Thomas Breen photo
Hill management team’s Leslie Radcliffe and Alder Carmen Rodriguez at Thursday’s dawn press conference.
All four Hill alders, two former Hill alders, and a small group of neighborhood community management team leaders gathered in the pouring rain outside Career High School Thursday to slam Mayor Justin Elicker for choosing the Legion Avenue high school to host a 75-bed facility for homeless people who test positive for COVID-19 but do not need hospitalization.
The mayor defended the decision by pointing out that Career is already a federally designated regional emergency shelter site, and that it will have “round-the-clock” security preventing people from coming and going as they please. He also pleaded for patience at a time when his administration has to move quickly to stay one step ahead of the ever-evolving public health crisis.
That press conference took place early Thursday morning outside one of Career’s front entrances at 141 Legion Ave.
Seeking shelter beneath an awning as rain poured down and traffic hurtled by in the pre-dawn darkness, Hill Alders Ron Hurt, Evelyn Rodriguez, Kampton Singh, and Carmen Rodriguez joined former Hill Alders Jackie and Latrice James and Hill North Community Management Team leaders Pamela Monk-Kelley, Lena Largie, and Leslie Radcliffe to lay into the mayor for announcing Career’s imminent new function at a Wednesday afternoon press conference.
“Unfortunately this decision has been rushed without adequate time to consider all of the burdens that it puts on the Hill,” Hurt said. “This decision needs to be delayed until all other options are considered.”
Outside Career High School early Thursday.
Radcliffe agreed.
“Please know that while we are concerned for the health and safety of all of our population, housed and unhoused alike, we feel that once again, the Hill is being used as a depository to address yet another risky health concern of the City that other neighborhoods would not tolerate if it was brought to their neighborhood,” she said while reading a letter on behalf of management team Chair Howard Boyd, Vice Chair Monk-Kelley, Secretary Maxine Harris, and Treasurer Jose DeJesus.
The group focused its concerns not just on mayoral communication and on other potential sites for the emergency shelter, but also on a familiar theme in the neighborhood: That the Hill already hosts a disproportionate number of homeless shelters, methadone clinics, rehab centers, medical facilities, and other social services that frequently bring people struggling with a variety of health issues into a densely residential community.
“In my opinion, we’ve just been dumped on without any communication, that’s not right,” said Singh (pictured).
“The Hill already bears an unfair burden in providing public services to the most vulnerable,” said Hurt (pictured).
“Throughout the country there have been stories about cities locating quarantine sites in low-income neighborhoods.”
That’s not fair, he continued, and makes Hill residents that much more vulnerable to contracting the novel coronavirus through its proximity to existing shelters, this new emergency shelter, and Yale New Haven Hospital’s main campus on York Street.
Latrice James (pictured) said that she texted with Elicker Wednesday afternoon and provided him with a few alternate locations for the emergency shelter site.
Those include the former Gateway Community College building on Long Wharf and a facility on Ella T. Grasso Boulevard.
Singh suggested Co-Op High School on Crown Street as another large, publicly owned space near the hospital that’s in a commercial district.
“If China can building hospitals in days,” James said, “the city, the State of Connecticut, can definitely retrofit [the former Gateway building] within hours.”
She said she’s concerned that people with COVID-19 will be able to walk in and out of Career if the school is used as an emergency shelter, potentially presenting greater risks to nearby neighbors.
And she said that the city should not let cost considerations be the primary determinant as to where such a shelter should be located.
“My life, my children’s life, my parents’ life, my community’s life costs more than a dollar,” she said. “Using ‘saving money’ measures as a driving force is totally unacceptable.”
“This is on my front step,” said Largie (pictured at right with Monk-Kelley). “This is not just my backyard. This is my front step. I have an elderly mother who lives at home. I cannot afford the virus to get to her.”
“This is not a great idea,” added Monk-Kelley. “We’re asking, we’re pleading with the city to hold off on this plan.”
Hill Alder Evelyn Rodriguez (pictured) said that Career may indeed prove to be the best place in the city to locate such an emergency shelter for homeless people who test positive for the novel coronavirus but do not need hospitalization.
But that decision should not be made unilaterally without community and aldermanic input, she said. “The problem is that we need to work on improving communcations across the board.”
Elicker: “We Need To Make Very Fast Decisions”
In a follow-up phone interview Thursday morning, Elicker (pictured) acknowledged the frustration that Hill alders and community leaders feel about his administration’s selection of Career to serve as such an emergency shelter.
He said that his office did speak with Alder Hurt on the phone before making the announcement at Wednesday afternoon’s press conference. He said that he did notify aldermanic leadership about the Career plans during a daily call held Wednesday morning, and that he had a long conference call with Hill North Community Management Team executive leadership about the decision Wednesday night.
“Our team is going to have to make a lot of decisions over the next month and two months that are going to be very difficult for us as a city to manage,” he said. “I am asking people to please be patient, to please do as much as they can to support their neighbors, to support their community members, even those they don’t know, and to be patient with the city.”
Elicker stressed that the Career shelter site, which won’t be open Thursday but should be open soon, will have “round-the-clock” security as well as medical staff present.
“People will not be able to leave the facility,” he said.
“People in the neighborhood surrounding the school will not be more exposed” to the novel coronavirus because of the presence of this shelter, he said.
He explained that his administration chose Career to host this facility in large part because the school is already a federally recognized regional emergency shelter site.
He said that the city and the federal Department of Homeland Security engaged in an extensive planning process after Hurricane Irene in 2011 to identify emergency regional shelter locations.
“In that process there were three sites in New Haven that were identified as appropriate places for people to shelter,” he said. Those were Career, Hillhouse High School, and Wilbur Cross High School.
Of those three, he said, “Career is the only site that is designated as a regional emergency shelter location.” He said that using such a location will help the city with potential reimbursements from the federal government.
But the site selection goes beyond money, he said.
“This is a regional issue. We need to focus not just on one neighborhood, not just on one city, but in a regional way” to address this crisis.
He said he thinks that Hill leaders are right in demanding that City Hall communicate as clearly as possible with residents about critical public health decisions related to the coronavirus pandemic. He said he also understands that Hill neighbors have been voicing concerns for a long time about being home to a disproportionate number of social services.
He asked residents to consider two key factors in his administration’s selection of Career.
One, he said, “we don’t have a lot of choice,” because of the federal designation of Career as a regional emergency shelter.
And two, “we just don’t have time. We need to make very fast decisions to protect the health of the city. If we don’t have a site up and running as soon as possible to ensure that we are able to quarantine many people who do not have a place to go, many, many more people in the Hill, in Beaver Hills, in East Rock, and all around the city will be infected.”