How To Make New Haven ​“A City Of 150,000 Thriving People”

Following is the prepared text for the annual ​“State of the City” address Mayor Justin Elicker delivered Monday evening at City Hall.

(As prepared for delivery)

Good evening, President Walker-Myers, members of the New Haven Board of Alders, fellow New Haven residents, and guests. It’s good to be with you once again to provide an update on the state of our city.

A month ago, we gathered together at Wilbur Cross High School to inaugurate our new city government, take our oaths of office, and begin our work together in 2024.

As you may recall, in my remarks, I noted that our city has a big anniversary on the horizon: ten years from now, in 2034, New Haven will be celebrating our 250th anniversary as an incorporated city, dating back to 1784. 250 years.

With such a milestone, it’s a time for us to reflect on both where we stand as a city today and where we want to go in the future – the values we hold, the challenges we face, the progress we’ve made, and the continued work that’s required to uplift more of our residents so they have the opportunity to thrive.

In what type of city do we want to live, in 2034? In what type of city do we want our children to live and inherit? Where do we want to make our biggest investments? What do we want to be known for as a city | and as a people as we prepare to celebrate 250 years?

In many ways we think about these questions every day – about who we are and how we define ourselves as a city. But in this past month since our inauguration, we’ve begun a more deliberate journey together to envision and more thoughtfully consider what city we want to be when we arrive at this significant 250th anniversary.

Last month, we kicked off our Vision 2034 citywide planning process – and over 150 residents showed up in-person or participated virtually at our first community meeting in the Hill, eager to share their inputs and ideas about our city and its future. Through the Vision 2034 process, residents will have the opportunity to come together to help collectively develop our priorities, goals, and actions that will touch upon virtually every aspect of life in our city – and which will ultimately result in the creation of our next ten-year comprehensive plan that will serve as a blueprint and a policy guide for city’s future.

And, if you haven’t already, I encourage you to go to newhavenct.gov/vision2034 to learn more, sign up, and get involved!

New Haven Public Schools also kicked off its citywide planning process to develop its next five-year Strategic Operating Plan – and over 1,000 people have already participated. Together, students, parents, teachers, administrators, and community members will help inform and identify the priorities, goals, and strategies we put in place to support student learning and growth and to ensure our schools are thriving educational environments for our children, families, and educators.

It’s an exciting time to be in New Haven because New Haven is hopping – and the secret is out!

We’re no longer just the cultural capital of Connecticut, increasingly we’re a national and global destination well beyond our state’s borders.

Last January, New Haven was named one of the top ​“52 Places to Go” in the world by The New York Times.

This January, just a couple weeks ago, Cosmopolitan Magazine named New Haven as a top tier ​“cultural hotspot,” and encouraged its readers to pack their bags and go visit!

Now, we all know New Haven is a ​“cultural hotspot” not because it has a trend-setting fashionista as its mayor. In the Cosmopolitan Magazine profile, our cool, hip, and always fashionable Director of Arts, Culture, and Tourism, Adriane Jefferson, was featured in the story – not me. Although, I must say, I might have been overlooked because I have one of the most impressive collections of blue-collar dress shirts of any resident in the Elm City!

As the article notes, New Haven is a hotspot because of all our city has to offer and, most significantly in my opinion, because of our people – who, in the words of Cosmo, are quote ​“gorge and diverse.”

Now, I don’t think I’ve ever used the word ​“gorge” before in a speech or even a conversation, but it’s true: from West Rock to East Rock, from City Point to Lighthouse Point, from West River to the Quinnipiac River, from Newhallville to the Hill, and every neighborhood around and in between, our city is filled with amazing individuals who are the essence of our city’s vibrancy and strength.

What’s also true is New Haven is a place where more and more people want to continue to live, relocate to, work, visit, start a business, and raise a family.

And, because of all this, our city is growing. Growing in size, growing in strength, and continuing to grow in stature.

According to the latest U.S. Census estimates, the Elm City is now nearly 139,000 people strong.

