Thomas Breen photos
Joe Jadach in his tent under I-91. Below: A city notice ordering the homeless to vacate their encampments under the highway overpass.
Joe Jadach has lived in a tent under the I‑91 overpass behind the Ralph Walker Skating Rink for the past seven months.
Now that the city has ordered the clearing out of his and a handful of other Goatville homeless encampments, Jadach is packing up his belongings and getting ready to move … where? He’s not sure. But he has survived outdoors this long, and figures he can last a bit longer until he lands a stable job and apartment.
Jadach is one of up to a dozen homeless people living in tents and small encampments in the woods under the highway by Exit 5 in between the skating rink and the Mill River.
I-91 near the Ralph Walker Skating Rink.
The 48-year-old Florida native, who lives alone atop a steep hill of sand and dirt that plateaus just beneath the highway’s rusted iron rebar, recently found out from residents in a neighboring encampment that the city has ordered them to leave their makeshift homes and will be cleaning up and throwing out whatever’s left behind. The city has undertaken similar homeless encampment clean-up efforts in recent years for that very same stretch of East Rock.
Jadach, whom the Independent interviewed at his camp site on Monday afternoon, said that he has built a safe, quiet, clean, and unobtrusive place for himself during his past few months living outdoors. He doesn’t throw trash around or light bonfires or get high, as some neighbors under the bridge have done, he said. He said that rowdy group is now gone, and the few people living in the four or five remaining encampments aren’t causing any trouble.
“The ones that are here,” he said, “we’re the good ones.”
A homeless encampment under I-91 a few dozen feet from Jadach’s tent.
Velma George, the city’s homelessness coordinator, said the city doesn’t have a definite timeline yet for when it plans to take apart the existing encampments and clean up whatever trash and debris is left.
The city issued a three-day notice on June 20 ordering the removal of all personal property from the area behind the skating rink. But, she said, frequent heavy rainstorms have delayed the city’s planned clean up.
The June 20 order, directed at the stretch of State Street under I‑91 near Exit 5 and adjacent to the ice skating rink, reads: “This is not an authorized area for storage or shelter. All items will be removed after 72 hours from the date and time posted above.” It also lists the phone numbers for the local homeless support nonprofits Columbus House (203 – 772-4200 ext. 2100) and Liberty Community Services (203 – 500-0591).
She stressed that the city is not clearing out the camps with the intent of punishing anyone. Rather, she said, this is an opportunity to move people into safer living conditions and to help connect the homeless with a variety of housing services provided by the city’s Community Services Administration (CSA) in conjunction with social service partners like Columbus House, Liberty Community Services, and Continuum of Care.
“The whole idea is we want people to move out of these unsafe conditions to more safe conditions,” she told the Independent Tuesday. “We have shelter beds. We have a transitional assistance program that will help them with their first month’s rent at a rooming house or a sober house or an apartment. Just to help them to get off the street. That’s what we’re trying to do: To help move them to a safer environment.”
Jacach’s outdoor home.
Jadach said he’s open to receiving help, but reluctant to give up his solitary, temporary home for the unstable, contingent group living afforded by a homeless shelter. “I don’t want to lose my bicycle,” he said. ‘I don’t like the idea of having to be back and inside a shelter everyday by four in the afternoon. I’m used to this.”
Jadach said he and his now ex-wife first moved to Connecticut from Florida several years ago to be closer to her family. Down south, he said, the married couple bounced between Jacksonville and Hollywood and Miami Beach and Jupiter. He worked as a truck driver, he said, and knows the Sunshine State like the back of his hand.
A view down the steep sandy hill from Jadach’s tent.
But a little under a year ago, he said, his wife left him, he lost his home and nearly all of his belongings in the divorce, and he found himself struggling to get by doing odd landscaping and tree trimming jobs for whoever would hire him.
He leveled his current campground and set up his tent about eight months ago, and has been living there ever since, with a brief two-week stint renting an employer’s trailer and doing landscaping work in Hamden. That job ended abruptly, he said, when his employer died of a heart attack on the job and Jadach lost the trailer and his work. He soon moved back under the overpass.
“Even though I’m homeless,” he said, “when I come here, I’m safe.”
Living outdoors isn’t easy, he said, especially for someone who had never been homeless before and is nearing 50 years old. He said he’ll stand at the Exit 5 off-ramp for an entire morning pandhandling, only make $2, and then have to take a few hours lying down in his tent to rest.
