nothin Homeless Man Knocks On Mayor’s Door | New Haven Independent

Homeless Man Knocks On Mayor’s Door

Ike Swetlitz Photos

Protest crowd gathers across from shelter.

After a city homeless shelter evicted him Thursday night, Flor Rico Jones traveled to Westville to knock on Mayor Toni Harp’s front door. He had company.

The Grand Avenue shelters staff evicted Jones (pictured at left), who is 51 and has been homeless for 10 years, earlier that evening after, he said, he took photos of the facilities. He said staff gave him no reason for the eviction. (A shelter staffer declined comment Thursday night.)

They told me I can’t come back forever,” Jones said.

In their latest conflict with the city over homeless issues, members of the Amistad Catholic Worker House showed up outside the shelter to rally on Jones’ behalf and to call for improvements; then four of them accompanied Jones on the ride across town to Harp’s house.



The photos Jones took Thursday (above) show a toilet missing a lid, showers missing knobs and heads, and pipes rusting.

The cleanliness of that place is atrocious,” Jones said. There’d be mold and mildew on ceilings. Mold and mildew on steel. Mold and mildew on insulation. Spider webs all over the place. Tiles missing in the bathroom walls. Tiles missing on the bathroom floor.”

How do other shelters compare? Taj Mahal,” he said.

A Continuing Campaign

Jones (pictured) and Catholic Worker House members previously met with Mayor Harp on May 22 about conditions at the shelter, which has has come under fire periodically over the years for mismanagement or lack of repairs. The May 22 meeting came about partially in response to the city’s dismantling of a camp on Rosette Street in May. Catholic Worker House organizer Greg Williams that the intention of the meeting was to find a legal place for the city’s homeless population to sleep now that the winter overflow shelter has closed for the season.

Jones, Williams and Catholic Worker House member Alan Elbaum said the May 22 meeting ended with three promises from Harp:

• To increase the capacity of the shelter on Grand Avenue to 90 beds.

• To have the shelter cleaned up.

• Eliminate the 90 days in/90 days out policy. This policy states that, after 90 days in a homeless shelter, a person must wait 90 days before re-entering.

Harp also agreed to try to find room at the shelter for Jones and another homeless man.

Harp said she did call the shelter, and the two men were provided beds.

The activists said that since then the other man was kicked out after one night, and Jones was evicted Thursday. They also said conditions haven’t improved. The Catholic Worker House started asking people to take photographs of the inside of the shelter for evidence of its conditions. Jones agreed.

After he took photos on Thursday, and then was evicted, Jones walked across the street and called Williams. Williams rushed to the spot across the street from the shelter and called the police to report the eviction. Ten officers in five cars drove up to the shelter, Jones said. A crowd formed; eventually most of the cops left. Officer Amando Vale remained on the scene. Neighborhood Alder Aaron Greenberg drove up, too, spoke with Vale, then declined to comment to a reporter before leaving the scene. Vale warned the activists — as well as a reporter — that they would be considered trespassing if they walked back across Grand Avenue to the shelter. Reached by phone Thursday night, a shelter staffer said no one would have a comment on the situation. (A message was left Friday with the shelter’s director, seeking comment.)

After Officer Vale returned to his vehicle, Williams asked the crowd of people to form a circle. Fourteen people, including some members of Catholic Worker House and other social justice organizations, gathered together to discuss their next steps.

The person who got Rico in [to the shelter] was Toni Harp,” Williams said. We know where she is. It is legal for a few of us to stop by and knock on her door.”

Rico and Williams, along with Elbaum, Catholic Worker House member Abigail Emerson, and Catholic Worker House founding member Mark Colville, piled into two cars and headed to Westville, the press in tow.

Williams laid out the game plan. They would walk up to the door and knock. If Toni Harp was there, they would explain the situation and ask her to remedy it. If she refused, Williams said, the group would engage her in dialogue until they got what they wanted or she called the police.

The group parked their cars down the road from Mayor Harp’s Upper Westville home. Williams said that it was better to park father away so that the activists could visibly walk away if they needed to.

The quiet Westville neighborhood couldn’t have been more different from Grand Avenue. Sounds of the city had been replaced by chirping crickets. People spoke more softly and sounded more reserved.

The group stopped at the base of Harp’s driveway, and Williams gathered everyone into a circle again to check in. The group designated Jones and Williams as their spokespeople, agreeing to keep it short and simple, using lowered voices and not interrupting.

[We’re trying to] register a complaint, not trying to start an argument,” Colville said.

To that end, the activists agreed that in the case that someone answered the door but did not want to talk, they would not leave a note.

They also agreed to ring the doorbell instead of knocking.

But when they walked up the driveway and to the door, they couldn’t follow through with that part of the plan, because they could not locate a doorbell.

So Williams banged on the door. After a minute or so of no response, Williams tried again. Jones stepped up and knocked. Still nothing.

Since nobody answered the door, the group decided to leave a note after all. Williams took a piece of paper and, using Mayor Harp’s door as a flat surface, wrote the following: Amistad Catholic Worker request that you reverse the eviction of Flor Jones from the Grand Avenue Shelter, which was carried out as a retaliation for taking a picture of a moldy bathroom.” He left his name and contact information.

Jones then took the note, rolled it up, and slid it through the door handle.

Harp: We’re Looking At Changes

The activists walked back to their cars and headed home. Jones and Williams declined to comment about Jones’s plans for the night.

Williams did comment on Catholic Worker House’s plans for the summer, however. He said that if homeless people don’t have a legal place to go by July 24, Catholic Worker House will stage another direct action. They will seize a city property, nonviolently, and hold it and offer hospitality just like they did last month on Rosette Street.

It turned out Mayor Harp was in Dallas for a U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting.

Reached Friday morning, she said that the city is currently negotiating a new contract with the shelter, which is run by a private not-for-profit organization called Emergency Shelter Management Services Inc. She said the issues raised by the Catholic Worker House group are very much on the table. She said the contract expires at the end of the month.

The broader questions raised by the 90-day policy are more complex, Harp said. The city’s winter overflow shelter does not require guests to collaborate with social workers on plans to get on their feet; but the year-round shelters do.

What I basically said [on May 22] was that we would take a look, as we restructure the contract, at the 90-day policy and find ways in which to waive it,” Harp said Friday. People can stay beyond the 90 days now if they’re in some form of case management, trying to dealing with the things that stand in the way of their being hosted and working with a case manager. If they’ve developed a plan and are working with a case manager, then currently you can stay beyond the 90 days. If you’re not, you can’t.”

A lot of the homeless providers feel that having the kind of structure is really important, because you want people who can be hosted and can be doing productive things in their lives to not be incented” to avoid dealing with underlying challenges, Harp said.

Harp said she has directed her new community services chief, Martha Okafor, to look at all the policies” as part of current contract negotiations with homeless providers. She also wants to look at whether enough money is going into the shelters to keep the facilities going,” Harp said.

Paul Bass contributed reporting.

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