Since 2020, New Haven has had population growth rate of approximately 1.8 percent per year. While, on the flip side, Connecticut’s other major cities have experienced very modest growth or declines during the same time period.

If this growth trend continues, and we have every reason to believe that it will, when we celebrate our 250th anniversary as an incorporated city in 2034 or soon thereafter, New Haven is on a path to be a city of 150,000 people and poised to be the most populous city in Connecticut.

Currently, only Bridgeport is larger, with a population of 148,000. And, while we wish for Bridgeport’s success, I have news for you: watch out, Bridgeport – New Haven is growing and we’re on the move!

Importantly, as we grow, we must grow inclusively, equitably, and sustainably.

Just as we have led the way in Connecticut in the post-pandemic recovery by centering inclusive growth and by prioritizing equity and sustainability, we will continue to do so during this next chapter of our city’s growth as well. 

Because the aim is not ​“how does New Haven become a city of 150,000 people?” The aim is ​“how does New Haven become a city of 150,000 thriving people?”

The alternative would be to try to fight this growth and try to remain a city of 139,000 people. But if we did so, as has happened in many other cities who have experienced rapid growth, as more people move into New Haven, more of our current residents would get pushed out – and that is an outcome we cannot and will not accept.

We want everyone to be able to thrive.

We must ensure that our residents who were born here, raised here, live here now, and made New Haven what it is today, are able to stay here and be beneficiaries of its growth.

At the same time, we must ensure we remain a city that is consistent with our values – an inclusive city that welcomes everyone and that is a haven for all.

We want residents who come back to New Haven – the returning college graduate or individual returning from incarceration – to have the opportunities to make the Elm City their home again. And we want new arrivals from all economic stations and walks of life to be able to build a life here as well – the refugee, immigrant, young person starting off on a new career, or growing family that is drawn to all New Haven has to offer.

So, to do right by our current residents and to be true to our values, we must embrace this growth, rise to the challenge, learn lessons from other cities successes and their missteps, so that as we grow, we grow inclusively, equitably, and sustainably.

So, the question is how do we make that happen?

I believe the first place we need to start is housing – and that’s where I’d like focus most of my remarks this evening.

In New Haven, there’s a lot of building going on. All over the city, shovels are in the ground and cranes are in the sky. Nearly all of our new construction is, and will continue to be, on vacant land or renovating vacant and unused buildings. But not only are we building, we’re building lots more affordable housing too.

While we still have a ways to go, we can be proud that New Haven has been a leader in the state in affordable housing. Today, a third of our housing stock is affordable housing, per the state’s standard, second only to Hartford. And, while we wish Hartford success, I have news for you: watch out, Hartford – New Haven is growing and we’re on the move!

Since 2020, when I first took office, approximately 1,900 new housing units have been built, and we’ve built and preserved approximately 900 units of affordable housing.

Looking forward, there are approximately 3,500 new housing units in the pipeline, and approximately 1,400 – 40 percent of them – are affordable units.

And let’s be clear, our City of New Haven and, in particular, this Board of Alders have dedicated more American Rescue Plan funds by far to the creation of affordable housing than any city in the state. 

By the way, those housing numbers don’t even include the largest development that will soon be ​“officially” in the pipeline, which is the redevelopment of the 12-acre Church Street South site directly across the street from Union Station. While the Church Street South site is still in the planning stages, we know the development will include a minimum of 300 affordable units and potentially up to a thousand total units. And, by the way, can we give three cheers for Elm City Communities, which has led the way on creating more affordable units for New Haven residents!

Now, while we are building, we are not building enough or fast enough.

To make this happen, we need new housing for all kinds of personal budgets: deeply affordable housing, affordable housing, and market rate housing too.

The need for more affordable units is obvious, given the number of cost-burdened families we have in our city. But we also need lots more market rate units as well because those units increase the overall supply, which in turn helps keep costs down. Also, thanks to the inclusionary zoning ordinance that we passed into law in 2022, any time new market rate units are built, more affordable housing units must be built as part of that development as well.

