New Haven Independent

Posted by: Ned | April 16, 2009 9:53 AM

"That's why [housing costs] a lot of young people are leaving the state" I remember leaving CT (as a young person) because it was boring [no street life - see the car], and the cities, where many young people want to live, were [are] dangerous, and one needs to own a car, whereas housing costs in a more expensive city, like Seattle or Portland, are offset by the ability to function without owning a car, and the culture is a little more open. Also, how many young people aspire to live in a public housing project, or isolated in a strip mall suburb?

Posted by: END The WASTE | April 16, 2009 10:16 AM

While it is very nice to see families receive a home. Most of these units are rehabbed, not new. An audit of the costs should be examined. There were allegations of lost materials and structural problems. $25 million for 25 more units is an extremely excessive cost per unit. Also, geothermal heat is not a reasonable use of funds when funds are limited. OVERSIGHT of public funds and procurement of services is needed.

Posted by: Beansie's Mom | April 16, 2009 10:59 AM

Correction:
The city didn't gain two two streets. It's replacing Eastern Circle, the actual city street that Terrace was built around with two cul de sacs.

Why because the experts felt that cul de sacs would be better than driving thru. That's worked so well at Cornell Scott Ridge.

When this plan was last presented to the general public those two new streets were presents as private roads that the Mangement company would be responsible for caring fo (ie plowing) not the city's Public Works department.

HANH contractors are why we have another Bridge now in this CIty. From 49 to 50, even the CIty engineer can't keep track.

I hope to hell, no one in Washington seriously considers pouring another 25 million dollars into this complex. Geothermal. Get a foundation to fund that not my tax dollars.

25 million to house how many people. Fiscally irresponsible.

Twenty five million would what: Fix the Grand Avenue Bridge or Finish Quininpiac Avenue. Maybe it could solve the constant flooding on Hemmingway Avenue. A problem exacerbated directly by this HANH Easview REDO.

Urban Development is more than constantly keeping Architects and Builders employed.

Congratulations one and all in the Democratic Party in Connecticut.

Posted by: Boristt | April 16, 2009 11:05 AM

Another freebe to people who will just trash them.Now we have people already complaining that they arnt new there refurbished,so what the tax payers are goung to foot the bill,so move in break everything,leave lights on,blast the airconditioning its all free to certain people

Posted by: robn | April 16, 2009 1:49 PM

Where the ehck is this $21/hour number coming from? Greenwich? You can get two bedroom apartments in New Haven for under $1000 per month. With each of two roommates paying half, thats $3.21/hour (in a 40 hour week). A $12 wage would make this reasonable rent.

Posted by: cedarhillresident | April 16, 2009 3:08 PM

Robn,

1000.00 is a rounded number. the old saying is, you need to make in a week, what your rent for the month. With a 1000.00 rent that would mean you need to be making $25.00 an hour. And the average income in New haven is 25-30 a year. Which is to much to qualify for these so called affordable housing programs and to little to stay here. When are these lug heads going to get it!! They are bushing a certain group out of this city.

Posted by: City Hall Watch | April 16, 2009 5:17 PM

$1 million a unit. $25 million investment for only 25 housing units. That's quite the business plan. Housing fit for kings.

Posted by: lance | April 16, 2009 5:55 PM

what a joke.

Posted by: robn | April 16, 2009 10:08 PM

CHR,

We're doing the same math for two bedroom apartments but I'm doing it through the lens of single person (who pays half). You are right that a single person (or single earner family) renting a two bedroom for $1000 would need twice as much. I see your point.

R

Posted by: fedupwithliberals | April 16, 2009 10:46 PM

LANCE

It would be funny if it weren't our money!

Posted by: Haha | April 17, 2009 9:22 AM

What a waste of money. I've lived in New Haven for over 20 years and have seen the projects east of I-91 at exit 6 go through at least three cycles of plywood over broken windows. I believe that we're on the fourth.

I hope that I'll be long gone before this new place meets the same fate. Let someone else pick up the tab.

Posted by: norton street | April 17, 2009 10:27 AM

Haha, I believe the plywood over the windows is to prevent people from breaking into the apartment because its vacant. Same reason why foreclosed upon homes are boarded up.

