Columbus House To Build New 80-Room Shelter

A tiny unit with a door is massively better than a communal room. I hope this gets built.

Boarding/rooming houses are part of the answer to citys homelessness/housing affordability problem. Before the adoption of zoning, they were a major source of housing for low income singles.The current zoning ordinance largely bars the creation of such housing. The BZA should approve this application And the Board of Alders (which serves as the citys Zoning Commission) should amend the ordinance to facilitate this type of housing.

And yes, I would be fine if such housing existed in my neighborhood. A neighbor already operates an AirBnB a block from my house. (She is not alone - there are over 100 AirBnB rooms for rent across the city).

This is such a great project, and its so frustrating that zoning is one of the obstacles preventing more like it.

Around Wooster Square, the rooming houses were determined to be in deplorable condition and demolished or rehabbed into what we have today on Court St. It's like a circle and developers always make money demolishing and rebuilding

Columbia House is best equipped to meet this increased need. I encourage anyone who cares about this issue to consider giving to them during this holiday season.

Sackler money should build live in rehabs for homeless addicts. The federal and state government needs to reimagine and rebuild live in mental health hospitals. The suburbs cannot keep dropping their people off on the streets of New Haven or on the doorstep of the Yale Emergency Room. What happens when someone who has privacy in this facility or the Rosette tiny house compound overdoses?

Matt, youre right that zoning is an obstacle in this case. But I do not think it will be a problem.
By law, the BZA must grant a variance if an applicant demonstrates that specific requirements of the zoning ordinance create a hardship. In practice, the New Haven BZA is much more lenient. It will grant a variance, even absent a demonstrated hardship, if the alder/neighbors are OK with it. This practice has been going on for years, something Robn has repeatedly noted. The BZA also grants variances when the applicant demonstrates hardship, which Columbus House likely did in this case.

CY2, Court Street was perhaps the only success of urban renewal here, and it did not involve developers. Former NHI staffer Melissa Bailey described the blocks history in 2010. The housing on block, including 19 rooming houses, was deteriorated. The city ordered that the rooming houses be converted to rentals. Four of the owners did this on their own. The citys Redevelopment Agency acquired the rest, rehabilitated them, and sold them to individual owners. (None were demolished, which is obvious if you walk down the street.) I think you agree that it is one of New Havens most charming streets today. https://www.newhavenindependent.org/article/court_st._home_headed_to_foreclosure

Apros pos developments of today, one of the things the city did was eliminate on-street parking and widen the sidewalks. In effect, it created a woonerf, where slowly moving cars, pedestrians, and bikes share the street. Contrary to views of some people, reducing on-street parking can help rather than hurt a block, A somewhat similar design will be incorporated in the development that just began construction on Olive Street.

This is great and as has been noted already, developments like this should exist in every municipality--not just New Haven and other cities. Is there a way to make stand funding of some kind to towns and cities dependent on reforming zoning codes to allow some mixed-use residential development, especially with units set aside for people with lower incomces? It's way past time for more towns to do their part.

This is the model that shelters need to transform to, non congregate private bedrooms with private bathrooms for couples and singles.
They need to be able to lock their doors to stay safe and to keep their possessions safe when they are not there.
They need to be able to keep their pets with them, or pet owners will not stay there.
They need to be able to come and go as they please, to allow for diverse work shifts and for walking their dog. If they use a sign in/out method with a resident photo ID keycard system when entering or leaving, that will help with safety and emergency evacuation plans.
They need daily wellness check ins to make sure they are doing okay and offered social services support references to suit their needs.
Having large group dining halls may be too loud and stressful to those with mental health issues, it may be better to do a couple of smaller community dining rooms next to each other where residents can take their meals from the cafeteria line and sit at tables in smaller groups.
And shelter residents should not be kicked out during the day to wander around the city until they are let in for the night. They should be able to stay in their room or the community room or do their laundry in a laundry room or attend a meeting or meet with a nurse or social worker in a consultation room during the day. This helps reduce anxiety and adverse weather exposure, while also reducing residents wandering around the streets with nothing to do but kill time until they are let back in, especially for seniors and disabled folks.
Having more autonomy, privacy, safety, support and being treated more like independent adults will draw more unhoused people to be willing to stay in shelters instead of sleeping outside.
But the end goal should be moving people into more permanent subsidized deeply affordable units, and not kicking them out of the shelter until alternative housing can be found.

William Kurtz, if only.

Most legislators, Democrat and Republican, are suburbanites and/or have lots of suburban constituents. Suburbanites generally believe that zoning should be a purely local function, even when this results in harm the state as a whole. Most Republican and many Democrat legislators take this position as an article of faith.

Part of this attitude is due to legitimate concerns, e.g. protecting open space. Part is fear of those people moving into town. I believe the latter is more a matter of class than race (although racism is hardly dead). I suspect most towns would welcome an African-American CPA with open arms. Someone who worked at Walmart, maybe not. The homeless, definitely not.

Heather, it is fine to say that shelters should allow guests to stay inside during the day. It is certainly more humane to do this. How do propose to pay for extra staff needed to make this happen? (How are you going to pay for that? should not a conversation stopper, as it often is. But it is an important part of the conversation.)

Will this amazing project also be 100% sustainable?

How about have local architecture students play a role in the planning to make it so that they have a stake in the game?

Please include local environmental groups in the planning of this amazing idea and structure.

BedZED in London is a perfect example for what is possible.

Let's get inventive!

If you want community support (donations, etc.), get inventive!!!!!!!!

Heather, in a better world decision-makers would look at all downstream costs and benefits, as you suggest. In the existing world, decision-makers have the same bandwidth constraints and other limitations as the rest of us. This is true in the public and private sectors. If an agency or company creates a downstream problem, it rarely shows up in their budget or profit and loss statement.

And people generally (not just decision-makers) have irrationally high discount rates. We dramatically undervalue costs and benefits that will occur in a couple of years, much less the long term.

Again, I do not want to end the conversation with how are you going to pay for that? But people who want to effect change, including you and me, need to be able to answer that question at least in general terms.

UnionYES, Ive contacted Ms. Middleton about potential funding sources to make the shelter more sustainable. (I worked on sustainability finance in my former life.) Im looking forward to hearing from her. Folks looking for ideas on paying for sustainability could start here energizect.com.

One caveat. Things that make economic sense in London may not work so here. The cost of electricity is more than twice as high there.

Heather, you are right that there are ways to reduce staffing costs. But advocates need to come up with plausible, general ideas of covering the remaining costs.

Unfortunately, there is no legal authority for billing the suburbs for the cost of their homeless. And even if there was, billing would be complicated. Lets say a person is born in Hamden, moves to Milford where they become homeless, and then moves to New Haven. Who is responsible for the cost of housing them? And homelessness is often not a black and white phenomenon. People routinely go from having stable housing, to various degrees of housing insecurity (e.g., couch surfing), to homelessness.

As a matter of political reality, if the state requires that each town to have an addiction recovery clinic, the state will have to pay for them. The quickest way for a piece of legislation to die is for the non-partisan Office of Fiscal Analysis to label it an unfunded municipal mandate. (My friends at OFA take non-partisanship very seriously. But absent state funding, that is how they would designate your proposal.)