Paul Bass Photo
One of the encampments.
The city Wednesday notified homeless people camping out in the woods off I‑91 that they have eight days to come inside or make other plans.
Officials have worked since last week with social-service agencies to help more than a dozen people who were found to having been living for up to years in clearings in the wooded section off the highway. Responding to neighborhood complaints about unsafe conditions there, city crews worked with the campers to remove an estimated 12 tons of trash from the area. Meanwhile, outreach workers have met with the campers to try to connect them with medical care, temporary shelter, and long-term supportive housing through agencies like Liberty Community Services.
George: We don’t want anyone freezing.
Most of the people have welcomed the help, according to city homeless coordinator Velma George.
“It’s going to be freezing this weekend. We’re trying to get them connected so they will be inside. … We don’t want anyone freezing out there,” George said. “Once they’re connected to services, we don’t want to leave the encampment standing.” Among other concerns, it presents a fire hazard, she said.
Outreach workers have succeeded in either placing people in housing or on the way to doing so, she said. “There are a couple of holdouts. We just wanted them to know they have a little more than a week to either come in and connect to services or figure out what they want to do. We really don’t want them out there.” She said workers continue to speak with the holdouts.
Dave Sadler (pictured), one of the holdouts, reacted with dismay to Wednesday’s effective eviction notice.
“I’ve got a week to figure out what i’m doing with my stuff and with myself,” he said. “I’m freaking out.”
Sadler, an artist who lives on social security, has stayed at the encampment since officials shut down the non-code-compliant living spaces at the Daggett Street Studios in the Hill in March 2015. He said he needs a roommate to afford an apartment, but because has trouble finding one because of his mental health condition.
He said he’s resisting outreach workers’ efforts to get him to stay in a homeless shelter for now.
“I refuse to go to the shelter,” he said. “It’s disgusting. You feel like you’re in jail. They take your rights away; you have to be there at 5. They have crappy food. They’ve had bedbugs. I’m a smoker — they wouldn’t let me go out and and have a cigarette” on some occasions.
Sadler said 15 – 17 people are camping at the site these days, including “two new couples [who] recently moved in.”
Amy Casavina Hall of the United Way of Greater New Haven, who has been working with the agencies helping the campers, put the effort in the context of the larger campaign to eliminate chronic homelessness in Connecticut. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said during a recent New Haven visit that he expects the state to be able to declare that goal met some time in early 2017.
“The tents are emptying out,” Casavina Hall said of the wooded site off I‑91, and several people have already been placed in housing. “We’re finding the folks out there who are most vulnerable, and we’re housing them” and assessing their situations.
If the people want to live there - who cares? Who are they bothering? Nobody. They welcomed the help with the clean up - they probably don't welcome now being evicted. "Hello, we're the government and we're here to help you...I mean, we're here to make you do what we want."