Petitioning Brennan Hears Pride Center Pitch

A ballot petition in hand, Liam Brennan waited for the buzzer outside 84 Orange St., walked through the lobby of an architecture firm, and descended the elevator to the basement home of the New Haven Pride Center.

He emerged three hours later one signature closer to his goal of getting onto September’s Democratic mayoral primary ballot — and a clearer picture of the community center’s efforts to move above ground at a time marked by rampant transphobic legislation across the country.

Brennan, a mayoral candidate focused on progressive housing reforms and currently working as Hartford’s inspector general, arrived at the Pride Center on Thursday morning for a tour and conversation about how City Hall can support the Pride Center and queer New Haveners more broadly.

Two days earlier Mayor Justin Elicker received the Democratic Party’s endorsement for the Sep. 12 primary election. That left Elicker’s Democratic opponents — Brennan as well as retired police Sgt. Shafiq Abdussabur and former McKinsey consultant Tom Goldenberg — to embark on a petitioning spree in order to make it onto the primary ballot. The candidates will need to gather nearly 1,700 signatures from registered New Haven Democrats by Aug. 9.

On Thursday morning, Brennan took a break from the usual flurry of signature soliciting to hear from the Pride Center about efforts to grow the nonprofit after a difficult year of financial troubles and national political attacks on LGBTQIA+ rights.

He learned that the center hopes to move out of the hidden-away 84 Orange St. basement and into a space where the organization could fly Pride flags and announce its presence to New Haveners — preferably one with windows. The organization is eyeing the storefront at 50 Orange St. down the block — formerly home to Artspace — and is in conversations with the landlord, Beacon Communities, while searching for more funding for rent.

Pride Center Seeks New Home

To some, the center’s basement location feels like another version of the closet. ​“There’s something that feels wrong in 2023, having people come into a building where we can’t put up a flag,” said New Haven Pride Center Executive Director Juancarlos Soto. And the center’s community is growing as families are beginning to move to Connecticut amid rising hostility and legislation against transgender rights concentrating in other states.

“It seems like visibility would make for a dignity-feeling space,” Brennan said. He compared the Pride Center’s location to the stately Grand Avenue home of Junta for Progressive Action, where Soto used to work: ​“a classic old house — a beautiful way to express openness to community.”

After the meeting, Brennan elaborated more directly: ​“It’s very important to have a Pride Center that’s in a visible spot.” He added that if elected he would help bring the Center’s work into the spotlight and look into funding options.

Soto said he recently reached out to City Hall and the Board of Alders for support — whether financial or logistical — in facilitating the move to a new location and said that he has not received a response. 

Soto said he wished City Hall would provide more support to the Pride Center — lamenting, for instance, that the center’s summer programming, including the renowned Black and Brown Queer Camp, was not included in the city’s summer youth programming guide. ​“I would want to think that we’re more than what you can bring out in June,” he said.

Mayor Justin Elicker said he was ​“surprised” by this sentiment, saying, ​“I see Juancarlos all the time and always ask him if there’s anything that they need and he’s never requested anything from me or from the city.” Regarding Soto’s email about a new location, he said his staff received an email last week about the matter and that ​“we’re very happy to work with the Pride Center to explore options here.” And the youth summer programming guide was a result of local organizations reaching out with information about their programs to the city, Elicker said, adding that the city could include the Pride Center’s camps in an updated online version. 

“We always are excited to do more with the Pride Center and the city has already a strong partnership with the Pride Center,” Elicker said, citing recent arts collaborations such as the Unapologetically Radical conference.

Thinking about the former Artspace home, Soto said he imagines a bright Pride flag alongside art — maybe portraits of LGBTQIA+ heroes — hanging in the windows. The storefront bathroom has a shower, which would be an enormous help for the unhoused community members who come to the Pride Center, he said. He’s working to connect with healthcare providers, which he hopes would come in each week to provide STI testing and other healthcare services. 

A more prominent location would make it easier for people to learn about the Pride Center and to recognize it as a quarter-century-old organization that has long fostered queer culture and community in New Haven. And more visibility would not only help queer people feel supported, Soto argued — it would help show heterosexual New Haveners that queer people can thrive while honoring their identities.

