Colon Slams Slumlords, Praises Hill Model

Drawing on her own story as a working single mother who ascended to the middle class, the co-chair of the Black & Hispanic Caucus called out slumlords and put high-end developers on notice that affordable housing needs to be part of their plans for the Elm City.

The chair, Hill Alder Dolores Colon, made that subject a focus of he annual Black & Hispanic Caucus’ ​“State of the City” address, which she delivered in the aldermanic chambers at City Hall Monday night.

Colon made the address personal, pointing out that she had the same challenges that many people face now when she came to the city in 1989.

She’d come to the city to get her undergraduate degree through a program for nontraditional students at Yale University, she recalled. A single mother, she graduated in a down economy. So despite her Ivy League degree couldn’t find full-time employment.

She did eventually get full-time work at the Yale University Library. But she was paid so little that she was eligible for Medicaid and food stamps. Then office workers formed a union, which now goes by the name UNITE HERE Local 34. The union contract, won after a hard-fought strike, gave her the wages and benefits needed to join the middle class and eventually purchase a house with the help of Yale’s homebuyer program.

“As we continue the fight for jobs we must ensure access to affordable housing,” Colon. ​“I, myself, would not have made it without access.”

Colon said in 1991 she was able to rent a three-bedroom apartment at Trade Union Plaza on Dwight Street for just $90 a month. ​“Today, a three-bedroom apartment like I needed in 1991 for my family costs over $1,600 a month,” she said. ​“Ironically, apartments in luxury condos sit empty while New Haveners struggle to pay rent in dilapidated apartments that have absentee landlords.” (Trade Union Plaza had been a labor-supported cooperative that like similar nearby complexes eventually fell apart and was sold to a private owner.)

Colon said the city needs to act against such landlords who allow their apartments to fall into the kind of disrepair that New Haven has seen in her ward at Church Street South, and more recently, in the Edgewood neighborhood at 66 Norton St..

“No one should have to live with faulty plumbing or dangerous electrical systems,” Colon said.

Colon called for stronger deterrents from the legal system to ensure that tenants never have to deal with chronically leaky roofs thatlead to toxic mold that create generations of asthma suffers. She pointed out while the city welcomes new development, it doesn’t go unnoticed that much of the city’s recent success has been with high-end apartment development in downtown.

Now that development is starting to branch out to other parts of the city, particularly in neighborhoods where the unemployment rate is often high and the stock of decent and affordable housing low, she pointed to the Hill-to-Downtown model as the way forward. Colon, along with other Hill residents and alders, helped push developer Randy Salvatore to raise the amount of affordable apartments in that project from 10 percent to 30 percent. Money from the deal also is helping to fund a construction pipeline that will provide jobs for neighborhood residents and a neighborhood improvement fund, she said.

Colon said Hill-to-Downtown proves that the city can attract developers who want to revitalize the city while creating affordable housing and employment opportunities for residents. She touched on the plight of the city’s immigrant community in the ​“Age of Trump,” encouraging New Haven’s sanctuary city policies. She also noted the tough road ahead for a state struggling with a massive budget deficit and a tightly divided General Assembly. But she kept to her theme.

“I stand before you as the longest-serving Board of Alders member today as of June this year,” said Colon, who has served nearly 17 years. ​“I’ve successfully raised two kids, own my own home, and when I’m ready will retire with a pension.

“If we give our residents a leg up their successes will benefit us all. I shouldn’t be the only success case. Let’s make it happen for everybody.”

Click on the Facebook Live video below to see Colon’s full speech.