6 Crisis Beds OK’d For Winthrop Ave

Three megalandlord-owned apartments on Winthrop Avenue will soon become six short-term spots for people unsure where to turn in the midst of an affordable housing and shelter shortage.

That conversion is all teed up now that Continuum of Care has won zoning relief to turn the three-family house at 310 Winthrop Ave. into a custodial care facility. 

Continuum of Care is a local nonprofit with over 50 residential recovery properties across the state for individuals struggling with mental illness. 

It’s also the organization contracted by the city to run New Haven’s crisis response team, better known as COMPASS, which sends social workers and peer counselors to certain emergency calls related to homelessness, substance abuse, and mental health care.

On Tuesday, the nonprofit received unanimous approval from the Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) for a requested special exception to allow a custodial-care-facility use in a residential zone with the condition that no more than six individuals live on site at any point in time.

The site will serve as transitional housing and care for up to six adults for 14 to 19 days at a time, with between one and four staff members on scene 24 hours a day. It will specifically provide emergency short-term shelter for people whom the COMPASS team responds to and interacts with.

John Labieniec, Continuum of Care’s vice president of acute and forensic services, told the Independent on Wednesday morning that the goal of the new center is to provide a short-term landing point for people in crisis as Continuum of Care workers seek out permanent and/or subsidized housing to meet each individual’s longer-term needs.

“We’re looking to expand our beds because we just don’t have enough of them,” Labieniec said. 

Now that Continuum of Care is serving as the city’s mobile crisis response team, he said, the nonprofit is encountering and uncovering an increasing number of people in need of basic care, like shelter, food, showers, and access to healthcare. 

Read more about the kind of outreach work that COMPASS does here, as well as about the long waitlists for housing and social services that COMPASS workers are struggling to navigate alongside the clients they identify through their outreach work.

Labieniec said Continuum of Care officially purchased 310 Winthrop Ave. from Pointer Del LLC, which is an affiliate of local megalandlord Ocean Management, on Saturday. The city land records database shows that the nonprofit bought the three-family property from the Ocean affiliate for $375,000 on March 14.

Ocean Management Principal Shmuel Aizenberg did not respond to request for comment. Labieniec said that when Continuum of Care developed interest in the property there was only one individual renting a room in the four-story building. He said that former 310 Winthrop renter has already found alternative housing.

In the meantime, Labieniec said it should take under a year to start renovating the property so that it’s ready to house six people in need. That rehabilitation effort will also include exterior improvements to the property, such as the construction of an outdoor patio behind the house. He said the nonprofit is still working on finding funding to complete that undertaking.

Monica O’Connor, Continuum’s vice president of facilities management, and Deborah Cox, the nonprofit’s vice president of fund development and marketing communications, joined Labieniec in pitching that project Tuesday.

“There’s a lot we’re doing to revitalize the property and bring improvement to the neighborhood,” O’Connor told the board, such as repainting the exterior of the building and adding ramps to the back of the property for improved accessibility.

Board of Zoning Appeals Chair Mildred Melendez welcomed the project, asserting that Continuum of Care will bring the dilapidated property ​“back to life.”