Kenny has a strategy for facing the coldest nights: remembering to change sides in the box he sleeps in.
The worst nights are when he is sleeping in the box down at Long Wharf, Kenny said. “I have lots of blankets,” he said, “but still you keep shivering, and you got to make sure you keep turning from side to side so you don’t freeze.”
From the streets to government suites, New Haveners are strategizing about how to cope with a deep freeze. Temperatures aren’t expected to reach beyond 15 degrees Friday — in the daytime.
City-supported homeless shelters, like the one where Kenny was interviewed Thursday, are staying open during the daytime during this spell to offer people a refuge from frigid streets.
The city’s Liveable City Initiative (LCI) has a campaign to “let people know their rights about heating and what landlords’ responsibilities are” to keep apartments heated, said mayoral spokeswoman Jessica Mayorga. “We are also contacting landlords right away if we receive complaints by phone of via 311.”
The city has a no-freeze policy. Police have been instructed to take people sleeping on the streets inside to shelters.
Homeless people were asked Thursday what they do if they prefer not to go to a shelter, or if they need to find a warm place during a particularly cold day.
Kenny spoke from the warmth of the Emergency Shelter Management Services building at Grand and Hamilton as the temperatures plummeted into the arctic, and worse was expected.
He described a patchwork of strategies that stretch from the train station to Dunkin’ Donuts. Going in to get coffee at various places works, “but,” said Kenny, “you got to have money for that.”
He also frequents the emergency room, usually at Yale-New Haven Hospital. “If you get there late enough, say, like 2 a.m., you can often stay until morning.”
Other places he has perched include the public libraries until they close. Then there’s Union Station, clearly one of the few public venues open all night.
“It’s all about timing,” he said, as other men in the shelter dozed or watched the big screen TV’s war movie with lackluster attention. “Timing is key because, at least with me, I don’t like crowds and I don’t like people staring at me.”
Kenny has beaten a drug habit, and is still struggling with alcohol, he said. Although he has a sister and a nephew living in town, and he could on a cold, shelterless night stay with them, he almost never does. “I have a sense of pride left,” he said, “and so I don’t stay with them. That old saying about what happens to fish after three days, well, it’s true.”
He said he has been on the streets of New Haven, which he calls home, since October, when he lost a job as a security guard in Massachusetts. “I juggled the bills as long as I could, the phone, the cable, the heat, but then that was it.”
Another man at the shelter, Wilson Ortiz, said that if he knocks on the shelter door at 11 p.m. and it’s full, he also does not bother his aged parents, who live in Fair Haven nearby. “I would never wake them up at that hour,” he said.
Instead, he often goes to one of New Haven’s all-night diners, one on Middletown Avenue, one on Lombard, and one on Water Street.
The Grand Aveue shelter has plenty of blankets, shoes, and winter coats, which its executive director, Wesley Thorpe (pictured), distributes as necessary. What Thorpe needs is money. The shelter, which sleeps 75, was cut $58,000 in the city’s budget, said Thorpe. He can accept up to 75 men, with the 76th being turned away.
“If that happens,” he said, “I’ll call over to the Columbus Avenue shelter, and they sometimes can send a van to get people to the overflow shelter.” Thorpe said that he too has a van, but no driver.
By around 11 on Thursday morning, some of the clients at the shelter told Thorpe the hot water was flagging. He checked to find that the oil was low in the tank. “I just called to get more oil.”
Those willing to help with financial contributions should contact him at 777‑2522 or this email address.
Kenny might have lost his home and lots more, but not a mordant sense of humor. The W on his cap, he said, stands for Winner. He’s enrolled in Alcoholics Anonymous, he’s looking for employment, and he intends to enroll to get his GED and then some college in the spring, when it’s warm again. If.