Door Stays Open During Deep Freeze

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.

New Haven’s three warming centers, including Varick Memorial Church where Coleman is sleeping, are staying open for longer than their standard overnight hours through Monday. That’s in an effort to protect people without housing following Gov. Ned Lamont’s call to enact the state’s severe weather protocol. Lamont ordered the emergency measure begin at 3 p.m. on Wednesday of this week and run through at least noon Monday. Temperatures are predicted to drop to the low teens and rise only into the 20s through the weekend.

Most warming sites in New Haven operate between December and April, opening their doors at 7 p.m. and closing them again at 7 a.m. They are drop-in spaces for those who may not have regular rooms in shelters or who otherwise find themselves without alternative refuge on especially cold nights. The three city-supported warming centers (more informal open rooms than the city’s seven standard homeless shelters, with food and social service help on hand) can accommodate a total of 107 adults per night.

This cold season has seen individuals lining up outside warming zones long in advance of 7 p.m. in order to avoid getting turned away as the first-come, first-serve sites quickly reach maximum capacity.

On Thursday night, there was no line to be seen outside Varick — because 38 people (six more than usual) have guaranteed shelter in the church’s basement 24 hours a day until the extreme temperatures pass.

“The highest number we’ve had to turn away was probably about ten” during other times in the year, Shellina Toure, who runs the warming program at Dixwell Avenue’s Varick Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church, said Thursday night as dozens of overnighters stacked chairs and collapsed tables so as to be able to set up their cots in the leftover room. 

“They can come and go as they please; their space is already reserved,” Toure said about the weekend reprieve. ​“But they forfeit their spot if they don’t return by 8 p.m. that night.”

Toure said that unlike other warming centers, Varick’s has been staying open year-round due to unprecedented need. They first launched their services in 2021 following the peak of the pandemic.

Monique Coleman, like most of those staying at Varick, is a regular at the warming site. 

The 52-year-old has been staying there nightly since late October, after roughly two years of bouncing between shelters.

“There’s nowhere else for me to go,” she told the Independent. ​“I just don’t feel safe in the streets – I’ve gotten beaten up for being trans. I got robbed. People follow me around.”

“I’ve been in jail my whole life. This is the longest I’ve been out since I was 19,” Coleman said, citing stints served in prison for prostitution, shoplifting, and fighting. 

Her mother, with whom Coleman said she typically stayed when not in a cell, is currently in the hospital following a bad fall. ​“I always wanted to be like her when I grew up,” Coleman said. ​“She was a nice woman — until she met the man that got her into crack.” 

“Now I have to learn how to on my own,” Coleman said. ​“But my life’s been hell growing up.”

Coleman said she hospitalized herself a few weeks back for suicidality. She suffers from several mental health disorders, but is not on any medications: ​“I can’t be on those because they make you sleepy. I gotta be alert because there are a lot of perverts in the dark out here.”

For the past two years, Coleman has stayed at various warming sites and shelters in the region. She said she consistently had to leave due to gender discrimination from staff and other clients who she said shout slurs and start fights with her.

Coleman said she is slowly learning to keep to herself, stay clean of substances, and just ​“walk away” when others berate her.

She doesn’t want to go back behind bars. But she also doesn’t want to be homeless: ​“It’s tacky and degrading; there’s germs everywhere. I’ve been sick five times since I got here in October, and I hadn’t been sick since I was a kid before that.”

Coleman does want an apartment, but her federal Section 8 rental voucher is set to expire next month. She said landlords have consistently turned her down because of her credit, criminal record, and appearance. 

Before Varick, she was staying at Martha’s Place, a women’s shelter with private bedrooms. 

“At first people were like, ​‘Oh, that man shouldn’t be here,’” Coleman recalled. ​“But I said, ​‘It’s the law, honey.’” She left Martha’s Place after her case manager found her an apartment. But Coleman said that when she met the landlord on scene for move-in day, they ​“looked me up and down and said, ​‘Sorry, we already gave it to someone else.’”

Despite the crowded conditions and curfews, Coleman said, Varick is the best place she’s been so far, other than Martha’s. The staff are kind, hot dinners are served, people are afforded cots to avoid sleeping on the floor, and clients can store some of their belongings and blankets in bags at the site.