In addition, we also need different kinds of housing options as well. That’s why we’ve introduced new legislation to expand the number and the types of parcels eligible as Accessory Dwelling Units or ADUs. This new legislation would permit homeowners at 23,000 different properties citywide to, as of right, have the option of adding another residential unit to their property – and it would also permit different types of Accessory Dwelling Units, including tiny homes.

Further, in conversation with our residents and this body, we’ll continue to explore and advance ways that we can lift existing barriers in the City’s zoning law to facilitate the responsible growth and creation of new housing as well.

Now, while we continue to build new housing, we must also ensure that our existing our housing stock remains affordable, safe, and high-quality for our residents.

This includes helping more New Haveners achieve the dream of homeownership through our I’m Home downpayment and closing cost assistance program, which provides eligible first-time lower- and working-class homebuyers with up to $27,500 in financial assistance, enabling more residents to put down long-term roots and to begin to build generational wealth for themselves and their families.

That also includes ensuring our city’s renters – who represent over 70 percent of New Haveners – are treated fairly, respected, and protected – especially by absentee or bad-acting mega landlords. Every resident in our city deserves to live somewhere safe, clean, and affordable.

To this end, the number of cases handled by the Fair Rent Commission has more than quadrupled in recent years. The number of inspections conducted by the Livable City Initiative has increased year- over-year by 66 percent — and, when there’s a lack of compliance and the health and safety of our residents is at risk, we’re taking those slumlords to court.

However, despite these increased efforts, we also know there’s simply not enough housing inspectors to cover the rising number of units that have come and that will come online. We currently have 13 housing code inspectors for an estimated 43,000 rental units. That averages out to about 3,300 units per inspector – and while we’ve got a dedicated city workforce and not every unit is inspected every year, I don’t care who you are, it’s just not physically possible for one person to inspect that many units. 

So, in the upcoming budget that I’ll be presenting on March 1st , I’ll be proposing that we significantly increase the number of housing inspectors and housing staff so that we can get the job done for our residents.

While we continue to do our job as a city government, we also need to continue to empower tenants themselves to organize and advocate for their collective rights and wellbeing as residents. And that’s why, this year, I’ll be submitting legislation to strengthen our landmark and first-of-its-kind in the state tenants’ union ordinance and to significantly expand the number of tenants and the number of properties eligible to be recognized in a tenants’ union.

Now, housing affordability isn’t just about the cost of the rent or the mortgage – it’s about lowering other housing-related costs as well.

That’s why the City’s Office of Climate and Sustainability, in partnership with Neighborhood Housing Services, has been knocking on thousands of doors across the city to sign up residents for free energy efficiency audits and to connect them to home electrification resources that will help residents lower their bills and reduce their carbon footprint.

It’s also why the Health Department is working to connect residents to our Healthy Homes program and Lead Hazard Reduction initiative that provide residents with access to thousands of dollars in federal funds to help test, remediate, and eliminate environmental and other home hazards.

Finally, we know some of our residents don’t even have a place to rest their head at night. Sometimes life falls apart – and, like cities across the nation, homelessness is on the rise in New Haven too. But unlike other places, we are committed to extending compassion, care, and holistic services to individuals experiencing homelessness – whether that’s through one of our four daytime navigation hubs, three winter warming centers, or eight emergency shelters.

And this board recognized the importance of expanding options for the unhoused by supporting the acquisition and opening of our largest and first non-congregant shelter on Foxon Boulevard, which, at scale, will have 55 private rooms and serve up to 110 individuals. The site, which is now operational, includes wraparound social services and supportive case management to help connect people to more permanent housing, employment and job training opportunities, healthcare and mental health services, and other supports and services. And while much work remains, last year, our Office of Housing and Homelessness Services and our community partners served over one thousand individuals who are unhoused, unstably housed, or unsheltered – and successfully rehoused over 450 people with a permanent place they can call home. When other places say it’s not our problem, New Haven steps up and that should make us proud.