I would rather pay for someone to eat and live under a roof then for road construction/repair so that people can use my streets to get home faster after work. i dont like subsidizing people that have more than i do, i have much less of a problem subsidizing people who have less than i do.

Posted by: yeah right | April 17, 2009 10:53 AM

The place looks so nice I would love to live there. Oh wait, I am responsible, got a job, and pay my bills. I dont qualify. Another 50 million down the tubes.

Posted by: Haha | April 17, 2009 11:55 AM

Norton Street:

The reason that the apartment is vacant is that it was trashed by the previous grateful law-abiding tenant.

Posted by: we need a new mayor | April 17, 2009 12:13 PM

By the way, I forgot to mention that the reason that these units are so expensive is because they have the top of the line windows, Trivek expensive decking, top of the line energy star appliances, and now geothermal heating!! great! I guess that's enough good reason for the big price....right Jimmy? Is that fair to other public housing residents who still live in deteriorating complexes? Is that fair to everyone else? Jimmy and Karen, why don't you think about spending OUR tax money more wisely and not all in one place? But no, you have the mentality that the tax payers and the government have deep pockets.
It doesn't fit in my head how HUD allows this when out country is in such a budget deficit and in such economic peril.

Posted by: weneedanewmayor | April 17, 2009 12:43 PM

This is outrageous. They spent $500,000.00 (highlight the zeros) per unit for the first phase and now they want to spend another $1,000,000.00 per unit for phase two? This is crazy! and every year they'll keep asking for more money to renovate units, and in 10 years (or less) we'll see them asking again for money to rehab these same projects. Enough is enough. I went to college, I'm married, and I work hard everyday, and I could never dream to either rent or buy a completely renovated, or new unit, worth half to one million dollars.

Posted by: fedupwithliberals | April 18, 2009 6:18 AM

And you wonder why the middle class has fled the city?

Posted by: norton street | April 18, 2009 12:07 PM

fedupwithliberals,
the middle class left the city because they were sold a packaged deal, including the automobile and country living with space and cleanliness.
50 years later, our population has doubled, gas demand is rising while supply is dwindling, the suburbs are cesspools of garbage architecture, no civic/cultural spaces, massive highways, unsustainable malls, strip malls, an over consumption lifestyle as normal, depressed teens, etc.
the middle class has been sold a product that is no longer what we're being told it is. Our farmland and forests are being destroyed to build single family homes in a way that cannot be maintained cheaply in the future (since this has been happening for 50 years, the future has caught up with us today).

Posted by: Charlie O'Keefe | April 18, 2009 4:43 PM

$450,000 a unit just to rehab two bedroom townhouses?

Maybe those folks throwing tea in Long Island Sound aren't so crazy.

Someone somewhere in the Federal Government should asking some sreious questions on this.

Posted by: fedupwithliberals | April 19, 2009 5:48 AM

NORTON STREET

My God, man! You really have to get out of the house more often! Have you been dialing in on Hugo Chavez radio? We're not fleeing America, just New Haven. Suburbs are cesspools of garbage architecture? What the hell does that and the price of gas have to do with anything? Your talking points have nothing to do with the subject at hand which is urban flight. People move out of the city because they are under attack from their local government who provide less services for more taxes, give sanctuary for people bustin' into this country to suck up social services on their dime. Working people get pissed because their local government builds beautiful waterfront property for Section 8 residents while letting their own streets collect potholes and broken glass. This happens in cities where one party rules with no opposition and acts to grow a voter base by expanding an underclass. Guess what. If I have no representation in my city and I do not have a say in how my money is spent, then I'm outta here. And, as other posters have noted, you eventually run out of other people's money to blow.

Give me the suburbs where people share my values, not yours.

Posted by: Tony Soprano | April 19, 2009 6:24 AM

Look at the money to be made out of public housing in New Haven. Patronage has become payola. I wish Newark was so good.

