Probing the backlash to New Haven’s impressive Hurricane Katrina efforts.
They lost their homes. They had no food. They had no jobs.
And New Haven rushed to their rescue.
That story has inspired the city this week as New Haven’s government, civic leaders and citizens have rallied to prepare to welcome up to 100 Gulf Coast families left homeless by Hurricane Katrina. (Click here to help out. See related story: Katrina’s New Haven Waves.)
But in some corners, the news was tempered by disappointment — “even outrage — “that New Haven failed to unite that way behind the increasing numbers of people here in town left homeless, hungry, and unemployed the past few years.News of the New Haven Hurricane Katrina effort ignited tempers at a meeting of Mothers for Justice, a welfare mothers’ activist group in town. The daughter of one mom in the room has waited seven years for a public-housing apartment; officials have promised Katrina refugees government-assisted homes. The waiting list for some public-housing apartments has grown so severe that a housing authority employee was able to shake down desperate families for bribes in return for moving them up. (The housing authority says apartments being made available for arriving families won’t come from programs which have waiting lists).
Unemployment’s up in town, employment down. Rents are out of control. Homelessness has been on the rise since 2001, when benefit cut-offs from the mid-‘90s welfare reform took effect and gentrification began sweeping parts of the city. Christian Community Action has to turn away 30 to 40 homeless families a month from its filled shelter, according to the group’s executive director, Bonita Grubbs.
“The New Haven community has been facing a disaster with growing unemployment and homeless populations of their own,” argues Madelyn Goodwin, acting president of Mothers for Justice. “What concerns does the mayor have for this community?”
“This is not right,” says Mothers for Justice Outreach Coordinator Carolyn McClendon. “You’ve got homeless people here. You’ve got people starving. Let’s take care of our own” as well as people from other communities.
Alderman Edward Mattison calls the crisis facing the poor and working poor in town a “disaster,” albeit one less noticed than a natural cataclysm like Hurricane Katrina.
“We have a sort of a slow-growing disaster. It’s like drip-drip-drip. Working families have largely been abandoned by the government. The whole idea is mothers would get off work and the state would provide them with day care. The waiting list is months. Our whole society has broken its promises to these folks and left them desperate.”
Blame the State?
Watching the generous efforts of schoolchildren, small business owners, and civil servants this week to prepare for the (hoped-for) arrival of Gulf Coast refugees, one is hard pressed to criticize the city for organizing this effort. Rather, the question is why this same kind of energy, from everyone, can’t be summoned for the people who suffer in the city’s shadows every day, or for kids left with little to do. Why has the Dixwell Q House remained closed? Where has been the rally to return LEAP to its former size? Where were the summer jobs for teens this year? Why is the new community center at Timothy Dwight school vacant most of the time instead of hosting rec programs?
“Emergency situations call for emergency measures,” says Kica Matos, executive director at Fair Haven-based Junta for Progressive Action. She calls the Katrina effort “a wonderful thing. I just really wish we took care of our poor around the year the way we have responded to the Hurricane Katrina crisis.”
Mayor John DeStefano acknowledged the concerns at a press conference this week about the Katrina effort. He called it “a good question to think about” — ”after New Haven throws down to help these families in the current emergency. He portrayed the question as a Connecticut issue: Why can’t the country’s wealthiest state do more for everyone who lives there? (The mayor does not acknowledge criticism that too little has been done for youth in town. Click here to read, or click here to listen, to his thoughts on the subject.)
One New Haven Independent reader, who describes himself as a DeStefano critic, came to the mayor’s defense. “It is —a humane gesture, and damn fine leadership by John DeStefano,” “True Blue CT” wrote in an online discussion on this site. “Even if we are using our own scarce resources in this endeavor, it is still an important one — If it was New Haven that got wiped out, wouldn’t you want New York and Boston to help out?”
Ed Mattison hopes that the impressive community rallying behind the Katrina victims will lead to similar action on behalf of New Haven’s left-behind citizens.
“If we can pull this off, and we have all the agencies working together and all the businesses, then we can figure out something that makes sense for our folks. We’ve never done something community-wide like this before,” he said. Maybe this will be the first of many.