Paul Bass Photo
Thomas MacMillan Photo
Donis: It’s safer here.
(Updated 5:23 p.m.) A replay of 2012’s Occupy New Haven showdown may be brewing in the Hill neighborhood, as the Harp administration Thursday afternoon “urged” homeless advocates to remove newly erected tents from a city-owned lot.
The three tents went up Thursday morning at the rear of a community garden at 211 Rosette St. The city owns the land; the New Haven Land Trust operates the garden.
The homeless advocates said they erected the tents in response to the closure earlier this month of the city’s 88-bed overflow shelter on Cedar Street for the homeless.
The Harp administration reacted by telling the homeless they have to leave. By later Thursday afternoon, both sides were digging in.
Erik Johnson (pictured leaving the scene), director of the Livable City Initiative (LCI), the city agency that handles lots like 211 Rosette, showed up at the encampment to deliver an ultimatum. He spoke for some 20 minutes with the homeless people there and their advocates.
“We saw their affirmative protest. We informed them that this is not the intended use of the land,” Johnson said as he left the lot around 4;30 with an LCI deputy, Frank D’Amore. “They have a choice: I hope that we don’t have to get the police involved. “
Johnson was asked how soon the campers have to respond before the city will send in the cops. “Sooner rather than later,” he responded.
Back at the encampment, the organizers said they already gave Johnson their answer. They’re not budging.
“As far as we’re concerned, we’re staying,” said organizer Williams. “I made that very clear.”
Mayor Toni Harp met with officials in City Hall within hours of the encampment’s emergence Thursday. Her spokesman issued this statement after that meeting: “The City of New Haven has a long and unwavering commitment to address the challenge of homelessness. This past year, the City dedicated more than $1 million in general funds and other city services to the issue. Nevertheless, the City recognizes that this is not enough to address the problem and is committed to figuring out how best to resolve it. Setting up temporary quarters on the city-owned parcel at 70 Rosette Street, while dramatizing the problem, does not move us sufficiently toward necessary practical solutions. The City urges those who have set up tents on this land to dismantle them, and then work with us to develop viable solutions to the issue because the City cannot permit them to stay.”
Thomas MacMillan File Photo
Police evict Occupiers from the Green in 2012.
City Hall took a more welcoming stance when homeless advocates set up a tent city on the Upper Green in the fall of 2011 as part of the national Occupy movement. Months later, as the tent city grew and people raised public-health concerns, the administration of then-Mayor John DeStefano ended up clashing with homeless advocates for weeks, and went to federal court, in a messy, ultimately successful quest to evict the encampment in April of 2012. Then the city drew up new rules to prevent such an encampment from reestablishing itself there.
“It’s Rough Out There”
Amistad Catholic Worker crew at work on Rosette.
Organizers set up the tents in the rear of the Rosette Street lot, away from the plants.
The crew finished erecting the tents around noon, then held a press conference.
“We didn’t see a need to ask” permission to erect the tents, said organizer Gregory Williams. “The purpose of the Land Trust is to take unused land and use it for the common good. This is the common good.”
Besides erecting the three tents, the crew — including members of the Amistad Catholic Worker House two doors away — spent the morning clearing garbage from the land. After a noon press conference announcing the encampment, they sat down to a communal meal. Williams said some of the people planning to sleep in the tents have agreed to help tend the garden.
Gregory Abraham (pictured) is among those planning to sleep in the tents. He said he has been homeless since his mother died in 1996. He said he was staying at the overflow shelter before it closed. Several years ago he stayed at a tent city in the woods off Marginal Drive at the New Haven-West Haven border, before authorities shut it down.
“It’s rough out there” for the homeless, Abraham said. “It’s not getting easier. It’s getting harder.”
Another homeless man planning to stay in the tents, Leo Donis (pictured), said he prefers that set-up to the other sites where he and others have camped since the overflow shelter closed. They take turns sleeping and standing guard at those other sites, he said.
“We’ve got to be like soldiers,” he said.
“Don’t worry,” Barbara Smith (pictured, with Williams to her right), who lives next door to the lot, told the gathering at the lot Thursday. “When they’re sleeping, I’ll be watching” to make sure everyone’s safe.
Thursday’s action coincided with a 100-day emergency drive, organized by the United Way, to find long-term shelter for 75 percent of the city’s homeless. The advocates involved in Thursday’s Rosette Street action have been protesting the seasonal closure of the 88-bed overflow shelter on Cedar Street.
Justin Elicker, who runs the not-for-profit Land Trust, was still exploring his options when asked early Thursday afternoon about the surprise development at the group’s Rosette Street garden. He spoke of both legal and ethical responsibilities the Trust must weigh.
“I think the Land Trust’s ethical responsibility is to help people who are struggling and help them find solutions when it intersects with our property,” Elicker said. “While I want to be able to facilitate these folks having a place to go, I’ve already reached out to Columbus House [emergency shelter] to get more information on what their options are. At the same time we need to be respectful of the people who are participating in our community gardens. We can’t treat different community gardens in different ways. It’s not sustainable for us to say, ‘At any community garden in the city, you’re welcome to sleep as well.’ It’s not realistic. It’s not fair to people who are keeping the gardens clean and working hard to have ownership over the gardens.”
The Trust recently had to prevent a homeless man from sleeping in a greenhouse at another garden, Elicker said. “We just can’t allow people to sleep on our properties in places where we have community gardeners as well. We’ll do everything we can to help this population, particularly since it’s part of our mission of providing support with low-cost and no-cost food for groups that are struggling.”
The Land Trust supports close to 50 community gardens around town.
As far as he could tell, Elicker said, he doesn’t believe the Trust has a lease from the city to operate the garden on Rosette.
“That means we’re in a tricky situation. We don’t have a lot of authority over this site. The city has the authority to do whatever it wants,” Elicker said.
A fence two doors down from the lot, at Amistad House.
City Corporation Counsel Victor Bolden said he needed to look into the matter before commenting. So did mayoral spokesman Laurence Grotheer. Livable City Initiative (LCI) Director Erik Johnson, whose agency is responsible for city-owned lots, failed to respond to repeated requests for comment before this story was published. Bolden met with Mayor Toni Harp and others around 2 p.m. to discuss the city’s response. In the discussion he suggested crafting a statement affirming the city’s interest in engaging in “dialogue” about the homeless but not allowing the tents to remain on the property. (Snippets of the discussion were overheard via an unintentionally dialed cell phone; most of the conversation was not audible.) The officials also discussed whether the statement should come from Harp herself or from Bolden.
Gregory Williams made clear his group’s legal take on the matter: “People have a right to take refuge together.”
Right...because when I think of what is beneficial for homeless people, I think of a tent placed on a vacant lot - the quintessential symbol of urban decay and neglect - within a distressed neighborhood suffering from high crime rates, low economic opportunity, and the illicit drug trade?
The compassion of the people involved with this effort is very inspiring and commendable. However, I can't help but think that this effort is somewhat misguided. Is the Hill going to succeed as a mecca for the homeless and will the homeless succeed if their home is a neighborhood still struggling with unemployment, crime and neglect? There are 11 other towns in our region that haven't done their share for the region's in-need populations for the last 50 years. New Haven has tried to provide for these populations but it simply isn't realistic that one small municipality can house an entire region's poor, drug-addicted, homeless, parolees, etc. without having negative budgetary, economic development, and social wellbeing consequences.