by | Feb 1, 2024 12:46 pm | Comments (53)
Laura Glesby Photo
Carlota Clark at Wednesday evening's open house at Science Park.
A rendering from Pine's presentation: Apartments up to $4,500 a month on Winchester Ave.
As Science Park developers presented renderings of a housing complex soon to rise on Winchester Ave., Carlota Clark wondered if one of the 283 apartments would someday be hers.
by | Jan 31, 2024 2:55 pm | Comments (3)
Dazauna Smith shows paint problems in her bathroom to LCI inspector Alvarado.
LCI Inspector Frank Alvarado paced around a frigid Cedar Hill bedroom with a mystery to solve: How could a bedroom have been built without a heating vent?
Another city inspector hadn’t noticed the problem the last time he’d visited the apartment. Now a judge had sent Alvarado back to check again.
by | Jan 26, 2024 11:30 am | Comments (17)
As close to actualization as they've gotten: A rough sketch of the future West River apartments.
Tom Breen Photo
Marchand: Would love "another bite" at the environmental apple.
A long-delayed elderly housing development will now open its doors to families of all ages – if it ever does end up actually opening its doors.
by | Jan 26, 2024 11:04 am | Comments (9)
A rough sketch of what the building could look like.
A local developer is planning to build an affordable housing complex designed for seniors atop a vacant city lot in the Hill — with the hope that she could someday move in.
Continue reading ‘New Affordable Housing Slated For Congress Ave.’
by | Jan 23, 2024 3:31 pm | Comments (7)
Alder Rodriguez makes a dent in homelessness.
Alder Carmen Rodriguez donned a hard hat and struck a sledgehammer into a wall — and urged her counterparts in other cities to break down metaphorical walls as well to support the “cold, wet, and hungry.”
by | Jan 22, 2024 3:14 pm | Comments (4)
Nora Grace-Flood Photo
Monique Ricks on her Healthy Homes-funded porch: Don't forget to remember about radon. The city is distributing 50 free test kits this week.
Monique Ricks can breathe easy — now that she’s sure her home is radon free.
by , and | Jan 19, 2024 1:40 pm | Comments (18)
Nora Grace-Flood photo
Monique Coleman bundles up inside Varick warming center: “There’s nowhere else for me to go."
Monique Coleman didn’t have to wait in line like usual to get into a warming center Thursday night.
She has a cot reserved for her and a guaranteed roof over her head throughout the predicted deep-freeze weekend — after the governor declared a statewide cold-weather emergency.
by | Jan 19, 2024 8:50 am | Comments (14)
Veterans group members at the Long Wharf memorial.
A local nonprofit is backing up but not out on plans to convert a vacant lot into housing for vets — after the city rejected their idea to let vets back their cars over sidewalks and into an intersection.
Continue reading ‘Vets' Housing Plan Returned To Drafting Table’
by | Jan 17, 2024 3:03 pm | Comments (24)
Nora Grace-Flood Photo
Mark DeFrancesco: I treated tenants/workers well.
Mark DeFrancesco denied that he offered no beds to the 19 Guatemalan migrants working for him and living in one of his houses.
He denied that he deliberately locked out two of those tenants after they got injured at work.
And he denied that the eviction he has launched against those two tenants is a way to avoid paying worker’s compensation.
“I got them a 60 inch TV!” he testified in housing court. Two of them, in fact, he added at his lawyer’s prompting.
Continue reading ‘Boss/Landlord Defends Booting Injured Worker’
by | Jan 16, 2024 4:00 pm | Comments (48)
Trachten in the office: Fed up with people saying, "We have a crisis -- so all rules out the window; we can do whatever the fuck we want.”
If you’ve ever had to go before the Board of Zoning Appeals, you probably know Ben Trachten.
by | Jan 16, 2024 2:51 pm | Comments (7)
Laura Glesby File Photo
Ocean Management's Shmuel Aizenberg with attorney Gerry Giaimo: Ready to "turn a new leaf."
Megalandlord Shmuel Aizenberg took a second stab at scrubbing his potential criminal record clean — and won a second chance.
by | Jan 15, 2024 11:55 am | Comments (18)
The heat’s turned on inside six tiny emergency shelters outside Amistad House.
Continue reading ‘Heat Goes On At Tiny Shelters In The Hill’
by | Jan 12, 2024 2:54 pm | Comments (24)
Edgar Becerra in court: "I just want everyone to know the name of this company and all the injustices they did."
Construction boss-landlord Mark DeFrancesco, right, in court with lawyer Josh Brown.
Edgar Becerra fell off a 30-foot ladder — then landed in court this week fighting to stay in the country against a boss who first fired him then moved to evict him.