“That’s the small vision,” joked Bennie Saldana, the Center’s support services coordinator. ​“The bigger vision has a water slide — with rainbow water.”

"It Feels Like Crap To Connect Folks to Broken Systems"

Soto said that disappointment with a lapse in support from the city festered last year, when the organization temporarily lost its nonprofit status in late 2022 due to a multi-year lapse in tax filings. After its status was revoked, the Pride Center temporarily furloughed most of its staff and promoted Soto as a new executive director. For a little over two months, the organization was unable to accept tax-deductible donations until its status was reinstated in February.

“When we had to lay off employees for a month, there was not even a call from the mayor’s office,” Soto said. ​“The community was scared.”

Gradually, the Pride Center recovered — and has taken on a new sense of purpose. Soto has aimed to refocus the center on creating community gathering spaces: helping kids thrive in their identities, helping older adults find connection in a loneliness epidemic, and providing direct aid to queer people facing poverty, mental health, and medical crises.

Soto and Saldana offered Brennan a tour of the center’s growing array of free resources including a queer books library, food pantry, clothing closet, and new ​“hygiene wall” of toiletries and period products, and gathering spaces.

Soto and Saldana explained that the Pride Center hopes to provide a safe and affirming space for queer community members who may not always feel supported in typical stores and food pantries — not only because of everyday harassment they might face, but because those resources are often designed with rigid gender expectations in place.

“Men who menstruate may feel really uncomfortable going to the store” to purchase menstrual products, which are often marketed as ​“feminine hygiene” and packaged in pink, said Saldana. And though fashion and makeup can be powerful tools for expressing and experimenting with gender identity, clothing shops also usually separate products into binary gender categories and makeup stores are not always welcoming to trans customers. 

Brennan asked the Pride Center staffers about the needs they often see from clients.

Saldana, who is in charge of case management services at the center, named a lack of housing — and even emergency shelter — as a key need that’s not being met by the city or state.

The Pride Center doesn’t have rent aid or other resources to distribute directly to clients; rather, Saldana typically sits down with clients to call 211, the state’s coordinated access network for social service nonprofits in the region. He said he’s sometimes waited on the phone line for hours with clients, only to hear back that there are no shelter beds or housing options.

“It feels like crap to connect folks to broken systems,” Saldana said. ​“As a formerly homeless youth, I remember feeling like doors were slamming in my face” while reaching out for help. ​“It feels like we’re doing the same thing.”

Soto recalled one client for whom the Pride Center provided a hotel room for two days until a housing option opened up. Soto paid for the client’s Uber ride to the hotel himself. ​“Half of the time we’re putting our own money,” he said.

When shelter beds are open, Saldana said, they are not always safe places for Pride Center clients. Trans women, for instance, may be sent to a men’s shelter, which could expose them to harassment and violence. 

(Elicker said that trans inclusion at homeless shelters ​“depends on the shelter and the nonprofit organizing the shelter.” He said that the city is working to open non-congregate shelters — which would provide individual rooms to individual households and which are likely to be more comfortable and affirming to trans clients compared to gender-segregated shelters.)

Another frequent concern of Pride Center community members is bullying at schools, the staff members said — not only from fellow students but sometimes from teachers and school staff. 

Brennan noted that New Haven isn’t always as accepting a community of the LGBTQIA+ community as it seems. He recalled a recent Town Hall at Edgewood School, where his kids attend, centered on Pride. The principal there had faced pushback after announcing the Town Hall, he said, and the event was sparsely attended. After the meeting, he said that ​“making sure our schools are welcoming places” to queer kids would be a priority of his if elected.

Soto is a registered Democrat in New Haven, and agreed to sign Brennan’s petition (Saldana lives in Bridgeport.) Before then, Brennan asked a more personal question: ​“How are you all doing emotionally?”

Soto and Saldana replied that the support from community members and from the close-knit staff at the Center gives them hope.

“I go home anxious sometimes. There’s tears in my cornflakes,” Saldana said with a laugh. He called for more funding for the center, which is operating primarily on support from community donations. ​“The vision for us to be thriving in a place above ground.”