Mary McFadden Photo
DuBois-Walton (fourth from left) at 2019 groundbreaking for Rockview Phase II.
The Omicron variant kept a majority of maintenance workers off the job this week at New Haven’s housing authority.
That hadn’t happened before since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Even the boss had to work remotely.
That hadn’t happened before, either.
Twelve people in all couldn’t make it out of the authority’s 23-member maintenance staff.
“I’ve never seen that in my 15 hears here. This is a workforce that shows up,” said the boss, Housing Authority of New Haven (HANH)/Elm City Communities Executive Director Karen DuBois-Walton, who oversees a 150-person agency responsible for the housing of 14,000 low-income people in 6,000 families.
“This wave has hit our staff and residents harder than the first wave in terms of numbers” of people sidelined, DuBois-Walton said during an appearance Tuesday on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program.
On the program, DuBois-Walton discussed both short-term plans to deal with the pandemic, and longer-range goals for 2022.
She spoke from home, via Zoom. Because over her one-week end-of-year break, she came down with Covid.
“It knocked me out,” she said. She was in bed with a fever, cough, and congestion.
So she returned to work remotely this week. She had made a point of working in person from her office throughout the pandemic, to set an example and show support for workers who could not work remotely.
As for maintenance, the authority will prioritize emergency calls while so many workers remain out because of the Omicron variant, DuBois-Walton said.
“We will not let up on anything considered an emergency” and will respond within 24 hours, she said. “It may take longer to clean the ground on a Monday morning” or perform other routine tasks.
“Nothing will not get done,” she added.
Experts expect the Omicron to peak in coming weeks, then fade.
In the months beyond that, DuBois-Walton described plans for building and rebuilding developments in town while broadening the affordable-housing tent into the suburbs.
The authority is ready in 2022 to proceed with the rebuilding of the first 62 apartments in the 150-unit Westville Manor development, the latest in a series of West Rock complexes to be reborn. It also has approval to proceed with the rehabilitation of McConaughy Terrace in West Hills, modernizing existing units and adding another 26 apartments. HANH’s nonprofit development arm, Glendower, has also received approval to proceed with the tearing down of the 35 townhouses at 210 – 290 Valley St. and replace them with 40 new units.
DuBois-Walton also plans to continue her advocacy of changing suburban zoning laws to allow the construction of low-income housing. While New Haven can increase its own public housing stock, it can’t realistically meet the full demand: HANH has 18,000 families on its waiting list. And a third of those families express a desire to live in suburban communities, DuBois-Walton reported. Plenty of those families also hail from outside New Haven, “families who have an address in Branford or Woodbridge or North Haven.” HANH has a deal for some families on its list for federal housing vouchers to live in a complex being built in Branford.
DuBois-Walton argued that New Haven should use some of the windfall of federal pandemic-relief dollars to promote affordable homeownership and rentals, in part by helping nonprofits, neighborhood development corporations, and the government obtain properties currently being purchased en masse by private megalandlords.
Click on the above video to watch the full interview with Karen DuBois-Walton on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven.”