Homeless Youth Facility Moving Forward

The social service providers behind a new temporary housing facility for homeless youth plan to begin construction in Wooster Square later this winter — but only if they have on hand the roughly $4 million they expect they’ll need to finish the project by late 2020.

Y2Y Co-Founder Sam Greenberg and Youth Continuum CEO Paul Kosowsky gave that update Tuesday night at the regular monthly meeting of the Downtown-Wooster Square Community Management Team on the second floor of City Hall.

Roughly a year-and-a-half after he first presented the concept for the Y2Y homeless youth housing service to the management team, Greenberg told the roughly 40 neighbors present that the project is moving ahead — with construction planned to start at the end of this year or the beginning of next. It should then be open, he and Kosowsky said, roughly a year after that.

Y2Y will provide between 12 and 20 beds for homeless youth in a new planned second floor atop Youth Continuum’s current headquarters and homeless youth service center at 924 Grand Ave., Greenberg said.

After holding over 200 meetings with 150 neighbors and other stakeholders in the Wooster Square neighborhood, he added, he won site plan approval for the project from the City Plan Commission in June—despite the vocal opposition of a minority of neighbors who decried the addition of another social service agency to that stretch of Grand.

Over a year of community feedback, Greenberg said, ​“has been transformative to the way we think about our project.” The planned design for the building, which the prospective clients for the facility are working with professional architects on finalizing, will include a new facade, a better lit interior, and a first-floor commercial space that will ideally function as some kind of community meeting area.

“If things go as well as things could possibly go,” Kosowsky said, construction will begin in late winter and the project will open at the end of 2020.

“We don’t have 100 percent of the funding in place,” he added, though they do have a $750,000 state grant that Youth Continuum won a while ago and has been sitting on as this project as slowly but surely moved forward.

If you already have $750,000, Wooster Square resident Elsie Chapman asked, how much do you need to finish the project entirely?

Initially, Kosowsky said, he and Greenberg estimated they would need $3.25 million. But that was in the early stages of the project, when they thought they would build the housing facility in the basement of 924 Grand.

Now that the design places those beds on a new second floor, he said, the estimated build-out cost is closer to $3.5 million to $4 million.

Kosowksky said that the remaining required funds are ​“90 percent” set, and Y2Y and Youth Continuum have enough on hand to proceed with the final stages of construction planning. He said that the organizations will not put shovels into the ground, however, until all of the necessary construction money is definitely in place.

How many of the homeless youth who Youth Continuum currently serve are from New Havaen? Livable City Initiative (LCI) Neighborhood Specialist Carmen Mendez asked.

Roughly 90 to 95 percent, Kosowsky replied.

And how many homeless youth are served by Youth Continuum on a daily basis right now? another neighbor inquired.

On slow days, between 10 and 15, Kosowsky said. On busier days, between 35 and 40. ​“They all leave at the end of the day right now,” he added, though Youth Continuum does arrange emergency transitional shelter for roughly 60 of its clients scattered throughout the Greater New Haven area.

Twelve of those youth, he said, are in another housing facility elsewhere in New Haven. They will be the ones moving to Y2Y when that second floor is built. Ideally, Greenberg said, the new facility will be able to accommodate closer to 20 homeless youth per night, since there are at least 10 to 15 additional youth on any given night in this city who need a place to sleep and have nowhere else to go.

Management team chair Caroline Smith commended Greenberg for the extensive community outreach he undertook between the first community meetings about the project in the spring of 2018 and the City Plan Commission meeting in June.

She praised the youth-led model of Y2Y, and the planned inclusion of a commercial space that would double as a community hangout.

“I’m honored and excited to have a project like Y2Y” in my neighborhood, she said.