Thomas Breen file photos
New Haveners who testified Thursday night. From left to right. Top row: Dave Cruz Bustamante, Kim Hart, James Bhandary-Alexander. Middle row: John Lee, Remidy Shareef, Iva Johnson. Bottom row: Howard Boyd, Mareika Phillips, Karen DuBois-Walton.
From legalizing accessory dwelling units to endorsing Medicare for All, dozens of civically engaged New Haveners offered the Board of Alders a policy-specific roadmap for how to help realize a safer, healthier, and more equitable city.
Those public testimonies came Thursday night during a marathon, three-and-a-half-hour public hearing hosted by the Board of Alders Health & Human Services Committee.
The virtual meeting took place over Zoom and YouTube live.
The primary focus of the night was a proposed resolution outlining the local legislature’s top policy priorities for the coming year.
The proposed legislative agenda submitted by Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker-Myers, President Pro Tem Jeanette Morrison, and Majority Leader Richard Furlow, among others, identifies five goals that the alders intend to focus on.
Those include jobs for New Haven residents, a safe city for everyone, quality affordable housing, health equity and vibrant communities, and environmental justice. (See the full proposed resolution below.)
Zoom
Thursday night’s virtual hearing.
During Thursday night’s public hearing, over 50 New Haveners — including many familiar faces from neighborhood management teams, community organizing efforts, and other walks of civic life from across the city — endorsed the proposed agenda.
They also filled in the general areas of focus with specific policies that they’d like to see the alders pass at the local level and advocate for nationwide.
Their collective call for action, on everything from zoning reform to job creation to a fairer redistribution of wealth to access to quality and affordable healthcare, challenged the alders to treat this agenda as more than just words on a page.
“I feel like the system of government in America has always been broken,” said Ice the Beef Executive Director of Outreach Remidy Shareef. “We’re asking the Board of Alders in New Haven to help put these pieces back together in New Haven, Connecticut, so we can live with peace, justice, and equality.”
Varick AME Church Pastor Kelcy Steele reminded the local legislators just how high the stakes are for city residents.
“The City of New Haven has been hit badly during Covid-19, but we were struggling long before the pandemic,” he said. “Children attend underfunded schools. The Department of Public Works is stretched thin. The police force has continued to get smaller. Many of our residents live from paycheck to paycheck in deep, intergenerational poverty.” And 60 percent of the city’s grand list is off the tax rolls.
Thomas Breen pre-pandemic photo
Board Prez Walker-Myers
Walker-Myers said that the agenda emerged from “years and years of conversations door to door with neighbors, surveys, community meetings” that alders have had with their constituents to try to understand what New Haveners want to see from their local government.
After hearing so many people come out to speak in favor of the proposed agenda, and to fill in details for how that agenda should be realized going forward, she told her colleagues, “We have to hold each other accountable and push each other harder to do what our community is expecting of us.”
Act Now On Zoning Reform
Pre-pandemic photo
City Plan Commission Chair Leslie Radcliffe.
Some of the most frequent housing-related recommendations to come up Thursday night pertained to proposed reforms to the city’s zoning code — a set of local land-use ordinances governed by the Board of Alders, and therefore some of the lowest-hanging fruit that local legislators could pursue.
At the top of the local zoning reform wishlist Thursday was legalizing accessory dwelling units (ADUs)—that is, allowing a homeowner to convert an attic or a garage into a legal living space.
The board should “take up the baton to begin once again to review and revamp the zoning ordinances,” said newly minted City Plan Commission Chair Leslie Radcliffe.
That means allow homeowners to convert garages into cottages and encouraging the development of new single room occupancies (SROs) and “boarding houses for the working poor.”
“We are all aware of the building boom taking place downtown and in surrounding areas,” she said. But many of those new apartments — at the Novella and at the Corsair — are not affordable for the average New Haven resident.
“We can and must find ways to promote quality, affordable housing with the stock we already have.”
Wooster Square resident Aaron Goode (pictured) encouraged the alders to refer to two recent, local reports filled with zoning reforms that could increase New Haven’s affordable housing supply.
One is “New Haven at a Crossroads,” by Joel Schiavone, Emly McDiamid, Mark Van Allen, Eric Polinsky, and Robert Orr. The other is a paper by Katherine McComic endorsing the legalization of “tiny homes.”
“Affordable housing has been a major topic for the Board of Alders for quite a few years,” New Haven Urban Design League President Anstress Farwell said.
She commended the alders for creating a new Affordable Housing Commission, and encouraged them to consider “accessory dwelling units, and how to expand zoning to allow them. It’s one of the best tools for expanding the amount of affordable housing” because the spaces already exist.
And, in addition to calling for more bike lanes, crosswalks, and pedestrian safety infrastructure citywide, Safe Streets Coalition of New Haven organizer Lior Trestman said the alders should consider eliminating parking minimums from the zoning code to both boost housing, and discourage car use.
Courtney Luciana photo
Newhallville Community Action Network Founder Devin Avshalom-Smith (pictured) singled out the zoning code for reform not just to increase the city’s housing supply, but also to increase jobs and improve the quality of life in neighborhoods like Newhallville.
“Why are we still hampered by zoning regulations that make it challenging to open businesses other than liquor stores and corner stores?” he asked.
If you visit Newhallville, he told the alders, “What you will witness is the resolve and strength of a people who have been segregated to a place of dark obscurity in the City of New Haven. It is a place we go to to find peace, but where we often find we have to continue to fight for our lives every day.”
