Public housing … in these sunny East Rock homes?
Yep — it’s part of an effort to integrate neighborhoods in the wake of the annihilated Elm Haven high-rises.
A two-family home at 21 Avon St. (pictured above, second from the right) is next on the list of houses the housing authority is planning to buy to convert into public-housing units. Another lies a couple blocks away at 117 – 119 Nicoll St., in an area saturated with student renters and joggers.
Why here? The answer lies in the ashes of the razed Elm Haven towers, a dense complex destroyed to make way for a new model of housing that replaced low-income high-rises with a range of more spread-out, mixed-income homes.
As part of a U.S. District Court settlement resulting from that redevelopment, the city Housing Authority (HANH) was given a directive: Find 183 units of public housing in other parts of the city that aren’t already “impacted,” explained Housing Authority Director Jimmy Miller Tuesday.
That process has taken more than 15 years.
“Impacted” in this case means “is comprised of less than 47 percent non-Hispanic whites, or in plainer English, “has a larger-than-average population of minorities.”
Finding a non-impacted zone, i.e. a low-minority zone, in New Haven is a tall task, said Miller. So the HANH up paying big bucks for East Rock real estate.
At a regular monthly meeting Tuesday, the authority’s Board of Commissioners approved the proposed purchase of 21 Avon St. for $440,000, with the total cost of acquisition, inspection and fix-up capped at $600,000. They also approved a proposal to buy 117 – 119 Nicoll St., a three-unit home, for $429,000, with costs capped at $700,000.
“Yeah, it’s a lot of money to spend,” said the board’s chairman, Robert Solomon. But the authority has an obligation to replace the units. “We know how hard it has been to find the units.”
“I’d like to live in that one myself!” joked Miller, eyeing the Avon property just two blocks off of Orange Street, and close to State Street restaurants.
Jokes aside, Miller said on top of fixing heat and water, one of HANH’s duties is to “integrate our families into neighborhoods, instead of concentrating them.” Of the 183 units that had to be replaced, only 14 remain, he said. Miller said he planned to finish the process of acquiring and rehabbing the remaining units in 2008.
I was pretty upset when I learned about this. I didn't think public housing belonged in East Rock and I called Alderman Lemar to tell him how wrong this was and see if he could stop it. I was more upset when he said that he didn't think he could stop it and, as a matter of principal, that he didn't think we should stop it. After I just about screamed my lungs out at him, I finally decided to hear him out and listened to his reasoning about what our neighborhood should represent, what it should stand for and what a welcoming place it should be. He was right. As a homeowner on Foster Street, I 'll admit that I'm worried about public housing and those types of people moving in to my neighborhood. But I appreciated my Alderman's response and I think he was right that the issue is mostly about ensuring that the Housing Authority is able to maintain these properties as well as a homeowner would and that should be our concern.
I encourage other people in the neighborhood who are concerned about this to email him and let him know that we will be watching - and that if he beleives we should support this kind of thing, he should help us if it starts to go wrong.