“Human Rights Zone” Grows In Hill Backyard

Fried onions, crispy potatoes and buttered bagels filled the kitchen of the Hill’s Amistad House — and spread a warm, starchy scent along Rosette Street and into the tents of neighbors camped out in the Catholic Workers community’s backyard.

That was the scene on a residential block of the Hill where a crew of ​“economic refugees” is currently camping out together on a tenth of an acre of land as a means of both fighting for housing justice and seeking sanctuary from shrinking shelter and increasingly harsh and unpredictable New England weather.

The backyard is that of anarchist activists Mark Colville and Luz Catarineau, who have led mutual aid efforts out of 203 Rosette St., dubbed ​“The Amistad House,” for decades in the tradition of the hospitality-focused Catholic Worker movement. 

From the front of Rosette Street, the pale-green Amistad House boasts fresh vegetables and plants growing straight out of the soil while Colville’s rescued cat and dog softly meander up and down the street. 

A few steps behind the porch on a recent Sunday morning stood a beaming yellow hut with a sign reading ​“Human Rights Zone… Welcome.” 

Surrounding that open-faced structure, which features sitting space, a heat lamp and a common table, are tents, tarps, modest fences and extension cords making up a whole community of roughly seven individuals who have found refuge at Amistad following months or years of living without housing, experiencing evictions from public land, and growing disillusioned with homelessness shelters.

The Amistad House is known for serving breakfast and lunch to those looking for their next meal, though that programming is currently on pause while the building’s first floor undergoes long-awaited renovations. (Coffee is still offered to anyone in the community at 8 a.m. daily.)

Colville, a peace protester best known for his anti-war activism as one of the seven Kings Bay Plowshares, said he turned his focus towards legalizing encampments for economic refugees (“homelessness as a descriptive is really disrespectful,” Colville argued, opting for the latter label) in 2013 when he first read an analysis of which cities comply with the United Nations’ Declaration of Human Rights.

Article 25 of that document states: ​“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”

In protest of New Haven’s non-compliance with that fundamental right, Colville and Catarineau first started organizing public encampments on Rosette Street in 2014, packing places such as the neighborhood’s community garden with those in need of a place to sleep. Those encampments were later dismantled by the city.

A decade of activism later, the pair have now brought a tiny tent city to their own backyard.

“I’ve lived here the last 30 winters, and I’ve never seen the kind of misery that’s been going on over the last two,” Colville told the Independent during his most recent Sunday breakfast, which he cooks up weekly. 

Click here to read more about some of the specific obstacles facing New Haveners in accessing housing or emergency protection from the elements this cold season, like new limitations on shelter capacity.

Colville said he began inviting neighbors back into his yard earlier this year in response to what he described as a failure by the city to ​“put enough resources into keeping people safe and warm at night” following a global pandemic that shone a new light on ​“the temporary nature of everything we do for low-income people here.”

Without well-paying jobs or a stock of housing affordable for people making minimum wage or a reliable system to care for those who may be out of work, ​“Homelessness is a permanent condition,” Colville said. From pop-up showers to downtown porta-potties and paper plates of food, Colville said the pandemic ultimately symbolized ​“throw away goods” given to those perceived by people in power as ​“throw away people.” 

The conversion of Colville’s backyard from lawn to lodging is also symbolic — of a revitalized movement by those living on the streets to access individual and collective power and place. 

"You Are Entering A Human Rights Zone. Welcome."

Colville’s daughter, Keeley Colville, and her husband, Jacob Miller, recently purchased the house next door to Amistad — and have now expanded the encampment to include their own backyard.

“I don’t feel personal ownership over any of this stuff,” Keeley said Sunday as she sat with neighbors and family members at the hut for breakfast. ​“I just live here. And this is the greatest place for him to live, too,” she added, gazing down at her six-month-old son, Josiah, who happily accepted countless smiles and loving gestures from people filing in and out of the ​“human rights zone.”

For those without permanent housing or the promise of four walls to protect them, living on Rosette Street is complicated.

For example, the Amistad encampment has given George Ashline an opportunity to remain in his home community — but with a host of health concerns, the 55-year-old is looking for greater stability.

Ashline, who ​“grew up right here in the Hill,” lost his housing this year after undergoing open heart, knee and hernia surgeries that found him no longer able to pour asphalt or perform the type of manual labor that he’d relied on for pay in years past. 

His doctors ordered bed rest. Instead, Ashline found himself couch surfing at his friends’ places until a few months back, when he moved onto Rosette Street after meeting Colville during a lunch at Amistad House.

