nothin Mom To City: Please Buy Back My House | New Haven Independent

Mom To City: Please Buy Back My House

Melissa Bailey Photo

On the day that Sandra’s son graduated from high school, young toughs from a neighborhood street gang pushed her son beside the Corner Store Market and pointed a gun at him. He heard the trigger click.

No bullets came out. For Sandra, the incident was the final breaking point of a dream of peaceful home ownership.

Sandra lives near Shelton Avenue in Newhallville. She bought her house in 2006 with help from the city’s anti-blight agency, the Livable City Initiative (LCI). She and her husband moved there from Fair Haven Heights, part of a new wave of homeowners who aimed to bring stability to the neighborhood.

She lives in a stretch of the neighborhood hard hit by gang violence. The neighborhood has enjoyed reprieves lately. Some of Sandra’s neighbors took back the street with a cookout last weekend. Youth workers brokered a truce between feuding gangs.

Sandra, on the other hand, said her family has given up.

She said her hopes have slowly fallen over the past four years, as a group of neighborhood kids hounded her teenage son. Fearful of repercussions, Sandra asked that her photo and real name not be used, nor her son’s, for fear of retribution.

The situation came to a head midday on June 24, when six boys dragged her son off a porch, then put the gun against his body.

They pulled the trigger twice and nothing came out the gun,” explained Sandra. The 40-year-old mother of four spoke in an interview in her home, the blinds drawn tight against the fierce heat. She wiped away tears as she spoke.

Her son wasn’t hurt. But ever since that narrow scrape, she doesn’t feel safe with him at home.

The kids, who she said are part of a Read Street gang, came back the next day with reinforcements. (She said she wasn’t sure if the gang is R2 or BWE, aka Beef With Everybody.) Ten of them walked the street in front of her house, looking for her son. Joey has been steering clear, staying with relatives, crashing at a different house on different nights of the week.

Sandra said she’s ready to get rid of the house and get out of the neighborhood.

She called LCI this week seeking help.

Can you buy the house back?” she asked.

LCI got the call, but didn’t take the offer, according to mayoral spokeswoman Jessica Mayorga.

The city does not purchase privately owned houses,” Mayorga said, unless the city has a planned development project in an area and purchasing private property would enhance the project.”

LCI gets calls like these from time to time but does not pursue acquiring,” she added.

Sandra and her husband bought the two-family home in April 2006 for $186,150 with the help of the Yale homebuyers’ program. They got a first mortgage from People’s Bank. LCI helped them out with a $21,000 second mortgage, according to Mayorga.

The couple bought the home from the Regional Housing Rehabilitation Institute Of Connecticut, a small not-for-profit that buys downtrodden homes, fixes them up, and sells them to first-time homebuyers with low incomes. The new owners have to live in the homes, and rent out any additional apartments to low-income tenants, said Warner Marshall, the group’s executive director.

Marshall said his group has made a big push to revitalize the area of Newhallville around Huntington, Winchester, Shepard and Read. His group built five homes there. Two other not-for-profits, Neighborhood Housing Services and Habitat For Humanity, built homes there, too.

The goal was to stabilize the neighborhood. People who own their homes take better care of them, the logic goes. As they have in other neighborhoods for many years, the not-for-profits sought to bring in long-time residents who would make the area safer.

Sandra grew up in Fair Haven. She moved to her new Newhallville home from Fair Haven Heights. She said she had high hopes at first.

I expected that a bunch of homeowners was going to be together and bring the place up,” she said. If a lot of people invest in the area, she reasoned, it won’t be as bad.”

However, her son, who was about 14 at the time, had trouble adjusting to a new neighborhood.

She said nearby kids started picking on him right away, because he’s not from around here.”

What do you mean he’s not from around here?” asked Sandra rhetorically. We’re property owners now.”

Sandra said she doesn’t buy into the territorial mentality.

Where’s your name at on the street? Where’s your house?” she asked.

Sandra said when her son started going to Hillhouse High, he started getting jumped by kids from Newhallville. Her son is scrawny,” not a tough guy, she said. Any time he came back to Newhallville, he got taunted.

His whole demeanor changed,” she said. He got depressed. He joined a group of guys for protection. He dropped out of sports and started spending more time on the streets.

One year ago, she caught him with drugs in the house. He had been trying to sell them, to prove himself on the streets, she said.

I called the cops on him,” she recalled. She made him face the consequences.

Over the past few months, she said, the harassment has continued. A group of as many as 10 boys roam the streets. When her son comes back for family meals, she said, they wait for him at an abandoned house nearby.

It’s no longer safe for him to wait for the bus, she said. If he goes to Winchester, the boys will jump him. If he goes to Dixwell, the boys will jump him.”

It’s real sad,” she said. He can’t come home.”

Sandra said she called the cops when her son was threatened at the corner store.

They said my son would have to call and press charges,” she said. He’s not going to do that. He’s scared.”

Sandra said she’s ready to move out right away. She wants her two youngest kids, who are 9 and 10, to grow up away from the Newhallville street culture.

This is not a great neighborhood to raise children in,” she said.

So far, she’s been keeping them protected by sending them to private school and keeping them busy with sports.

Now, the family is looking for apartments. Sandra said she’d like to move somewhere safer, like deep Hamden” or Middletown. She called everyone she can think of — Yale, Neighborhood Housing Services, the mayor’s office.

I don’t know what else to do,” she said. I just want help to get out of this.”

Warner, the Housing Rehab director, said he recognizes the challenges of the neighborhood, where street violence is a chronic problem.”

Melinda Tuhus File Photo

New Haven Habitat For Humanity Director Bill Casey (at center in photo), who has placed families in Newhallville for 15 years, acknowledged the struggle, but said his group remains committed to the neighborhood. The New Haven chapter has built 32 homes in Newhallville since 1995, according to Casey.

One of those locations proved difficult: A woman at 526 Winchester Ave. complained of threats stemming from a dispute with a bar across the street. For the first time in local Habitat history, the new owner fled the house. That home remains vacant, Casey said.

He said that case was the exception: New owners haven’t had problems in any of Habitat’s other Newhallville homes.

Casey said in general, people who are from the neighborhood have a leg up” in getting adapting to life on their new block. Habitat is still making investments in the neighborhood: They’re just now finishing two homes at 300 Newhall and 432 Huntington. One of the new owners will be an older couple, two people who have spent their whole lives in the neighborhood.

He said he’s looking forward to the chance to make the neighborhood stronger: People like that help to anchor blocks,” he said.

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