Now, with housing, it’s not simply ​“If you build it, they will come” – rather, we have to remain a vibrant city where people want to stay and where people want to be. And, again, in all this, our growth must be inclusive, equitable, and sustainable.

We need to be a city with a healthy and growing local economy; a city where our residents have access and pathways to good paying jobs; a city where our children receive a high-quality education that focuses on the whole child; a city where our streets and neighborhoods are safe; a city where our residents enjoy a high-quality of life with great parks and great public transportation and commuting options; and a city where our environment and our climate is protected.

Now, I won’t be able to get into the details on each of these topics tonight – otherwise, I’d keep everyone here all night – but I’d like to offer a few highlights.6

First, like our population, our economy, is also growing. We have been on an incredible journey, as we have grown from a small regional center to a global, world-class city that’s rising up through inclusive growth. New Haven has long been an economic center for health care, higher education, arts and culture, and the restaurant and foodservice industries. And while we continue to invest in and grow in these core pillars of our local economy, we’re also rapidly expanding into fast-growing new sectors that will help drive our future economy, in particular, bio, neuro, and life sciences; technology and quantum technology; the data sciences; and, most recently, climate technology.

Growing the number of affordable housing units is critical for our residents. And we also want to make sure more and more of our residents can afford the market rate units that are being built as well. And that’s about jobs.

To this end, we’re aggressively working to further strengthen and expand our career pathways initiatives to connect New Haveners to good-paying jobs in both growing and emerging industries. In fact, just the other week, the U.S. Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su was in town to highlight and celebrate the successes of career pathways initiatives at our local colleges and high schools.

Through collaborations with Gateway Community College, Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven Public Schools, the private sector, and other nonprofit partners, more of our students and young adults are getting connected to meaningful career exploration opportunities, real-world training, and industry certifications. New Haven Public Schools now offers seventeen different industry certifications in fields such as advanced manufacturing, computer engineering, and several health sciences careers to name a few. This fall, we’ll be launching a new bioscience pathway housed in the new 101 College

“BioLabs” classroom, where our high school students will meet and collaborate with some of the world’s leading scientists. In New Haven we have a promise that kids who choose to, can go to college.

We need a promise that every child has a pathway to success, no matter what they do.

Outside of our schools and universities, this year we invested $1 million in career pathways grants across ten partner organizations that’s connecting over 1,000 young people to workforce education, training, and certification initiatives – and, this year, we’ll be announcing another $1 million in grants as well.

We’re also working to support our local, home-grown entrepreneurs with our Small Business Resource

Center that supports residents looking to start up or scale their business through professional support, training, resources, networking, and access to capital. Over the past year, there have been 74 graduates of the DNA of an Entrepreneur program, 16 of which have already started their own business.

Similarly, in partnership with the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, this past year the New Haven Equitable Entrepreneurial Ecosystem (NHE3) initiative was launched, which has begun to award an anticipated 750 grants to help support and sustain existing and emerging local entrepreneurs as they create jobs, establish economic independence, and build generational wealth – with a particular focus on historically marginalized Black, brown, and female entrepreneurs.

Now that I’ve talked about housing and jobs, our schools are growing and getting stronger every day as well.

This school year, we welcomed a new superintendent, Dr. Madeline Negrón, and she has hit the ground running, laser-focused on student attendance, a strong school culture, and literacy.

My cell phone voicemail box is full and has run out of memory several times from all the reminder calls and my fellow parents get from Dr. Negrón, Danny Diaz, and New Haven Public Schools staff to make sure my daughters are in school!

During the 2021 – 22 school year, we were not in a good place. Our chronic absenteeism rate peaked at 60 percent as the pandemic upended our lives and our schools. But thanks to so much hard work by so many individuals, our teachers, administrators, and staff, we’re making incredible progress with a chronic absenteeism rate of 33 percent during the first half of this school year.

We still have a long way to go – with the state average at around 19 precent – but we’re on the right path and we’re going to keep at it to make sure we’re supporting our students and families, and fostering an environment where every student feels valued and motivated to attend school every day.