Posted by: norton street | April 19, 2009 2:34 PM

FUWL,

http://www.tv-links.eu/show_link.php?data=Mjg3MzA1

this film begins to explain suburbia's illusion and effect on this country. i'm not sure i completely agree with their view on peak oil, but thats not the only thing to take from the documentary.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1ZeXnmDZMQ

i would also read
City: Urbanism and its End by Douglas Rae

the solution to unpleasant cities is not to "flee" them and go to energy draining, highly subsidized and unsustainable suburbia, it is to make the cities better because they are the original, timeless, meaningful containers for human civilization.

Posted by: lance | April 20, 2009 12:28 AM

Well said fedup.

And Norton Street, correct me if I'm wrong, but Doug Rae's only street cred is that he coached a couple of black kids in soccer twenty years ago. What do Ivy league professors know about the hood and the mentality of it's occupants? Let me tell you something, many if not most are just running the ghetto hustle graciously facilitated by the democrats. Any hope of saving this county let alone the cities rests in giving less entiteents and not more.

And calling the suburbs "highly subsidized" is bullshit.

Liberals are cheap as hell, ask any bartender or waitress. they're only good at spending other's tax dollars.

Posted by: fedupwithliberals | April 20, 2009 5:53 AM

NORTON STREET

If you think that hard working people investing their money (read their) in towns that share their values is subsidizing, then you have to go back to public school for another lesson in Economics and English. What you see in the cities, where millions of dollars are shoveled from state and federal coffers for unsustainable and dubious programs, now that's subsidizing. Putting a new school on every streetcorner which removes a private property from the grand list, increasing the educational budget beyond means and expecting Jodi Rell to pay for the difference, now that's subsidizing.

I'll agree with you on only one point. Being raised in the city when the world made sense is a wonderful thing. Having neighbors and relatives all around you, walking to the corner store, walking to school, enjoying your local park. Now that was community! I miss that dearly. But my original post still holds true. If you try and change the citizen's environment and culture against their will with no appreciable return for tax dollars spent, then you move on.

Posted by: norton street | April 20, 2009 12:15 PM

the way eastern circle is subsidized is through reduction in rent for its tenants.
the way suburbia is subsidized is different, not as straight forward. some subsidies include road construction/repair/expansion, parking garage/surface parking lots (that could be the site for retail but instead take up 45% of downtown new havens square footage just to house people from outside the city's cars), and gasoline. my bicycle doesnt require that i use any of these subsidized things, yet i pay for it anyways. i am subsidizing people who have way more than i do. so i am punished for trying to live as locally as i can while people who buy goods in mass from china and india, and guzzle up gas from the middle east get a cheap ride on my dollar. youre for this country? your (maybe not specifically you but suburban people in general) daily purchases continue to export jobs to other countries. the decentralization of cities caused the price of shipping goods across our coutnry to every little town extremely expensive, so to offset the cost we send jobs to countries that will do the work for next to nothing. people have lived in suburbia for enough generations that it seems like theyve always been there. suburban life is the antithesis of local and modest living.

and i will say this again:
an inner city welfare mom is to new haven, what a suburban family is to new haven. the only difference is that i know the inner city welfare moms, because we ride the bus together, some of them went to school with me at some point k-12. the suburban family is something i never get to interact with because they lock themselves in their cars to drive through my city, they park in massive garages, work in tall buildings that have no relation to human scale and then they leave, and i pay for this.

Posted by: fedupwithliberals | April 20, 2009 12:53 PM

NORTON STREET

And of course, all the state income tax, federal income tax, CT sales tax, capitol gains, estate tax, motor vehicle and gas tax never finds it's way to the inner city. All those federal HUD grants just rain down on the suburbs as well. Yeah, right. All comes back to us with no more being given to the cities.

And if you don't know why suburban moms lock themselves in their cars and stay out of harm's way to protect themselves and their families, I don't know what anyone can say to make you understand what has happened to the society over the past 30 years. We call it the survival instinct.

