Homeless Youth Housing Plan Revived

A years-delayed plan to provide shelter on Grand Avenue for young New Haveners in crisis is moving ahead — with fewer beds, and a new nonprofit director at the helm. 

That’s the latest with the Y2Y temporary shelter and service center for homeless young adults that has long been planned for 924 Grand Ave.

That site previously served as the headquarters for Youth Continuum, a decades-old local nonprofit offering services to young people experiencing homelessness around the city.

Youth Continuum still plans on building that shelter — albeit on a smaller scale. While a December 2020 symbolic groundbreaking celebrated a shelter and service center with 20 beds for homeless young people aged 18 to 24 years old, Youth Continuum’s new design for the shelter includes just 12 beds. 

Youth Continuum has also recently hired a new executive director to replace the organization’s recently retired former head, Paul Kosowsky, and is pressing forward with a development it hopes will come to fruition next fall, just on a smaller scale and a few years later than originally imagined.

Youth Continuum’s new director is Mike Moynihan, who replaced Kosowsky as CEO as of the latter’s retirement on Friday. 

Moynihan, who grew up in New Haven, served as president of the United Way of Camden County for 15 years and later as a member of the national staff at Boys & Girls Club of America. Read more about him in a press release from Youth Continuum here.

“If there’s a young person who’s either gonna sleep on the street or an abandoned building or a warehouse, if they come to us, we’re gonna find them a place where they’re safe and supported,” Moynihan said in a recent interview with the Independent, joined by the nonprofit’s also newly hired director of development, Ann McCarthy. One of the ways he says Youth Continuum will help accomplish that as the Greater New Haven region observes a growing number of youths enduring housing instability is by making sure that more beds make it to Grand Avenue.

The initial plan proposed by Youth Continuum was to partner with another nonprofit called Y2Y, which employs a ​“youth-to-youth model” that connects student volunteers from local colleges and universities to help with youth homelessness initiatives. 

The two nonprofits planned to work together to build up a social services network, including on-site healthcare, legal aid, and youth mentorship, out of a property owned by Youth Continuum at 924 Grand Ave. That’s a one story, vacant building just across from the organization’s relocated main offices. Youth Continuum and Y2Y’s original plans for that site included constructing a second story with a total of 20 crisis beds. 

Wooster Square neighbors initially turned out in force to oppose the project during a May 2018 public meeting. They argued at the time that Y2Y represented just another social service provider moving to an overburdened stretch of Grand Avenue. Y2Y co-founder Sam Greenberg then embarked on a year-plus-long community outreach campaign, winning the support of 150 neighbors, business owners, and other Wooster Square stakeholders before securing site plan approval from the City Plan Commission in June 2019. And in December 2020, Youth Continuum and Y2Y leaders joined supportive politicians and philanthropists for a ceremonial groundbreaking to publicize their intent to open the doors to said center the following fall.

Supply Chain, Design, Covid Delays

According to Monynihan, a combination of factors — including supply chain issues, escalating costs of materials and a redesign review from the state Department of Housing — twisted the original pathway plotted towards completion of the project.

“Our timing was spectacular when we started this project,” Moynihan joked. The preliminary designs for the project pitched to the community in 2018 sought to maximize the number of beds available by creating a bunk system arranged in open ​“pods,” as Moynihan put it. Moynihan said the state Department of Housing later reviewed those floor plans and, in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, said that it would too easily facilitate disease spread. The Department of Housing did not respond to a request from the Independent seeking confirmation of that critique and clarity on any policies surrounding congregate shelter. 

Moynihan said that other issues with design emerged as the early architect team searched for materials amid supply chain issues and inflation. For example, the initial site plan required a significant number of steel beams, Moynihan said, the cost of which doubled in 2021 compared to 2019.

So, it was back to the drawing board. 

Now, Moynihan said, Youth Continuum is working with the Glendower Group — which is a nonprofit housing development affiliate of New Haven’s public housing agency — as a co-developer and has contracted a new architect and engineering firm, Christopher Williams Architects on Willow Street, that ​“just started last week negotiating all of those obstacles that cropped up a couple of years ago.”

He said that all the public sector funds that had been committed to the project, including $2.5 million from the state Department of Housing, are still intact. More than $1.5 million originally raised from private philanthropists remain committed as well.

The new idea is to keep the first floor as a social services hub while building a second floor that will feature four bathrooms and 12 beds divided into either private or double bedrooms as well as a dining and communal gathering area.

“Going from 20 to 12 was not our ideal scenario. However, what’s most important to us is the safety of youth served,” Moynihan said. 

What sorts of youth might stay at the center? ​“Perhaps they just came out to their parents as LGBT and gotten thrown out of their house, or they’ve been physically abused by a relative or sibling or caregiver and they can’t stay there any longer,” Moynihan gave as examples. Ann McCarthy noted that another sensitive population include teens exiting out of custody through the state Department of Children and Families who find themselves with nowhere to go.

Y2Y New Haven will also remain involved in the project; that model is already integrated into a shelter owned by Youth Continuum on Valley Street, which boasts 8 student volunteers. That pilot has been operating for around three years. Tim Maguire, Youth Continuum’s chief operating officer, explained that Y2Y has also hired a new director — Matt Barsalou — who works to coordinate student teams and lead programming development and implementation. Barsalou could not be reached for comment for this article. Y2Y co-founder Sam Greenberg told the Independent he no longer works for the organization.

The students hired by Y2Y, who hail from Yale, Southern Connecticut State University, University of New Haven, Albertus Magnus, and Gateway, go through abbreviated staff trainings and often assist with fundraising and curriculum development, according to Maguire.

The crisis beds will be open to people between 18 and 24 years old. Youth Continuum staff, not just students, will be on site 24 hours a day overseeing the center and helping find those individuals stable and independent housing within around twenty days of their stay. In the meantime, those individuals as well as the broader community of over 500 youth from the Greater New Haven area served by Youth Continuum can find laundry services, job training, a computer lab, and private counseling support, among other services.

“I am totally psyched to get this thing going again,” Moynihan said. ​“I can’t wait for construction to start.”

Moynihan said that construction is expected to start in the mid summer and doors to the center could be open by August 2024. He said other than sharing final drawings of the redesign with the city and following through on inspections around sewer and water control, Youth Continuum will not have to reapply for site plan approval or building permits in spite of the reconceptualization.

“As the new CEO, our vision is to prevent and bring an end to the unhoused youth that are in Greater New Haven,” Moynihan said. ​“That’s a tall order, I know. That’s the miracle we’re trying to make happen.”