Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen Buys New Home For Expansion

Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen (DESK) has purchased 266 State St., one of the brick buildings sandwiched between Cafe Nine on Crown Street and the State Street Parking Garage. The nonprofit plans to move into the building in 2022 and transform into a one-stop-shop for people experiencing homelessness.

DESK Executive Director Steve Werlin announced that news to the Downtown-Wooster Square Community Management Team (DWSCMT) on Tuesday evening.

“The goal is to be a drop-in and resource center as well. It will have longer hours, so [people experiencing homelessness] can get services whenever they need them,” Werlin said.

The Center Church Parish House on Temple Street has hosted DESK since the mid-2000s. The location is not ideal; it has become cramped for what the nonprofit wants to provide for its visitors. It has to accommodate its hours to the church’s schedule and does not have enough space for case managers and outreach workers to talk one-on-one with clients. Plus, the only entrance to the basement-based dining room is a narrow staircase tucked away from the street.

“In many ways, our current space has the air of a speakeasy. Like the people we serve, DESK’s current physical location feels sadly invisible from the public eye,” Werlin wrote by email after the meeting.

DESK started looking for a new space downtown last year. It commissioned a study from the Yale Law and Public Health schools, as well as a literature review from New York-based public health nonprofit Vital Strategies, on best practices in how to become an effective and helpful drop-in center. At the same time, they spoke to their soup kitchen visitors, others who had experienced homelessness and the health and housing service providers they work with about what they wanted to see in a New Haven center.

The nonprofit found 266 State St. this fall and purchased it for $765,000, after accommodations for DESK’s nonprofit status, Werlin said. Renovations will cost an additional, to-be-determined chunk of change, which DESK plans to fundraise for over the course of three years. DESK may also seek public dollars to help.

The basement of the building will house the operation’s kitchen. The ground floor will become the dining room, with fewer seats but longer hours than the Temple Street version. The second floor will have a shower, waiting room and offices for wrap-around service providers like the Cornell Scott Hill Health Center and the Sex Workers and Allies Network.

“In other words, we’re seeking to ​‘meet people where they are’ — physically, emotionally, behaviorally, and in terms of their specific needs. DESK will provide the space and food, while our partners will provide specialized services,” Werlin said.

Werlin said that after a few weeks of light renovations on the ground floor, DESK will start using the space for some winter services. However, the nonprofit does not plan to move its soup kitchen operation to State Street and open its full drop-in center until 2022 — if all goes according to plan.

“So much is up in the air because of Covid. The benefit of owning this building (as opposed to renting) is that we are not racing the clock from a financial perspective. (In other words, we’re not counting down on a lease.) That said, the need is acute and we want to be as immediately responsive as we can in the near-term,” Werlin wrote.

At Tuesday night’s meeting, DWSCMT Chair Caroline Smith, who congratulated Werlin for the nonprofit’s careful growth strategy and asked about current levels of homelessness.

DESK has become a particularly important resource during the Covid-19 pandemic, as job loss, health emergencies and other factors push more people out of stable housing. Werlin said that it has been tricky to get a reliable count of how homelessness has increased during the pandemic. However, he and his staff have talked with many newly homeless individuals in recent months.

Homeless in the Time of COVID from Made in New Haven by Steve Hamm on Vimeo.