Now, he has a consistent place he can return to within walking distance of the Congress Avenue methadone clinic. He’s been clean for over a month after struggling with a heroin addiction for over 15 years.

Having a relatively reliable space of his own has proved more sustainable than ​“hanging out with friends who supported my habit,” he said. Rosette Street offers a supportive community of equals where ​“everybody knows everybody and we all pull together.” It’s emblematic of a broader sense of community among New Haveners, Ashline said. For example, he said that there are plenty of places to get a free meal around the city, from Colville’s home to organized soup kitchens across neighborhoods. 

“In New Haven, you’re not starving,” he said.

Despite all measures taken to turn his tent into a home — like a shoe rack, art work, candles, portable heating, and a pitbull named Princess ​“curled up in a little ball” by his sleeping bag — Ashline was clear-eyed about how this current setup is still not the kind of adequate housing needed by someone trying to recover from such serious health issues.

“I’m trying to get housing. I don’t wanna be out here in the cold,” Ashline said. In the meantime, he’s also trying to winter-proof his tent with the understanding that he likely won’t find a room before the cold sets in. 

He learns lessons each day about preparing for the unexpected. For example, on Sunday morning, he woke up ​“soaked in” from a thunderstorm that he said the weather channel had previously forecast would be a cloudy but dry night sky.

Ashline said he’s tried persistently to make it into a shelter or an apartment. During the pandemic, he said, he was hoping to get into La Quinta, a Long Wharf hotel that had temporarily been turned into a source of shelter for the homeless during the pandemic.

He said he is currently on the waiting list for a bed at Columbus House, which operates two homeless shelters in the city. He’s hoping that once at Columbus House, he’ll connect with a case manager who can expedite the process of attaining a housing voucher as a disabled senior.

“I just get frustrated,” he said. 

Many others staying at Rosette Street have intentionally left the kind of shelter sought by Ashline.

While stopping by the yellow hut to grab himself and his wife cups of orange juice and yogurts, a man named Flip briefly recalled his struggle to assimilate to shelter life.

After a ​“traumatizing” career in the Marine Corps, Flip moved back to Connecticut in 1992, ​“but couldn’t work and didn’t fit in anywhere.”

“I just wasn’t the same,” he said. He moved from his hometown of New Britain to New Haven in hopes of finding ​“stronger public transit, more people, more diversity and more opportunity.” But after securing a bed at Columbus House, he said he felt subjected to yet another ​“traumatizing” experience.

“It was like jail almost,” he said. ​“I stayed there for six months.” 

He said many of the people who stayed alongside him at the shelter were dangerous and out of control. And he didn’t feel that the promise of additional support in navigating governmental bureaucracy was ever provided in the shelter: ​“They tell you, ​‘We’re gonna get you housing.’ They tell you this and tell you that. No,” Flip stated.

"How Am I Gonna Survive Being Homeless?"

B, another man living with his girlfriend on Rosette Street who requested anonymity in the article, listed similar concerns about the hotels where many found shelter during the pandemic.

“I heard about it and thought, ​‘Oh, awesome, that’ll be great.’ Then I heard the details: I can’t have a visitor, these people are telling me what time I have to be in at night, they can come into my room and go through my stuff. It’s like jail!” he said, echoing Flip. ​“I didn’t like that.”

For a while, B lived in New Haven’s tent city, a large encampment by Ella Grasso Boulevard. But surveillance stalked him at that site as well. The city ​“told us no fires; they have drones.” 

He added, ​“There is an orange drone you can see above tent city at all times.” B said that for years he would rent motel rooms when possible and camp out at tent city when there was no other alternative.

B said his best experience as an economic refugee was living underneath a bridge by a river in Ansonia for over 12 months.

“It was awesome!” he recalled. ​“I was all by myself. I don’t like making friends with people — they’re always trouble,” he lamented.

“The only person I hang around with,” he added, is his girlfriend, Donna Abate, who now also lives with him on Rosette.

By the bridge, he said he could ​“set up fires,” maintain relative privacy, and keep his belongings in Abate’s car while Abate lived in her own apartment nearby. When he had the money, B would get a hotel room to do his laundry and take a shower. 

Later on, B said he had to ​“find a place” in New Haven because he became a client at the APT Foundation methadone clinic on Congress Avenue, like Ashline. ​“I was missing appointments,” he said, until he found his way to Rosette Street.

