Homeless Hotel Conditions Questioned

Albert Hargrove would like to lock his door to keep safe at night — but the door doesn’t lock. So he sleeps with a metal pole besides his bed and hopes for the best.

Hargrove is one of more than 100 homeless clients who are staying at the New Haven Inn hotel on Pond Lily Avenue in West Hills under an emergency shelter/supportive housing plan.

The city contracted with New Haven Inn hotel to keep up to 115 homeless people out of the cold and sheltered in a winter​“warming center” program that offers on-site social services. The city contracted with BH Care to administer the program.

The program continues until April while working to provide each of the clients with longer-term housing arrangements. 

The program also offers breakfast and dinner daily on site through a contract between the city and The Community Kitchen and Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen (DESK).

Currently all 112 client beds are filled at the hotel. On Thursday, the city government’s homeless coordinator, Velma George filled the warming center’s three designated cold-weather emergency beds with a trio of homeless Fair Haveners living in tents.

Overall, city Community Services Administrator Mehul Dalal said, the program has produced hopeful results. New Haven government expanded the concept of ​“warming shelters” since the onset of the pandemic to keep people safe in hotel rooms curing the winter and get them extra, hands-on help moving to permanent shelter.

“Other communities haven’t had this level of dedication and support for this community,” Dalal said. ​“BH Care has stepped in and really put together a program that we can all be proud of.” 

He said the city is seriously considering ​“having this type of model be an important complement of our sheltering system moving forward.”

“We can implement successful models of sheltering that are not based in large facilities where people have to come in and out and really don’t have a space to call their own,” he said.

A Look Inside

Several tenants told their stories about being in the program during a canvass by Ward chair Iva Johnson this past Sunday. 

Johnson checked in on the residents Sunday and offered them containers of disinfectant wipes and toiletries. 

Johnson and other neighbors raised concerns about the program being brought to the neighborhood this past November. Residents feared the program would bring more crime and drug use to the neighborhood and that the hotel wasn’t in safe condition to house the program. 

During Sunday’s canvass, several tenants reported that they consider the hotel unsafe, while some realized clear benefits from the program in addition to having a roof over people’s heads in sub-freezing nights. 

Johnson, a neighborhood organizer and Ward 30 Democratic co-chair, distributed wipes and bottles of shampoo to the clients staying at the hotel. Some made requests for socks, shoes, underwear, and longjohns in the future. 

“I’m here to check that you got all the services you need, and when you’re ready to transition you’re not just going back out on the street,” Johnson said.

Hargrove said he has dealt with a broken sink, stained mattress, rats, and sparking lamp wires in his room since moving into his room in January. 

For safety, Hargrove sleeps with a pole beside his bed because his room door doesn’t lock correctly due to rotting and damaged wood on his door. Even when ​“locked” he said the door of his room can still be easily pushed open which concerns him.

The hotel removed its room chain locks by recommendation from the fire department in case of emergencies. But clients are allowed to lock their doors, said Velma George. The city requested that the hotel make repairs before the program began, she said. The hotel is responsible for maintenance and cleaning.

Hargrove slipped in the hotel’s shower recently and was sent to the hospital for the injury, he said. He now uses a walker for his reinjured knee. 

“They got us living foul in here,” he said. ​“They’re putting our life on the line in here.” 

Hargrove and his roommate also have put plastic wrap around the air conditioning unit to keep cold air from freezing their room at night, he said. They put anti-rodent power in the corner of the room to keep roaches away. 

Maintenance and cleaning of the hotel are perfromed by the staff, George said. 

“At night time, people be running around here doing crazy stuff, using drugs, and our door don’t lock,” Hargrove said.

“I need to get out of here because they ain’t helping me. They’re hurting us.”

Hargrove, who doesn’t have a cellphone, calls for transportation at 6 a.m. when his roommate is leaving for work. The room telephone has been broken since he moved in, he said. 

George said the program has partners that can provide clients with cellphones and tablets to book personal medical appointments.

Under his bed sheets, Hargrove lined his mattress with plastic to avoid ​“sleeping on filth.” 

He said he’s been threatened by program staff with being kicked out several times because he spoke up about hotel conditions. 

“They promised us that they were going to take care of these people,” Iva Johnson said. ​“This is abuse.” 

West Hill Alder Honda Smith has arranged an update meeting with neighbors, the city, and BH Care about the program next week at The Shack. 

“They have the money to do better than what they’re doing,” Johnson said. 

Smith said since the start of the program, staff and clients have come to her with complaints. 

“Everything is getting swept under carpet, but homeless people have rights also and their rights need to be protected,” Smith said. 

Smith said some clients have told her that they ​“live better on the street.” 

Smith added that she is also worried about what will happen when the program ends in April. The problem for the neighborhood will remain because the city will leave the hotel on its own to evict all the clients, she said.

View From The Neighborhood

BH Care Adult Behavioral Health Services Tony Corniello said that the program’s 24/7 security and staff presence have helped to decrease problem activity on site. Neighbors said that hasn’t been the case on surrounding streets.

First Church of God Rev. D’Hati T. Burgess said since the start of the program, he has noticed more drug and crime activity in the community. 

“I’m part of this community, and I want to make sure that everything that the city had promised to do for those placed out here is being fulfilled,” he said.

Burgess suggested the city utilize and convert some of its unused and empty owned properties to housing for homeless individuals so ​“they’re not just placed out here and forgotten about.”