Continue reading ‘Landlord-Boss Boots Injured Migrant Worker’
by | Jan 12, 2024 11:32 am | Comments (49)
Nora Grace-Flood Photo
City Plan chief Laura Brown Thursday night: Help us chart city's future.
The city invited the public to a launch party for a once-in-a-decade rewrite of New Haven’s primary land use document — and the community showed up.
by | Jan 10, 2024 4:32 pm | Comments (8)
Nora Grace-Flood Photo
Home for now: Jimenez with Marlee at the former Days Inn.
In less than a month of staying at New Haven’s newly opened hotel-turned-homeless shelter, Debra Jimenez got a new job and has started hunting for an affordable apartment for her partner and three pets while staying on track to earn her second master’s degree come spring.
Continue reading ‘People, Partners, Pets Settle At Ex-Hotel’
by | Jan 10, 2024 11:28 am | Comments (21)
The proposed four-home site plan for 252 Davenport Ave.
An empty sliver lot on Davenport Avenue could serve as the future home for four veterans in need of housing support — if a nonprofit’s plea for zoning peace is granted.
by | Jan 9, 2024 3:59 pm | Comments (10)
The city ordered six people to clear out of a four-tent encampment in Edgewood Park after working with them to find indoor places to stay.
by | Jan 4, 2024 4:19 pm | Comments (36)
Maybe this'll work: City Plan Director Laura Brown, Housing Authority chief Karen DuBois-Walton, and Congressional staffer Lou Mangini at Thursday's presser.
The Elicker administration is looking to update a law aimed at encouraging people to develop “mother-in-law” apartments — so that someone will actually build them and create needed new housing.
by | Jan 3, 2024 3:23 pm | Comments (7)
Amistad House leader Jacob Miller with electrician John Rienzo from L & M Electric Wednesday afternoon.
An electrician arrived at Amistad House Wednesday afternoon to decide where to start digging trenches — and get the people living in a backyard homeless encampment out of the trenches by turning on heating and lighting.
by | Jan 1, 2024 8:57 am | Comments (47)
Twining / L&M designs
Design for "Winchester Green" apartments and retail on a vacant lot within Science Park, complete with a new interior street grid.
The money’s in. So the next apartment complex slated for a fast-changing stretch of the Dixwell-Newhallville border is ready to rise.
Continue reading ‘$90M In Hand To Start Building "Winchester Green"’
by | Dec 22, 2023 12:53 pm | Comments (75)
Nora Grace-Flood photo
Yale claims its "campus custom" is to reserve housing for university "affiliates" – including at 57 Broadway.
Tenant Lewis Nelken’s new landlord sent him unwelcome news this December: He can renew his apartment lease on Broadway for another year, but, after that lease runs out, he has to move. Just because he doesn’t work or study at Yale.
That’s the new rule for living in a stretch of downtown that Yale has continued gobbling up this year.
by | Dec 22, 2023 11:16 am | Comments (8)
Nora Grace-Flood / Thomas Breen file photos
2023's housing market movers and shakers, and departers: Housing authority's Karen DuBois-Walton, Mandy Management's Yudi Gurevitch, Ocean Management's Shmuel Aizenberg (with attorney Gerald Giamo).
One of New Haven’s largest landlords of low-income housing sold off 65 rental properties this year, was dragged again and again into court, and grappled with new tenants unions.
Another invested in expanding its real estate empire and improving its business and reputation under a second generation of leadership.
A third doubled down on constructing lots more affordable housing — and swooped in to save long-stalled developments that it will now have to convert into new places to live.
Continue reading ‘In 2023, Ocean Got Out, Mandy Got Better, & HANH Got More Ambitious’
by | Dec 20, 2023 5:24 pm | Comments (37)
Nora Grace-Flood photo
Shelter staff and helpers Danielle Robertson, Deshaya George, and John Labieniec.
There’s room at the former Days Inn on Foxon Boulevard this holiday season.
by | Dec 20, 2023 11:58 am | Comments (5)
Laura Glesby photo
Commissioners William Kilpatrick, Alberta Witherspoon, and Elmer Rivera at Tuesday's meeting.
The housing authority took one big step towards building 40 new mixed-income apartments and ground-floor retail space by the Quinnipiac River, as its board voted to spend $1.42 million to purchase an East Grand Avenue lot and nearby pizzeria.
by | Dec 19, 2023 1:14 pm | Comments (25)
Sam Gurwitt file photo
Derrick Draughn: "It's not about the money. I just choose not to pay it until I feel like it."
A highway-adjacent vacant lot on the northern edge of Wooster Square wasn’t sold at a foreclosure auction on Saturday.
It almost was. But for the third time in a decade, the property’s owner retained control after paying off years of back taxes just in time — and kept alive a dream of building on the site himself, or selling it to someone who will.
Continue reading ‘Empty Lot Owner Dodges Foreclosure. Again’