In addition, this year all our elementary schools have implemented our new literacy curriculum that’s anchored in the Science of Reading. And, outside the school day, this school year our New Haven Tutoring Initiative is working with 16 different non-profit organizations to provide over 800 elementary school students with high-dosage afterschool tutoring in reading and math – double the number of organizations and double the number of students from our initial 2023 summer pilot!

Finally, schools are at their best when they are not only an anchor of learning in the lives of our children, but when they are an anchor in the life of our communities as well. And, it was exciting when just last week, joined by U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, we celebrated two of our schools – Fair Haven School and FAME – being awarded a $2.5 million federal grant to become full-service community schools.

This initiative, led by Clifford Beers Community Care Center in partnership with New Haven Public Schools and 14 other municipal and community-based organizations, will expand the academic and enrichment programs, services, and supports available to Fair Haven students and families; help further activate these schools to serve the community in a coordinated way beyond the traditional school day; and hopefully serve as a model that we can learn from and replicate in other schools.

Now, while housing, jobs and education are core to our success, our community and our neighborhoods are only at their best and growing when our residents are enjoying a high-quality of life with great parks and other local places to connect with others; the ability to commute safely and easily on foot, bike, public transportation or car; and the peace of mind that comes with living on a street and in neighborhood that is free from violence and crime.

The good news is that on all these fronts, we’re making progress.

When it comes to public safety, our multi-pronged approach to reduce gun violence is working.

Violent crime continues to fall. Since January 2020, violent crime is down 28.5 percent – and year-over- year is down 5.8 percent. We have much more work to do here, but we are making progress.

Adding to the technology enhancements we’ve made in recent years, our Real Time Crime Center at police headquarters is now fully operational. It is the new nerve center for real-time information that is enabling our officers and detectives to get the intelligence they need to respond to, investigate, and solve major crimes. I’d like to thank the alders for supporting an historic investment in public safety to allow for this infrastructure.

Through strategic law enforcement, a community policing approach, state-of-the-art-technology, violence prevention and interruption programs, community resources and supports, and cross-departmental collaboration, our streets are not only safer, but we’re actually connecting individuals who are at the greatest risk of committing or being a victim of an act of gun violence with the supports they need to stay safe, alive, out of jail, and successfully reintegrate into the community.

Through our P.R.E.S.S. initiative, we’re employing evidenced-based practices, supportive case management, and coordinated service delivery to those returning from incarceration and the results have been remarkable.

It’s clear in the numbers — Correctional institutions send around 900 individuals back home to New Haven every year. Tragically, the state average is that up to 32 percent of individuals released or discharged from correctional facilities are reincarcerated within one year; up to 45 percent within two years; and up to 61 percent within three years. That’s a public policy failure if there ever was one.

However, among the around 160 clients who have been involved in P.R.E.S.S. since the program started about two years ago, the recidivism rate is a remarkable 14 percent.

So, this year, we’re expanding P.R.E.S.S. to serve more clients, expand the services offered, and also extend support to the families of those individuals returning from incarnation as well. We don’t talk about the P.R.E.S.S. program enough – which is ironic given the name. But this program is working and it’s a model. It sends the message that, in New Haven, we welcome you home and we want you to stay home.

Elm City C.O.M.P.A.S.S., our new crisis response team, completed first full year in operation in 2023.

Whether it’s a mental health issue, substance use issue, or homelessness issue – we’re employing a social services response to these situations to ensure the right person with the right skills is there at the right time to help people out.

Complementing and supporting the work of New Haven first responders to 911 calls and through outreach, C.O.M.P.A.S.S. has responded over 1,000 times since it first launched in November 2022.

And when talking about safety, we’d be remiss if we didn’t talk about complete streets. When it comes to commuting on our streets, we will continue to implement our Safe Routes for All plan and Major Corridors projects to make our roads safer for all users – pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers.

We’re committed to expanding our 48 miles of bikeways to 128 miles of bikeways, and this year we’ll be getting started on our most ambitious bike and pedestrian project yet: the extension of the Shoreline Greenway Trail, a 4.4‑mile route that will connect the Farmington Canal Trail to the rest of the Shoreline Greenway. With this new link, New Haveners will be able to travel by bike from downtown up the coast.

