Hamden Hispanic Community On The Rise

Some of the faces behind the fastest-changing census numbers in New Haven could be found Monday night in the basement of a Circular Avenue church.

A day after hurricane predictions disrupted the church’s Spanish Sunday mass, Ecuadorian immigrants filled the basement of Christ the Bread of Life Parish for the fourth night of Spanish-language prayer leading up to the festival of La Virgen del Cisne, or ​“The Virgin of the Swan.”

The scene wouldn’t even have existed when the U.S. Census came to town in 2010. For starters, prayers at the church were in English.

The U.S. Census returned to Hamden in 2020. The findings were released last week. They showed that Hamden’s Hispanic population, such as the congregants at Christ the Bread of Life, is the town’s fastest-growing group.

The Hamden population grew by 47 percent in the last decade. They now constitute 13 percent of the town’s population (and none, so far, of its elected officials).

The trend is regional. Next door in nearby New Haven, census data revealed that Hispanics have bypassed the local Black population as New Haven’s largest racial category. Latinos now make up more than a third of New Haven’s population.

Unlike New Haven, Hamden remains majority-white. But the past ten years have seen steady increases in the town’s levels of diversity, following the city’s neighborly lead.

In 2010, Hamden was 64 percent white, 20 percent Black, 9 percent Latino, 5 percent Asian, and 2 percent individuals who identified as ​“other,” according to census figures.

Hamden is now 53 percent white. Hamden’s Black and Latino communities both increased by 4 percent, to 24 and 13 percent of the town’s total population, respectively.

Prayer Language Evolves

“The most effective prayer is individual, it’s what you do in your heart— but it’s a privilege to come and pray as a group,” one of the evening’s many speakers stated toward the conclusion of Monday evening’s communal prayers.

Luis Pintado was one of the Hispanic Hamden residents in the ​“audience” who prayed, sang, drank morocho (Ecuadorean spiced corn pudding) and consumed bread filled with queso at Monday night’s basement service. Pintado said that most of the night’s attendees usually attend church once a week, along with Hamden residents hailing from Colombia, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and even Italy and Portugal, for Sunday services in Spanish.

Pintado, who works as a truck driver, left Ecuador 25 years ago to move to New York. He and his wife came to Hamden over 15 years ago to provide his two daughters, who go to Hamden High and Hamden Middle Schools, with more open space to safely play. Though they have lived right next door to the church for more than a decade, he recalled that he started praying there only seven years ago.

That’s when Christ the Bread of Life Parish began offering services in his native language at the requests of an expanding Spanish-speaking community.

Before that, Pintado said, he and his family would drive to a church each week in New Haven’s Fair Haven neighborhood. Since then, the church has started to provide space and resources for additional Spanish services, like this week’s Novena, as community members have asked for more structured opportunities to observe their families’ and countries’ religious traditions.

Pintado said that while many of his Ecuadorian friends and family live in East, North, and West Haven, he has discovered a new community here in Hamden through the church.

Mini-Trends Driving The Numbers

Kelly Davila, a senior research associate at Data Haven, said that Hamden is experiencing ​“population churn” over ​“population growth,” a trend that she pointed out exists across the state in part due to the affordable housing crisis.

Hamden’s population of 61,169 only grew by around 209 people over the past decade, which is ​“basically nothing,” in Davila’s words.

With the net number of nonwhite residents increasing, the population is remaining static due to a reduction in white individuals.

Davila said that phenomenon could largely be explained by empty-nesters choosing to stay in spacious homes that they now own after their children have grown up and moved out. For example, Davila said, in the more rural and northern areas of Hamden, such as West Woods and Mt. Carmel, ​“There are single people living in a six bedroom house because they own it and aren’t willing to downsize.”

Notably, construction has increased at least marginally, in every Hamden neighborhood. But the number of housing units has skyrocketed in areas of southern Hamden on the New Haven border, like Whitneyville, which experienced a 17.4 percent increase in housing units.

In addition, changes in how individuals who previously identified as white or Black alone describe themselves alongside a growing number of ethnically and racially mixed children from inter-racial and/or inter-ethnic partnerships have contributed to a more diverse populace. On that latter point, while 57 percent of Hamden adults are white, only 33 percent of Hamden children identify as white alone; 30 percent of children are now Black and 21 percent Latino.

Superintendent of Hamden Schools Jody Goeler noted that the numbers of Asian American, Black, and white students in Hamden schools since 2011 have fluctuated and ultimately decreased, with total enrollment figures dropping.

The number of Hispanic students has steadily climbed by a total of 300 during that same time period.