpensive model of alternative housing to a city facing a shortage of affordable apartments. Read more about that project here.
The city first issued cease-and-desist notices against the structures for skirting local and state regulations. Read more about that here. Then they teamed up with Amistad to draft an application that sought to bring the structures into compliance with the state building code by describing them as “single-family dwellings.”
The state rejected that application — and instead told the city to follow the International Residential Code to temporarily permit the “tiny homes.”
Dillon told the Independent that Amistad House started filing their application for the building permit as of Wednesday.
Dillon said he has asked the state to draft a management plan which Amistad House will have to agree to prior to closing the building permit. That will include rules overseeing maintenance, such as ensuring that Amistad House shovels snow off the structures’ roofs, as well as fire safety, like purchasing communicating smoke detectors so that if one alarm goes off in a “tiny home,” all six alarms will sound.
That plan, Dillon claimed, will also have a provision stating that the 180-day temporary status is a one-time form of relief. In order to receive a permanent green light for the structures, changes must be made to the State Building Code, he claimed.
Luckily, he noted, the state edits that code every three years — a new code should be adopted by 2025, meaning that members of the public can push for language permitting emergency shelters during legislative sessions this spring.
He did not say how long it would take to review that application. Jacob Miller, a real estate broker who has contributed his own adjacent Rosette Street backyard to the effort, told the Independent that the actual electrical work should be completed by early next week.
Before an electrician installs the lines behind the six homes, a group of volunteers will dig 18 inches deep and two feet wide trenches around the property. Miller said that drafting zoning and building applications, meanwhile, is the trickier part. A zoning application costs $875 to file, a building permit is $2,800, and Amistad House will have to work with a lawyer to navigate the complicated codes. “It’s all prohibitively expensive,” Miller said.
Just the same, Miller said, “Whatever we need to do, whatever box we need to temporarily be put in, we’re comfortable with as long as we get the heat on. That’s the only thing any of us care about right now: getting the electricity on for the next couple of months.”
In the meantime, backyard residents are staying warm by layering blankets, hugging hot water bottles, and crowding around a fire pit lit during especially cold days and nights.
The Amistad backyard, crammed full with six "tiny homes" ...
... at least ten tents in the next door community garden...
... and a central warming hut open to the neighborhood.