New Haven Independent

The celebration was not just of these four homes. It also marked the 50th home built by New Haven Habitat over the past 20 years. (This reporter remembers sitting on a plank hanging outside off the third floor of a Habitat house on Cassius Street nearby in the Hill in 1987, scraping lead paint off the back of the house with then-U.S. Congressman Bruce Morrison — who admitted being afraid of heights but was up there anyway — and meeting a young Habitat volunteer named Jorge Perez, shortly before he was elected to the Board of Aldermen, where he still serves.)

Two of the volunteers who had put in many hours on these houses walked through one and kept up a non-stop commentary of all the work they had done. Sue Tomlinson of New Haven and Cassasndra Mendoza of Bridgeport volunteered through their employer, Health Net, one of the four main sponsors of the project. They put up wallboard, painted, and made the house “hurricane-proof.” Click here to listen to their excited account.

Other major sponsors for the homes are the Knights of Columbus, NewAlliance Foundation and Madison Cares.

Benito and Teresa Castellano will be moving in with four of their daughters (two other children are grown) after the closing in about a week from an apartment in Fair Haven. Benito said he’s been volunteering with Habitat, a faith-based self-help housing development program, for six years. The program requires income-eligible families to put in 400 hours of sweat equity on their own and other families’ houses. He said of his impending move: “The house is great. The neighborhood is great.”

The Bryant, Castellano, Ortiz and Otero families will soon be moving in next door to one another, with three more Habitat houses to follow, creating a critical mass of homeowners on one end of the street, which formerly had more than its share of abandoned houses, drug-dealing and violence.

The dedication began with a prayer offered in the names of “Jehovah, Allah, Creator God.”

Bill Casey, executive director of Habitat in New Haven, explained to a big crowd of volunteers and neighbors (some of whom are pictured here) that the project took nine years, far longer than expected. They stuck with it because of their commitment to the Hill and reciprocal support from neighbors and the city administration. Click here to listen to his elaboration.