Meanwhile, Abate, who was evicted from her apartment in Ansonia a few months back, cited a simpler reason for avoiding shelters: She couldn’t bring her 4‑year-old dachshund, Tiny T, along with her.

But, like her boyfriend, she said she felt a distaste for rules concerning when she would have to leave or check into a shelter. ​“I can stay here all day,” she said of her tent. ​“I prefer this.”

Abate, who currently works as a bus driver, said her hours have recently been cut back. When she’s not at work, she can hang around Amistad House, either helping Colville with local organizing and mutual aid efforts or scanning Facebook Marketplace for bargain buys to make the tarp covered structure she and B call home more livable.

Now, her bed is framed with fairy lights plugged into a power cord extending 30 feet from Colville’s house. She’s secured a microwave, mini fridge and coffee maker, the latter of which she said Ashline gifted to her, to establish a makeshift kitchen. A big suitcase keeps her clothes off the floor of wood scraps and carpet.

Most recently, she said she found a multi-room tent online that she was able to argue down from $40 to free after telling the seller her story of financial hardship. ​“Don’t feel sorry for me,” she instructed. ​“But if I can get a bargain, I’m gonna get it!”

On occasion, her new reality leaves her in sudden shock. ​“I never thought I would be homeless,” she said. Years back, she lost some financial stability after divorcing her husband, but felt empowered by her choice to pursue independence and happiness. With four kids and a boyfriend in need of financial support and care, ​“every paycheck went to rent and bills,” she said, until there wasn’t enough to cover even that.

“You can easily be homeless in the next week or a month,” she reflected. Loss of hours at work, a health emergency, or even just commitment to caring for others can find one in a similar position of instability.

She and her boyfriend, who have opted to live separately throughout their long relationship dating back to 2013, are now experiencing ​“new ups and downs” cramped into their most recent means of shelter. She’s also found new friends on Rosette Street; when she hears her neighbors are hungry, she’ll be sure to offer them whatever she can spare at the time or to give them access to the microwave to make instant noodles.

Despite the setbacks, maintaining a sense of self and autonomy alongside service to others, Abate suggested, has allowed her to keep moving forward.

“I always asked myself, ​‘How am I gonna survive being homeless?’” she said. ​“But I’m doing it.”

"Fight It By Practicing Neighborhood"

In addition to figuring out how find power in uncontrollable circumstances, Abate and her neighbors are regularly taking action to reimagine what survival can look like across the city.

Abate is a member of the Unhoused Activist Community Team (U‑ACT), made up of people experiencing homelessness as well as local organizers like Colville who have been working towards ending evictions of individuals off public land; the implementation of public bathrooms and showers on the Green and throughout the city’s neighborhoods; and city-funded storage spaces to ensure those without housing have safe places to keep their belongings. 

During the pandemic, Colville also sought to get the city to bring electricity, snow shoveling services, and running water to the tent city, a significant encampment of people along Ella Grasso Boulevard. That plan has yet to pan out, but as Colville works towards a micro-tent city on his own land, he is simultaneously building a cohort of activists who make and bring breakfast to the Boulevard as a condition of their stay at Amistad.

Liam Fama, a member of Frassati New Haven, a young adult ministry tied to St. Mary’s Parish, was also drawn into a different mentality of doing-good during a Sunday visit to Amistad House. While dropping off a car-full of brown-bag lunches, Fama asked how else he could help out with Colville’s mission.

Splitting firewood or assisting in home renovations could be useful, Colville considered. But mainly, he pointed out, the city needs to change some basic policies.

“What policy needs to change?” Fama asked.

Land that is public should truly belong to and support all of the public, Colville began. ​“I used to think war was the worst, but now I think it’s the fact that we practice the lie of scarcity… that’s a predatory capitalist myth, a lie that’s been swallowed by the church,” Colville continued.

Fama nodded along slowly. He promised to return in the weeks to come for more conversation and more lunches in hand.

Sitting out back with a full table of breakfast and lunch and smiling neighbors making conversation, Colville reflected that ​“this is what it looks like when people care about each other and don’t ignore each other.”

Still, he said, the encampment was representative of ​“what life is gonna be like for half the people in this country in a few years.

“Look at where society is headed right now,” he urged. ​“An absolute collapse is coming.

“We don’t need to fight it by talking about politics. We need to fight it by practicing neighborhood.”

See below for more recent Independent articles about homelessness, activism, and attempts to find shelter this winter.

• Homeless Hotel Plan Scrapped. What’s Next?
• Election Day Rally Casts Ballot For Housing