He said he needs $20 to $25 a day to get by, to afford food and water and whatever new clothes he may need. He said the biggest lesson he’s learned while living on the street is “humbleness,” followed closely by knowing how to conserve your energy and ration what little money you have.
If he has to move, he said, he’ll pack up his rain gear and clothes and whatever else he can fit into his rolling suitcase and move on to somewhere else. He’s not sure where, but, he said, he knows it will be hard to leave behind the home he’s built for himself under I‑91.
Eric.
Eric, a 44-year-old New Haven native, also lives in the woods behind the skating rink near the overpass. Though he’s been out there for only several weeks.
He said he got evicted from a bedroom he was renting on Bradley Street after he lost his job at a fabric manufacturer in the Annex.
“For now,” he said, “I’m just trying to survive on the street.” He said he too had never been homeless before this recent stint.
“There’s no jobs in New Haven,” he said. Besides working at a McDonald’s or a Dunkin Donuts, he added. “But you can’t survive on that pay.” He said he was paying $800 per month to live in the Bradley Street rented bedroom, where he had to share a bathroom and a kitchen with another third-floor tenant.
Now living on the street, he said, he doesn’t have high hopes for finding a more stable job. “If you don’t have an address,” he said, “how can you find work?”
“This Is Morally Wrong”
Connecticut Bail Fund supporters gather under I-91 on Tuesday.
On Tuesday morning, a dozen Connecticut Bail Fund workers, volunteers, and supporters gathered under the I‑91 overpass on State Street near Exit 5 in preparation to protest the city’s planned removal of the homeless encampments.
City officials never made their way down to the encampments, at least on Tuesday morning, focusing their attention instead on an interdepartmental sweep taking place in Cedar Hill.
Jewu Richardson and Norm Clement.
Jewu Richardson, who works with the bail fund, said he would like to see the city recognize that not all homeless people can or want to go to a shelter. That doesn’t mean they should love their outdoor homes, he said.
“There’s a lot of vacant lots and empty city buildings,” he said. If the buildings are safe enough, he said, homeless people should be allowed to move to that city-owned property, where social workers should also be stationed to help transition people towards stable housing and employment and whatever other services they may need.
“What’s the motive?” he asked about the city’s plans to take down the existing encampments.
“There’s no room in the overflow shelter,” Norm Clement added. He said the city has been promising renovations to the Grand Avenue shelter for years. In the meantime, he said, thousands of market-rate apartments have gone up all over town. “Social services for people in this city are put off for years,” he said.
The city should pass a homeless person’s bill of rights, he said. It should erect public bathrooms so that the homeless don’t have to go outdoors. It should not focus on tearing down homeless camps.
Sade and Brett Davidson.
Bail fund co-director Brett Davidson and Sex Workers and Allies Network (SWAN) Director Beatrice Codianni agreed.
“This is morally wrong,” Codianni said about the planned dismantling of the homeless encampments.
If trash is the problem, Davidson said, the city should provide garbage cans and totes in the makeshift campgrounds.
He said the social safety net provided by the city and various local providers for the homeless is so thin. There’s only one open bed currently available for homeless women, he said. “If people have no options, they should be able to sleep wherever they feel safe.”
Donny and Sade.
“They could tell me to leave,” said Donny, who lives with his wife Sade under the I‑91 overpass closer to Cedar Hill. “If they’re gonna arrest us, let them.”
When asked where she would live if she had to move away from her current encampment, where she and Donny have lived for over a year, Sade said, “Back to the New Haven Green. Back to my bus stop.”
George, the city’s homelessness coordinator, said she recognizes that there are rarely enough beds available to meet the existing need for the city’s homeless popilation.
“We can never have the supply to meet the demand,” she said. “It’s just too great. But we do what we can between beds and helping people to move into alternative living situations.”
Jadach walks back towards his home.
were is the good REV Kimber to offer the support of the church ..these people are residents of new haven! Why isnt he stomping his ,shouting and fighting to help them find housing,resources and employment ..oh yea because it doesnt have potential dollars on the end for him.
Where is the mayor ? Is she and Delauro out cutting ribbons again w Yale or giving out more tax credits and benefits to people building two thousand dollar one bedroom apartments?