Look What Appeared Near Union Station

Now the community has the street back
?
The road was closed, and US Route 1 re-routed, to give the street to the community of Church Street South, whose residents did not want a major highway running through their housing complex.

[Paul: Thanks. Story altered in response.]

So cool!

Everything goes in circles; especially in NH. The street always went through. Now opening it is considered a brilliant idea??

Just curious, when and how did "Northland Investment Corp", a private equity firm worth billions, buy and get control over land that public housing once stood on? There's an incredible shortage of decent affordable housing in New Haven, yet public housing is torn down with no concrete plans for one-to-one replacement? How many affordable housing units could have been built in New Haven with the $50+ MILLION used to build this Orange Street crossing, which is redundant when pedestrians and cyclists could easily cross Route 34 using Church, College or State Streets?

@concerned4NewHAven-- That is a good question and probably privatization is the reason to turn over mgt to private slumlords---I mean investors--.
AND-- There actually was a plan for those displaced: get them out of NH and out to the suburbs! This way the wealthier/working/less needy folks can come to NH and pay taxes.
This is what people said they wanted. Diversify the suburbs--- how about some data on where the residents of public housing are going???

[Paul: CCS used to be run by a tenant cooperative. Then private owners took over. Northland was recruited by then-Mayor DeStefano to purchase CCS from Community Builders when the project was a rundown, neglected mess. Northland was asked to buy the property with the plan of eventually tearing it down and rebuilding a mixed-use, mixed-income project. But after the sale, the neighborhood made clear it didn't want to lose affordable housing. So City Hall backed off support for a new project. Meanwhile, the project continued deteriorating to the point of a public-health emergency requiring evacuation of tenants and demolition of the complex.]

Concerned4NewHaven: Church Street South was never intended to be publicly owned housing, just publicly subsidized housing as project-based section 8. HUD granted low-rate loans to non-profits such as the Junior Chamber of Commerce/Jaycees, Trade Union Council, and the Antillean Friendly Society to build Church Street South, Trade Union Plaza, and Antillean Manor. After the apartments were rented, ownership was turned over to a tenants' co-operative, with the HUD loan secured by a mortgage. The tenants, not the public owned the property. In the cases of CSS, Union Plaza, and Antillean Manor, however, the tenants defaulted on their loans leading HUD to foreclose their ownership interests. In the cases of CSS and Union Plaza, HUD then sold the complexes to private investors, who were bound to maintain the complexes as section 8 for a period of years, after which the owners could do what they wanted with the properties. Friends and family of my wife bought Trade Union Plaza and fixed it up with the intention of condo-izing it when their section 8 obligation ran out. As it happened, they sold to another landlord, who, I think, sold to another, who turned it into market rate rental housing. Had the tenants of CSS not defaulted on their mortgage loan, they would own the complex, and have built wealth. New Haven Urbanism is an expert on CSS.

@Concerned4NewHaven, Northland bought Church Street South and its 301 apartments in July 2008 for $4M in borrowed funds.

Thanks, 1644, for a very clear explanation of the chain of events. So, it is safe to say that the residents were not not ready for the demands of home ownership and this is what torpedoed the plan?

One thing I'd love to see with articles like this is maybe a link to a Google Map so I can see exactly where it is? Sometimes I have a hard time picturing the exact road we're talking about.

All for more bike lanes, though.

I've been walking this new street on my lunch break. The guys were installing the street lights the other day. It's a nice change.

Does that mean here?
https://goo.gl/maps/vSpG4SXcDb7NPut86

You can see the long-term plans for the area at https://www.goodyclancy.com/projects/hill-to-downtown-transit-oriented-development-community-plan-2/.

Given the transportation access I'd also be happy to see large office towers or a conference center next to the train station instead of primarily residential/retail. Union Square Park is a great idea, though.

The area will feel very different once Yale demolishes the old Lee High School and puts in a few more office towers at that site.

I second BetweenTwoRocks. Please show, don't just tell, us about the locations of building projects.

I love the cycle track and lighted sidewalk which will mix nicely with the Hill To Downtown neighborhood reconnection project. But we need a new complex with mixed income levels units with a good percentage of truly affordable housing and mixed use on street level development to replace the Church Street South complex. It shouldn't be exclusively residential because we need a vibrant lively diverse commercial mix of food and beverage, retail, offices, services and other business uses for the street level so the street doesn't shut down and become desolate at night. It shouldn't be exclusively low income, because we shouldn't be concentrating poor people's housing into large subsidized housing project stigmatized ghettos, and instead we should be requiring a healthy percentage of low income and truly affordable income units into all new builds and rehabs in every neighborhood throughout the city.

@cityyankee

New Haven in the 1980s and early 1990s were very violent, especially in "the jungle" . I doubt people just walked away from their mortgages and adult responsibilities just because.


https://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/juneboy_re-hits_the_big_time/

Offtherails: The Church Street South/JayCee tenants defaulted before 1980, with their foreclosure finalized in early 1980. Antillean tenants were foreclosed in 1977. Trade Union Plaza was also a quick default, with multiple modifications, then strict foreclosure in 1983. The tenants of Hill Central, organized in the 1980's by New Haven Clergy and funded by CHFA rather than HUD, never defaulted and only recently sold their shares to a private developer. I believe there is a HUD funded co-op in Wooster Square that survives.
The reasons for those early failures are passing from living memory. It would be great if some student did his dissertation on why some failed and others survived. My personal take, somewhat informed by Union Plaza, is that those who wind up in subsidized housing are nearly by definition those who are poor at life and financial planning. I know with TUP, there was a reluctance to evict those behind on rent, as well as nuisance tenants, leading to a degradation of the project. When tenants did not pay their rent, the co-op could not pay its bills, including its mortgage loan payments.