She usually passes the days at the downtown library, plugging in her phone and turning on a drama series until it’s time to get back to Varick. On Thursday, she didn’t leave the basement thanks to the extended hours. Going outside to walk in the extreme cold triggers her arthritis; she was content to sleep throughout the day and ​“watch my soap operas.”

Coleman said she wishes she could sleep in everyday. Instead, she wakes up at 3 a.m. in order to use the Varick bathroom to do her makeup before the shelter typically closes at 7 a.m. (when there’s not a cold-weather emergency).

“I gotta shave. I put on foundation, I do my eyeliner and draw on my eyebrows. Then I put my eyelashes on and get dressed.” 

Only once, she remembered, did someone yell, “‘Ah, there’s a man in the bathroom!’” while Coleman was doing her routine. ​“I said, ​‘Shut the hell up or I’ll give you a real reason to scream.’”

By now, Coleman knows most of the other people staying at Varick. There are around eight women each night compared to 30 men. The women stay together, setting up their cots in the furthest corner of the basement. 

Around 8 p.m. Thursday, a staff member called groups of individuals to the kitchen for dinner. 

“Ladies!” a volunteer sang out as Coleman sipped milky coffee to the side.

“There’s my food!” Coleman declared.

She turned to her neighbor, Tara: ​“Want me to get you a plate?” 

180 Thanks

Over at another city warming facility Thursday evening, the 180 Center on East Street, Lindsey Abrams and Jonathan Soto settled in for a second night on yoga mats. They too felt calmer knowing that no one would make them lug their suitcase out onto the icy streets by 7 the next morning thanks to the cold-weather emergency protocols to keep the door open during the day.

“It’s hard in the winter to do that,” Abrams said of heading out each day and returning each night. Abrams and Soto were among 30 people prepared to sleep at the 180 Center.

Soto, who’s been homeless for seven years, and Abrams, who’s been homeless for a year, met while sleeping outside in a Waterbury park. After a couple of nights sleeping in an abandoned building, they said, they decided to relocate to New Haven this week, hoping to find a safer place to sleep — and eventually some housing.

“The waitlists are so long for actual shelters. You can be waitlisted for sometimes years,” said Abrams.

So in the interim, the couple sought out warming centers. They spent a couple of nights earlier in the week at Upon This Rock’s Orchard Street warming center, but they said they couldn’t sleep: They were required to sleep in uncomfortable chairs at that center, they said, and the atmosphere was noisy.

Then, per the standard rules, they had to leave at 7 a.m., dragging their suitcase through snowy sidewalks that would soon harden into ice.

People at the religious-themed warming center offered thanks for the open door — and thanks in general.

Charles Middleton plugged in his blue earphones to listen a recording of Bible verses on his phone. He listens to the Bible at least three times to day ​“just to break up the monotony,” he said. (He carries a hard copy of the book, too, in a reusable shopping bag.) Thursday night he listened to Matthew 15 — the part where Jesus feeds 4,000 hungry people with seven loaves of bread and a handful of fish.

Middleton, who is partially paralyzed, finds it difficult to get up and down from sleeping on the floor. ​“I need a private place,” he said. But ​“sleeping on the floor is better than being outside.”

William Oronzo said he was grateful to not be sleeping on a bench Thursday night, as he knows some other people were. ​“I don’t want to see anybody freezing to death.” Oronzo has been staying at the 180 Center for a little over two months. He makes sure that he gets a spot; the last time he was too late, he slept on a bench in 22 degree weather and dislocated his already injured knee. He’s been wearing a brace for two and a half weeks now and doing better. 

By 7:30 p.m. mats were claimed with coats and belongings, and center-goers ate cup noodles and chatted. 

A volunteer interrupted, briefly, to say a prayer.

So cover this room, God almighty, tonight and every night, and the people that are in this room.

The others in the room kept their eyes closed, their heads lowered.

You will bring them peace, and you will bring them grace, dear Lord, and you will provide for them, God almighty.

“Amen,” the volunteer finished.

“Amen,” the others repeated.