Melissa Bailey Photos
Williams: “An emergency.”
Under pressure from activists, Mayor Toni Harp negotiated to keep the city’s overflow shelter open for one more week — and cautioned that the Cedar Street facility’s long-term fate remains up in the air.
Harp made those remarks Thursday morning, in response to a crowd of two-dozen activists who stormed her office in search of more support for the homeless.
The 88-bed men’s shelter at 232 Cedar St., which is open six months of the year, was initially set to close Thursday for the end of the season. A group of activists, led by Yale Divinity School student Gregory Williams and Mark Colville of the Amistad Catholic Worker House, made plans to show up at Harp’s doorstep Thursday to protest its seasonal closure, especially given the raw, rainy weather this week.
Harp got wind of the protest Wednesday and started making calls.
She knows the landlord well: the Cornell Scott Hill Health Center, which owns the building and lets the shelter use the basement rent-free, used to be her employer. Harp worked there as a homeless health coordinator before becoming mayor in January. Harp called up Hill Health as well as Columbus House, which staffs the shelter.
She said the city, which funds the shelter, will pay an extra $10,000 to keep it open another week, until next Wednesday, if the two agencies agreed. Columbus House and Hill Health got on board.
Upon finding out that news, Williams and Colville then changed the theme of Thursday’s day of action to a “victory” celebration. They praised Harp — and pushed for a long-term solution to homelessness.
“One more week is not enough!” chanted the group.
The crowd featured one person who’s currently at the overflow shelter, Kirk McKenzie. McKenzie, a former security guard, forklift driver and supermarket employee, said he’s currently looking for work. He said without a shelter to go to, he’ll have to carry his stuff around with him all day — which hurts his chances of finding work again.
“Walking around with stuff, you’re not going to get nothing,” he said. (He declined to be photographed.)
Other people, both currently and formerly homeless, showed up in support.
In remarks at the Sengbe Pieh statue outside City Hall, Chrissy Smith (pictured at the top of this story), who has been homeless for seven months, said she spent Wednesday night in a tent and got drenched with rain. She said she showed up at City Hall to make sure men who are still living at the overflow shelter don’t face that situation.
“I know what it’s like to wake up tomorrow morning and know that you don’t have a place to sleep tomorrow night,” said Mike Stebbins, who spent 10 years without a home.
“If you have a place to stay, you can start to reform your life again,” Stebbins said. “A place to live, to me, is a kingdom of gold.”
Colville announced the group would head up to Harp’s office with one question: “Where, then, shall we go?”
Upstairs, the group met Harp’s spokesman, Laurence Grotheer (pictured). Grotheer announced that Harp was in a meeting. The group did not have an appointment.
“The mayor keeps a schedule,” Grotheer said. “You’re sort of running counter to protocol, which is to call ahead.”
“We have people who are being evicted,” countered Williams (at center in photo). “We need her help.” He couched the situation as an “emergency.”
“The mayor worked into the evening [Wednesday] to arrange with Columbus House” to extend the shelter’s season for another week, Grotheer noted.
“We see her as an ally,” Williams replied. But “a one-week eviction is still an emergency.”
“This is a seasonal and annual closure,” Grotheer replied. He said it was unfair to call it an “eviction.” The city spends $1.1 million in its general fund, plus hundreds of thousands of dollars in state and federal grants, on homeless services, he said. “I don’t think New Haven is irresponsible” in its homeless services.
Harp emerged after a short wait and accepted her visitors before rolling TV cameras.
“I’m sorry you had to wait,” she said calmly.
She announced that Hill Health had “agreed to another week,” but “there is some concern about continuing with” the overflow shelter at Cedar Street. “They feel like it’s not an appropriate use of the space.”
The shelter has occupied the basement of 232 Cedar for ten winters.
Hill Health spokesman Rob Rioux later confirmed that statement. The front of 232 Cedar St. contains the South Central Rehab Center, which houses a methadone clinic and a 29-bed detox facility for people recovering from drug addiction. The homeless shelter occupies the basement.
“It just doesn’t make sense to have a wet shelter in an environment where people are trying to recover from substance abuse,” Rioux said. People in recovery there look out the window and see people drug dealing or drinking in the parking lot, he said.
Rioux said Hill Health wants to “start having a conversation” about moving the shelter elsewhere. “If we have to [keep the shelter there] next year, fine. But long-term, it puts too much pressure on the folks who are trying to get well.”
Harp said she’d be participating in the talks about where to move the shelter. In the meantime, she noted the city is amid a 100-day quest to end chronic homelessness. During this 100-day period, she enlisted the help of churches to house the homeless, as they have done in the past through an effort called Abraham’s Tent.
“We’re asking our religious community to help us out,” Harp said. She said the city would also check other shelters for available beds for men at the overflow shelter. “We’re going to support them in any way that we can.”
"She said the city, which funds the shelter, will pay an extra $10,000 to keep it open another week, until next Wednesday, if the two agencies agreed."
What goes into that figure of $10,000 per week?