Evadney Taylor's word on College Street: It's complicated.
Evadney Taylor rushed to get to work on time while shuttling kids to school, navigating a botched breakfast take-out order, and figuring out how to fend off an eviction by a legal aid staffer while seven months pregnant.
Taylor’s day was off to a rough start — and it had already been a long week.
She talked about that while power-walking to work during the “Word on the Street” segment of WNHH FM’s “LoveBabz LoveTalk” pogram.
The word on College Street was: It’s complicated.
By 9 a.m., Taylor had already missed her usual earlier bus downtown while dropping her kids off at school. Then Dunkin’ Donuts got her order wrong, robbing her of a coffee cake breakfast. At seven months pregnant, she had cramps kicking in as she speed walked across the Green toward the Schwarzman Center at College and Grove streets, where she was to administer Covid-19 tests.
Just Keep Walking, Moving
Taylor, a working mom of three with a fourth due in two months, has been a certified nursing assistant (CNA) and emergency department tech at Yale New Haven Hospital throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.
Getting to the job requires a lot of steps.
Because “the school system’s bus schedule sucks,” Taylor said, she was forced to walk her kids to Hill Central School and Bishop Woods Thursday morning.
Drop-off turned into waiting for her kids to make it through a long temperature-check line. That caused Taylor to miss her own bus — so she resorted to walking some more.
“I did a lot of walking this morning,” she said. “I’m cramping — I’m seven months pregnant.”
Taylor attempted to expedite her usual breakfast stop at Dunkin’ Donuts by placing her order in advance through the mobile Dunkin’ app. But she was given the wrong order. Rather than an iced green tea and decadent coffee roll, she was left with a plain buttered bagel.
Bagel in bag, Taylor headed to work an eight-hour shift conducting Covid tests on Yale’s students and faculty.
Health organizers have been setting up pop-up clinics all over the city.
“Even with free testing people still don’t get tested,” she lamented.
The reasons people pass on testing? That’s complicated, too. But when she runs into individuals who aren’t regularly checking their health, Taylor has a simple response: “If you don’t want to die, test. If you want to see your family, test. If you want to touch your kids and hug on your kids, test.”
Taylor, who grew up in the Hill, described her workload as “stressful” but necessary “to pay the bills.”
She has worked in the medical field since she was 17, after growing up in and out of foster care.
As a teenager, she was the primary caretaker for her grandfather. After he died in hospice of cancer, she looked for paid care work and got a job as a CNA.
“We are always overlooked,” she said of CNAs and nurses. “We do a lot of work, but the people that get the credit are the doctors or the physicians, the surgeons.”
During the Covid pandemic, Taylor said, she has been more “overworked,” still underpaid, and treated with an unwavering level of disrespect.
It’s hard not to carry home hard feelings from long, laborious days inside the hospital.
Everyday, she said, she watches people come into the hospital injured or on a mechanical CPR device known as a “thumper.”
When people are rolled in on a thumper, “nine times out of ten, we know you’re dead” she said.
“So then you come home and you’re afraid to go to sleep, because all you see is this body in front of you on a thumper.”
Taylor’s strategy for dealing with the stresses of care-taking is taking care of, or spoiling, her three kids. When she was a child, Taylor said, she had to make her own meals; but her kids get homemade breakfast and dinners everyday.
That’s how Taylor planned to spend Thursday evening once she got off the clock at 6 — picking up her kids and making a nice dinner. But, she said, this week she has an extra burden on her shoulders: Moving.
Landlord Trouble
If Dunkin’s incompetence, Covid-19, child rearing and public transport weren’t stressful enough, Taylor said, she is currently dealing with a threat of eviction.
She was asked where she plans to move once the 30-day eviction notice is up next week. “I have no idea,” she said.
“It’s complicated.”
During the first year that Taylor started living in the two-family home on Button Street, in 2017, the owner died. Taylor started paying rent to his wife.
When the wife of the late owner passed away in July, Taylor said she was told she didn’t have to pay rent anymore. “And then we found out that the house was in foreclosure,” she stated.
That revelation came at the same time as a phone call from a family member of the deceased owners — asking Taylor to pay retroactive rent from all the months that had already passed.
“ ‘We’re not giving you a dime because, for one, we don’t know who you are and we don’t have a lease with you,’ ” Taylor recalled.
Taylor also had complaints about the former owners. A massive hole in the bathroom, she said, kept her family from using the space — except to wash their dishes in the bathtub, because the kitchen sink didn’t let out any water. “If I can’t trust them, how can I trust you?” Taylor questioned in connection with the family member who requested rent.
A vermin and rodent infestation had also damaged her family’s belongings, Taylor recalled. Instead of hiring an exterminator, the landlord told Taylor to “get a cat,” Taylor said.
“The lady has been threatening to evict us and I’m like, ‘How can you evict someone who has been here for five years and has been an absolute perfect tenant?’ ” Taylor said.
(Court records show a foreclosure action filed against the late owner’s estate on Jan. 4. No eviction filing is on record against her.)
Taylor reported that the woman told her that the house is now under contract — and that Taylor and her family have to be “out” be March 11.
“The funny part is … this woman works for legal aid,” Taylor said.
The Independent contacted the woman who is allegedly threatening to evict Taylor, who does indeed work for New Haven Legal Assistance Association. She declined to comment for this story.
Legal aid will not be representing Taylor in the eviction action.
“We wish that we could represent and help everyone,” said NHLAA Executive Director Alexis Smith, but Taylor’s case is one of those “unfortunate situations where we can’t help someone” because the legal aid worker’s involvement in the case creates a conflict of interest.
Watch the full “Word on the Street” interview with Evadney Taylor on WNHH FM’s “LoveBabz LoveTalk” below.