Sam Gurwitt Photo
Engineer Michael Ott presents Benhaven’s plans.
A plot of land on the southern end of Old Coach Highway in Hamden will soon become the site of a new group home for four young men.
Representatives of Benhaven appeared before the Hamden Inland Wetlands Commission (IWC) last week to get approval to build the house within 200 feet of Shepard Brook. The commission voted unanimously to approve the application.
Benhaven, based in North Haven, serves people of all ages with autism. It runs two schools in Wallingford for students with autism, provides support to families, and operates eight group homes for both youth and adults.
“It’s the Choate of autism,” said John, the Benhaven facilities employee representing the organization at last week’s IWC meeting. He declined to give his last name.
The new Old Coach Highway house will be the organization’s ninth group home, and its second in Hamden.
The site plan.
Benhaven has two categories of group home: those for adolescents, and those for adults. Executive Director Kathryn du Pree explained that a group of three young men in one of Benhaven’s adolescent group homes will soon age out of the home. Their families want continuity with the care their sons would receive. Benhaven decided to build another group home so they could stay with the organization. The fourth spot will go to whomever the Connecticut Department of Developmental Services (DDS) places there. Du Pree said that Benhaven does not have plans to build any more group homes.
The DDS funds group homes like those that Benhaven runs. It maintains a waiting list for families who still have their children living at home but can no longer care for them. When a spot opens up, it then places the child (or adult) in a group home.
The home will have separate bedrooms for each of its four inhabitants, and will have 24-hour staffing. The staff, said du Pree, helps train the residents to develop skills to live independently. Eventually, the men living there may be able to move to a different facility for people who can live more independently, or could even find a place to live completely on their own. They may also live in the Hamden group home indefinitely.
Quinnipiac Trail
Inland Wetlands Enforcement officer Tom Vocelli at IWC meeting.
In March, the IWC approved another application for a house just up the road on Old Coach Highway. That time, neighbors showed up to protest the application.
That property, like the Benhaven property, sits within 200 feet of Shepard Brook, meaning that any construction must gain approval by the IWC before construction can begin. The commission decided that the work would not pose too great of a threat to the brook. The neighbors, however, were less concerned about the brook and more concerned about the Quinnipiac Trail, which runs right behind where the new house will stand.
The Quinnipiac Trail runs through the Benhaven property as well. However, no neighbors showed up last week to speak against the application.
Michael Ott, the civil engineer who presented the project to the IWC, said that the Connecticut Forest and Park Association has agreed to reroute the trail around where the construction will take place.
