This Time, Tents Pop Up On The Green

Twelve tents popped up on the Green Monday evening — as part of a rescheduled overnight protest against past clearings of homeless encampments, and in support of the rights of the unhoused.

Monday’s tent encampment was led by the Unhoused Activists Community Team (U‑ACT).

It comes more than a month after that same group had initially planned on pitching tents and spending the night on the Green, in view of the mayor’s office on the second floor of City Hall. 

Back in May, rainy weather and the prospect of arrests ultimately deterred the group from setting up camp. 

Not so on Monday.

As wind blew across the Green, cardboard signs flew and tents shook. Organizers and fellow housing activists said they intend to stay the entire night.

“This is a human rights zone,” said Billy Bromage, the director of community organizing at the Yale Program for Recovery & Community Health and an organizer with U‑ACT. ​“This is a beautiful thing and it should be normal until the crisis of homelessness is finally over!”

The tenters set up camp at around 8:15 p.m. They installed their tents in a circle on a patch of grass between the flagpole and Church Street. 

At around 11 p.m., well after the sun had set over the encampment, Latin dance music played faintly in the distance as tenters talked amongst themselves. Some tents were zipped up, their occupants ready to sleep for the night — only to be interrupted by the occasional zooming car nearby. 

The group intends to stay through Tuesday morning, when breakfast will be served and the donated tents — roughly 50 in total — will be distributed to those in need. 

The tents were adorned with signs bearing such messages as ​“Stop Denying Us Homes” and ​“I Deserve A Safe Home” and ​“Fund Homes Not Cops.”

The encampment was preceded by a teach-in and dinner as part of a so-called People’s Festival, which also took place on the Green, not far from the main stage of the Arts & Ideas festival. 

Mark Colville, one of the organizers of Monday’s encampment, said that the group was not protesting Arts & Ideas. Instead, they wanted to bring awareness to homelessness and criticize the current administration.

A coalition of organizations attended and gave speeches at the teach-in, including representatives from Connecticut Dissenters, Dare to Struggle, Yalies4Palestine, Yale’s Endowment Justice Coalition, and the People’s Clinic.

Organizers listed four demands to city policy regarding the use of public spaces:

1. No evictions from public land, including a request to bar police involvement from sweeps if they must happen 

2. No throwing away belongings 

3. Permanent bathroom use for all, starting in downtown and Fair Haven. 

4. Free permanent public shower access.

Mayor Justin Elicker did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Monday night. He and Police Chief Karl Jacobson did speak with these same protesters when they considered pitching tents on the Green in May. At that previous protest, the mayor listened to concerns about the closing of the last of the city’s warming centers for the season. He also pointed to efforts his administration has undertaken to promote the creation of lots more housing, including below-market-rent affordable housing, as well as its purchase of the former Days Inn hotel on Foxon Boulevard and conversion of that site into a non-congregate homeless shelter.

On Monday, speakers shared experiences from previous encampments.

“When you remove a tent city, you remove a community,” said U‑ACT organizer Shannon Carter.

Suki Godek said the city’s sweep of the former Tent City by the West River was traumatic. She said she and other residents tried to comply with the city’s orders to clean up the encampment, including by getting rid of heating appliances and disposing of trash, but the city cleared the encampment anyway.

Godek now lives in the Rosette Village collection of tiny shelters in the backyard of the Amistad Catholic Workers House on Rosette Street in the Hill. 

“It was a big adjustment,” Godek said about being displaced from the cleared encampment, ​“and it wore on my mental health.”

Tammy Varney began experiencing homelessness when her husband passed away last February. She said she was evicted from her apartment, leaving behind her belongings, which included her step-daughter’s ashes. 

Varney has experience setting up tiny homes outside of Connecticut, and continues to advocate for tiny home building in New Haven. But for now, she is camping out overnight to protest.

“I was born and raised in Connecticut and can’t do nothing in my own state,” Varney said. ​“If I’m born and raised somewhere, I should be able to get back in my own state and” live in a tiny house.