“I think the owners of these hotels out here are money hungry,” said Burgess, whose church is a block away on Harper Street. ​“If the city has enough money to fund these hotels. then they have enough money to build up other structures.” 

Loubna Ettaki, the owner of Valley Mart on the corner of Valley and Harper streets, said that since the start of the program she has been dealing with an increase in shoplifting, vandalism, panhandling, drunk customers disrespecting her and her staff, and customers passing out in her store aisles. 

Ettaki has owned the corner store for the past decade. She said this year has been the most difficult. 

“It’s overwhelming and feels like too much,” she said. 

After confronting a homeless shoplifter in her store recently, Ettaki was pushed by the individual who later returned in the night and broke the store’s outdoor ice cooler, she said. 

Other customers have come to the store calling Ettaki and her staff ​“foreigners who don’t belong here” and other disrespectful names while starting arguments with them. 

Ettaki is considering selling the store as a result but is reluctant because it is her only source of income, she said. 

When clients agree to join the program, they are also agreeing to case management services. 

“We’re in the business of trying to house people not warehouse them, and so part of housing people is active case management,” George said. 

On-site services include crisis intervention, assistance with court matters, medical and mental health support, and aiding with building and maintaining relationships with landlords and other agencies to form a service network for clients.

The program also offers services supported by other community providers through referrals. 

The program model states; ​“The ultimate goal would be transitional or permanent housing although not every client has the same means, income or resources to achieve this before the center’s expiration.” 

An agreement of the program is to also have regular room checks to keep clients from having and using drugs in the hotel. 

Due to Covid precautions, clients are not allowed to have guests stay with them but may have visitors during the day. Clients must return to their rooms for a 9 p.m daily curfew. 

To keep residents from accumulating too many items in their rooms, the program moves them to new rooms every 21 days, George said. 

The site is staffed with case managers, security, a manager, and night monitors daily. 

Before starting the program, the hotel ripped up the carpeting of some but not all rooms and repainted walls inside rooms.

According to several program residents, the carpets in their rooms remain heavily worn and stained. 

“I’m tired of breathing in everything in this carpet,” Hargrove said. ​“It’s not good for my health at all.” 

One hotel resident, Ginger Marie, 50, is working on finding a home with her permanent housing voucher, which requires her to pay 30 percent of her income. She got help getting the voucher while in the New Haven Inn program.

In the past Ginger would live in a tent that she would moved around town. 

While thankful for the program’s housing, Ginger, who moved in Jan. 14, said, she has had concerns with the room’s dry air. She said it makes her congested and sick. 

Most surprising to Ginger was that there are are no washing machines available to clients. Instead clients are recommended to go to Fellowship Place, Inc. located three miles away at 441 Elm St. 

Ginger, who lost her leg in a motorcycle accident 20 years ago, uses a wheelchair. 

“I can’t cart my laundry all the way over there,” she said. 

Ginger is also concerned that the staff can enter their rooms ​“without me letting them in.” 

“When they came in when I didn’t invite them in, I was using the bathroom,” she said. 

She got locked in her room in January, and the lock to her room hasn’t been fixed since, she said. 

Another client said he looks forward to moving out the hotel at the end of month and into a new apartment in West Haven that BHcare helped him find. He signed the lease Feb. 15 for an apartment costing $1,000 a month.

The program has helped to provide him with temporary housing and access to his nitroglycerin medicine for the past month, he said.

“This is not a luxury hotel. This is damn near a condemned hotel which they put back together for this, and that’s a blessing within itself. That’s how I look at it,” the resident said.

Another client who has an addiction to phencyclidine (PCP) called the 211 hotline every day in December and January to finally get a spot in the program this month. 

“This is just a place for me to lay my head. I don’t expect them to help,” she said. 

That client, who works as a personal care assistant (PCA), picked up shampoo, disinfectant wipes, and conditioner Sunday from Johnson. 

Fed Up Staff

A former employee [who wished to remain anonymous] of the hotel’s program said they quit their job at the warming center due to constant mistreatment of the clients by management.

“Numerous times I have reported the way [a manager] is treating the clients and nothing has been done,” the former employee wrote in a email to Mayor Justin Elicker and City Community Services Administrator Dalal on Jan. 22. 

The employee started working at the warming center this past November. They then quit months later because they felt the program wasn’t being run in the best interest of the clients. 

“All the staff has witnessed clients coming to the office to ask for food, clothing or just to ask a question and [the manager] curses and slams the door in their faces,” the former employee said. ​“Some of the clients leave the warming center and go back outside because they don’t want to deal with her. They shouldn’t have to feel like they’re nothing.”

The former employee also reported that a client told them that on Dec. 11 the client witnessed a staff member and her boyfriend having an altercation at hotel. The client told them, who was employed at the center at the time, the altercation involved ​“banging on the windows and yelling.”

During the incident the client also told them that the manager ​“came out of the office and went into her car and pulled out a gun that was a light blue color.” 

The former employee said they reported the client’s testimony to a community outreach worker for the city. 

It was a difficult decision to leave the job, because ​“helping the homeless population is my life,” the former employee said. 

“I feel like I should be able to work for the clients in peace and provide a service for them without feeling like if I report something I become a target. Not fair to me or the clients,” they said.

BH Care Chief Human Resources Officer Mary Beth Peacock said she couldn’t comment on a personnel issue.