Jobs. Jobs. Jobs
Markeshia Ricks pre-pandemic file photo
Those who turned out on Thursday also pressed hard on the alders to prioritize New Haveners access to good-paying jobs.
“A good job transforms a person’s life,” said New Haven Works Executive Director Melissa Mason (pictured). “It provides their family with stability.”
Since the alders helped create the employment support agency in 2012, New Haven Works has placed more than 1,600 people in jobs with New Haven-area employers, including 140 since the start of the pandemic. She called on the board to continue to support organizations like hers that connect New Haveners with local jobs, and to continue to encourage city employers to hire locally.
Thomas Breen photo
Retired former police sergeant and Beaver Hills alder candidate Shafiq Abdussabur (pictured) called on the board to fund a “robust investment in trade programs that start at high school,” so that young New Haveners who cannot afford to go to college or simply do not want to go to college are prepared to enter the workforce right after high school.
“I want a New Haven where young people can afford to buy a house, not just afford to pay rent in a house somebody else owns,” he said.
City Point resident and federal public defender Andrew Giering recalled growing up in New Haven and driving with his parents from his mom’s family home on Ivy Street in Newhallville to the adjacent neighborhoods of Prospect Hill and East Rock.
While average life expectancy in the predominantly African American neighborhood of Newhallville is 72 years, he said, life expectancy in the predominantly white neighborhood of East Rock is 83 years.
“We are a segregated city,” Giering said. “The gap between the haves and the have nots in our city has never been wider.”
New Haveners from all across the city must stand with the Board of Alders to keep the pressure on large local employers like Yale University and Yale New Haven Hospital to hire city residents and increase their annual financial contributions to New Haven’s cash-strapped budget, he said.
“Yale’s charity is not enough.” (See this article for the university spokesperson’s response to calls for Yale to contribute more to New Haven’s budget.)
On Healthcare Access, Think Big
Chris Peak pre-pandemic file photo
And some New Haveners pushed the alders to exercise whatever political pull they can muster to encourage New Haven’s federal representatives to advocate for a single payer healthcare system in the form of Medicare for All.
Local immigrant rights organizer Jesus Morales Sánchez spoke of how he was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age 23, and delayed seeking medical treatment for a dangerously long period of time because of his lack of health insurance.
After trudging through “an endless bureaucracy,” he was able to enroll in the state’s expanded Medicaid program, known as Husky D. He said he was only able to afford his insulin before enrolling in Husky D thanks to the federal government’s 340B program.
Policies like these — and ones that would provide an even broader, more affordable medical safety net — are critical for low-income people with chronic health conditions to survive, he said.
“Medicare for All, a single payer system, already exists in Canada,” said legal aid attorney James Bhandary-Alexander. It would redistribute the cost of health insurance away from cash-strapped people and organizations, like New Haven’s city government, and towards wealthier taxpayers.
“It leads to no copays, no premiums, no deductibles, and a system that works for everyone.”
Witnesses to Hunger organizer Kim Hart said that one in 10 people of color in New Haven have no healthcare coverage at all and “many more are underinsured.” That leads to delayed care and costly Emergency Department visits, she said.
She noted that the alders have already declared racism a public health crisis. Endorsing Medicare for All represents a logical next step.
“High quality healthcare,” she said, “is a human right for every person in New Haven.”
See below for the full proposed resolution outlining the Board of Alders legislative agenda.
RESOLUTION OF THE NEW HAVEN BOARD OF ALDERS ESTABLISHING A LEGISLATIVE AGENDA AND CALLING ON CITY PARTNERS TO INCREASE THEIR COMMITMENT OF RESOURCES IN ORDER TO ENABLE THE CITY TO PROVIDE SERVICES AND TO ADVANCE KEY POLICY PRIORITIES
WHEREAS New Haven is a diverse and engaged community with tremendous potential; and
WHEREAS New Haven faces serious challenges, including the harm caused by decades of segregation and discrimination, which have created economic and social inequality along racial lines; and
WHEREAS the COVID pandemic has exacerbated these inequalities and has had a disproportionate impact on communities of color concentrated in neighborhoods of need; and
WHEREAS these communities face several challenges: high unemployment and limited access to good jobs; a scourge of violence and a lack of trust in the police; an insufficient supply of clean, safe, and affordable housing; inadequate access to quality, affordable health services and poor health outcomes; and proximity to pollution and environmental degradation; and
WHEREAS the Black and Hispanic Caucus of the New Haven Board of Alders has called attention to these legacies of segregation and racism and has challenged political and community leaders to come together to change the maps of redlining and exclusion.
NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the New Haven Board of Alders hereby establishes a legislative agenda that advances the following policy goals: Jobs for New Haven residents; A safe city for everyone; Quality affordable housing; Health equity and vibrant communities; and environmental justice.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Board of Alders calls on the City’s partners to increase their commitment of resources to support the City’s ability to provide services to residents and to make strategic investments that advance the policy goals set forth in this legislative agenda.
Seems like a good place to bump my NHI op-ed on why New Haven needs Medicare for All: https://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/new_haven_hamden_need_medicare_for_all/
In addition to advancing health equity and literally saving lives, it would also help with the budget!
The board of alders should absolutely pass a resolution endorsing Medicare for All to our delegation in Washington. Hamden should do it too!