U‑ACT Pushes ​“People’s Budget”

A coalition of unhoused activists marched into City Hall to meet the mayor’s proposed city budget with a spending plan of their own, as summarized by a song: ​“More housing, defund the police!”

The 20 activists, members of the Unhoused Activist Community Team (U‑ACT), filed through the aldermanic chamber on Thursday evening, with house-shaped posters in tow. 

They were there for the Board of Alders Finance Committee’s first public hearing on the mayor’s proposed $703.7 million general fund budget for Fiscal Year 2025 – 26 (FY26), which, if approved by the alders, would take effect July 1.

The group arrived to testify in support of their own ​“People’s Budget”: a $4.5 million allocation toward resources for unsheltered people.

Specifically, U‑ACT is proposing that $3 million be allocated toward 150 ​“tiny homes” — the low-cost Pallet shelters that make up the currently unsanctioned Rosette Village. (One bill currently before the state legislature in Hartford has proposed popularizing state building code-compliant tiny homes across Connecticut. Mayor Justin Elicker testified against that bill.)

As part of their local ​“People’s Budget,” U‑ACT is proposing an additional $500,000 toward keeping warming centers open year-round; $500,000 toward building and maintaining public restrooms on the New Haven Green; $250,000 toward a shower truck or trailer; and $250,000 toward a storage facility for unhoused community members to keep their belongings.

Mell Savage, a self-described ​“survivor of the streets,” spoke to the potential impact of a storage system for unhoused New Haveners. 

“Their entire life is in their backpacks, especially when somebody immediately hits the streets,” he said. ​“All of their personal, sacred family photos — those are the first things you take with you when you are unhoused. Those things get stolen, lost. That could be prevented by a simple method of providing storage space.”

Savage argued that community storage could even help people secure employment, enabling them to store their possessions rather than ​“walking to a job interview with all their stuff.”

They said that the funding could come from shrinking the police department’s budget (proposed to total $59,795,766 for the upcoming fiscal year, not including pension and healthcare costs). Specifically, they pointed to an unspecified amount of costs associated with police overtime for clearing outdoor encampments throughout the city.

One advocate, who asked to be identified as ​“G.,” made the case that encampment clearings aren’t an effective or humane way for the city to respond to homelessness.

“They think they’re fixing [homelessness] because they’re getting it out of sight,” G. said. But the actual solution to homelessness is to get people into housing, he said, and to provide them with basic needs.

“In the long term, you’re saving a lot of money” with the measures proposed in the People’s Budget, G. argued.

Police Chief Karl Jacobson said that the police department spends very little resources on clearing encampments, a statement that Mayor Justin Elicker echoed.

“We almost never use the New Haven Police Department to remove tents. In fact, nearly the only times we have used the New Haven Police Department is when U‑ACT has been protesting and has acts of civil disobedience and refuses to let public works remove the tents,” Elicker said.

U‑ACT hasn’t been able to get an estimate of the amount of funds that the city spends on clearing homeless encampments, according to community organizer Billy Bromage. 

Nevertheless, he pointed out, the $4.5 million would constitute a small fraction of the police department’s budget and an even smaller fraction of the city’s overall $703.7 million budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year.

Mayor, Alders Give Mixed Responses

In a phone interview, Mayor Justin Elicker responded to U‑ACT’s individual proposals.

He said that the city already contracts a mobile shower service, Power in a Shower, and that city staff are working on building a public restroom on the Green. ​“I think it’s unlikely that we will get to 24 hours of it being open, because it’s an incredible staffing cost,” he said, ​“but we will do as much as we can to have it open as much as possible.”

“It would be great to have warming centers year-round, but all of these things are tied to cost,” Elicker said. He argued that the funding for such an initiative should come from the state.

As for storage space, Elicker said that Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen has lockers available at 266 State St. He said that it has otherwise been challenging for the city to find a non-profit willing to offer the storage space service.

Elicker cast the most doubt on the proposal to build 150 Pallet-brand ​“tiny homes,” due to concerns about the shelters’ safety. ​“It’s not just that they don’t have a bathroom and a kitchen, which is required by the state building code, but they also are not approved for wind loads and snow loads,” he said. ​“The state building code has been created to keep people safe.” 

Proponents of the Pallet shelters have responded to these safety concerns with the argument that the shelters remain safer than sleeping outside, where unhoused people are vulnerable to assault, theft, and bad weather.

Elicker said that while he supports the idea of building ​“tiny homes” that conform to state regulations, he argued that it’s far more resource efficient for the city to invest in more dense buildings for emergency shelter — such as hotels, like the one the city purchased on Foxon Blvd. to convert into a shelter.

Meanwhile, U‑ACT testifiers stressed the urgency of more resources for those in need of shelter.

“Can y’all PLEASE help us?” one testifier said.

As the meeting continued, a handful of alders, including Majority Leader and Westville/Amity Alder Richard Furlow, Downtown Alder Eli Sabin, and East Rock Alder Caroline Smith, stepped outside to confer with some of the U‑ACT advocates.

“I think we have to think about maintenance” and legal liability issues regarding the storage system, Furlow said.

“Have people sign waivers!” suggested G.

After a few minutes of conversation, Furlow suggested that the group schedule a meeting to talk about how to put their ideas into action.

Activists: Shelters Don't Work For Everyone

U‑ACT advocates stressed again and again in interviews that the city’s shelter system isn’t currently able to meet the needs of many unhoused people.

Alberto Pablo Bautista, who said he’s been unhoused for three years, said after the meeting that he sleeps outside because he doesn’t feel safe in warming centers, and finds it hard to take care of his own mental health in those often-crowded settings. 

“211, they’re not picking up the phone!” Bautista said, referring to the hotline that connects individuals to shelters and other resources.

Two transgender U‑ACT advocates, G. and Zakar, said that most homeless shelters and warming centers aren’t able to safely accommodate trans clients. 

Zakar (who now has housing) provided the example of a trans man seeking to navigate the shelter system. He could be assigned to a men’s shelter, which may not be as physically safe if he’s perceived to be a woman. Or he could be assigned to a women’s shelter, which could worsen his gender dysphoria and overall mental health, Zakar said. 

Meanwhile, trans people are disproportionately likely to become unhoused. ​“A lot of our families disown us,” said G.

Zakar said that all of the People’s Budget proposals could have been a lifeline during his time of homelessness, but he pointed to the storage lockers as a relatively low-cost priority.

Sleeping outside, he said, ​“I lost a lot of stuff.”