A growing city also needs a growing public transportation network – and good news is en route: Bus Rapid Transit is coming to the Elm City! Design and planning are now underway for a historic $150 million investment in our public transportation network that will provide faster, more frequent, more reliable, and greener bus service up and down the major corridors of Dixwell Avenue, Columbus and Congress Avenues, Grand Avenue, and Whalley Avenue. Construction is expected to begin in 2026 with Bus Rapid Transit beginning in 2029. This will be a game changer for our city and our commuters, and the routes will also extend into our neighboring towns of Hamden and West Haven as well.

What else is growing? Our commitment to our parks, green spaces, and climate.

New Haven is blessed with over 2,200 acres of parkland across 100 sites, and 96 percent of residents living within a 10-minute walk to a park.

But similar to LCI and the number of housing units, that’s a lot of park ground to cover and there is simply not enough parks staff to provide the type of maintenance and care that our residents want and that our parks deserve. So, in my budget, I’ll be proposing separating out Parks and Public Works and increasing the number of parks staff so that every neighborhood has parks that are clean, well maintained, and accessible to all.

Excitingly, this year, we’ll also begin construction of our newest flagship park: Long Wharf Park and Waterfront. This 18-acre shoreline site is a gem of the city and the ​“welcome sign” to New Haven for everyone who travels along I‑95 – and it’s used every day by hundreds of New Haven residents from every neighborhood. Thanks to a $12.1 million investment from the state, this shoreline area will be transformed with an upgraded promenade, playground, outdoor fitness equipment, bike paths, public benches and furniture, and – of course, a food truck pavilion.

And, by the way, this is just one component of our Long Wharf Responsible Growth Plan, a transformational initiative that – with the nearly $200 million in funding we’ve secured – will strengthen our costal resiliency, protect the costal habitat and wetlands, reconnect residents to the shoreline, and support the responsible development of this key waterfront area. A decade from now, in 2034, the Long Wharf and Gateway districts will in many ways be unrecognizable from what it looks like today.

We’ll also be doubling the number of trees we’re planting from 2,500 to 5,000 over the next five years in our partnership with the Urban Resources Initiative, with an added focus on streets and school grounds in our environmental justice neighborhoods. Plus, we’ll be developing a comprehensive Urban Forest Management Plan for our public forested natural areas, greenspaces, and parks.

Finally, as a coastal city, our growing city is also inextricably tied to our climate. In New Haven, we are committed to doing our part to reduce our carbon footprint, and we are leading the way.

This past year, New Haven was the first and only municipality in the State of Connecticut to receive gold certification status from Sustainable CT for its sustainability practices and climate initiatives.

And, as we continue to support our residents and businesses with access to resources to achieve energy efficiency and home electrification, including through our Solar for All program, as a city government, we will continue to lead by example.

This year, we will accelerate the electrification of our vehicle fleet (more on that soon) and commit to continuing to build out new facilities and, whenever possible, retrofit older facilities to eliminate on-site fossil fuel – resulting in buildings that are more energy efficient, more comfortable, and better for workers’ health. We’re also developing new solar resources and canopies atop our schools and even atop our city landfill.

In conclusion, Madam President and my fellow New Haveners, the state of our growing city is strong.

And as we walk towards our 250th anniversary, it is inevitable that we will continue to grow because of everything our city is and everything we have to offer as a people.

We will become the most populated city in Connecticut, but we must grow on our terms – ensuring that each of our long-time New Haven residents benefit from this growth – through the creation of thousands more affordable housing units, through the education and training of our young people and adults who deserve access to our growing economy, through the improved quality of life and high- quality parks and environment that bring clean air and a sustainable climate for another 250 years.

Yes, we will continue to have challenges, but our future is bright — and, by continuing to work together, our growing city will continue to be one where every one of our ​“gorge and diverse” residents have the opportunity to thrive.

Thank you and good night.

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