Posted by: norton street | April 20, 2009 3:39 PM

whats happened to society over the last 30 years is that suburban children have felt entitlement to a lifestyle that is extremely expensive to maintain, and we expand it every year onto more and more forests and farmland. kids grow up used to a massive single family home, a dog, multiple siblings and several cars for each driver in the family. this is the normal, accepted lifestyle, and anything less isnt okay. and these kids look at me, someone who rides public transport, who doesnt have a car, who lives by my means and thinks im someone to lock themselves in their car from. i feel really bad for families that are scared to drive for 10 minutes down whalley avenue or chapel street or any other commuting route when i only have to live on these streets! i WALK around on these streets, so yeah i feel like theyre justified to be scare in their box of a car. i must be the luckiest person in the world to still be alive with all the random bullets and muggers flying around on the street. the american assumption is: suburbia=good, city=bad. so the people with money dont invest in inner city neighborhoods and you can see this on shelton ave in newhallville, empty lot after empty lot, boarded up, burnt out houses and real poverty. the only investments made in these communities are through public housing, which was a terrible idea that has been implemented horribly since its beginnings in the 1930s.
the suburbs are just large housing projects, families pay for the homes themselves but all the rest of what makes suburbia possible (highways, state roads, city streets, gasoline, shopping malls, cross-country shipment of goods, etc) is payed for and/or subsidized by everyone.
i do not agree with housing projects, they destroyed old neighborhoods in cities and single-handedly created gangs in new haven (would we have had the crime we did in 1990 without the jungle boys from church street south, the ghetto boys from farnham courts, the island brothers from quinnipiac terrace, the tribe from elm haven, etc). and suburbia is the largest housing project of them all! i dont see where you got that i was all for eastern circles $25 million renovation because im not. i would rather that money be spent in an old neighborhood like newhallville to rehabilitate 100 year old homes, build traditional housing on vacant lots and make the neighborhood attractive for middle class people so that this country can return to a modest living arrangement that is defined by meaningful interactions with people and spaces and not one defined by overconsumption, greed, separation, unsustainability, meaninglessness and everything else that has come from the modern approach to living.

Posted by: annon | April 20, 2009 5:48 PM

did anyone take a moment to read the part about the culdisac style roads? If you have a chance drive through and notice all the areas within this new development people are going to be able to hangout and commit crimes while still being able to see the police comming. In a city with such a large crime and drug problem it seems that the mayor and builders have yet to realize that they can help prevent crime with good arcitecute and road placement. The new culdisac allows dealers to sit almost anywhere inside the complex and deal with almost no fear of getting caught. By the time the police can enter and reach them they will be able to disapeer into houses backyards woods. The new homes on front street were created with several short roads allowing police to enter and exit from several directions constantly keeping dealers and buyers on their toes. This setup is almost inviting the buyers and dealers into their nieghborhood. I give it a year before there is a serious crime issue. The sad thing is you can't even blame the criminals. The city refuses to look at what has worked for crime suppression in new develoments and what continues to fail. Hell of a job Destefano keep up the good work

Posted by: norton street | April 20, 2009 7:44 PM

great observation anon,
the perfect example of this is in memphis where public housing was spread out across the city to outer ring neighborhoods that were located on windy country roads. the results of this was a massive surge in violent and property crime and its because its very difficult to patrol these areas since they are not on a regular gridded road system. it is ideal for criminals. its not quite the same situation here, since this area is slightly more dense and there are more streets than in memphis but it will definitely be much more difficult to patrol and prevent crime on this non-grid development.

Posted by: lance | April 21, 2009 7:27 AM

Norton street, will you be publishing a manifesto any time soon?

Posted by: Gary | May 14, 2009 10:41 PM

"the perfect example of this is in memphis where public housing was spread out across the city to outer ring neighborhoods that were located on windy country roads. the results of this was a massive surge in violent and property crime and its because its very difficult to patrol these areas since they are not on a regular gridded road system. it is ideal for criminals."

Not only Memphis, but right here in New Haven. You basically described west rock housing project streets (in the middle of no where, no easy access, crime infested).

Posted by: Cherese Chambers | September 9, 2009 3:38 PM

I would like to know, what happen to the ones who moved out of eastern circle as a tenant in good standing being contacted about moving back an I attended meetings my name was on the list to get letters about the plans and our insight of what we would like to see but in the end they've have been rebuilt and we were never contacted. How unfair is that