Laura Glesby Photo
Imam Saladin Hasan at Saturday's rally: "We are pro-help."
“You don’t set up trauma sites in communities that are already traumatized.”
Imam Saladin Hasan offered those words Saturday to a crowd of roughly 100 Newhallville residents and neighbors protesting the APT Foundation’s planned move of a methadone clinic to a former middle school building on Dixwell Avenue.
That rally took place outside of the former Elm City College Prep middle school building at 794 Dixwell Ave. near the corner of Elizabeth Street.
The focus of the protest was the APT Foundation’s planned relocation of a variety of outpatient healthcare services — including a roughly 395-patient methadone clinic — from Long Wharf to the empty Newhallville school building, which APT purchased in December for $2.45 million
On Saturday afternoon, speakers from a new coalition called Newhallville-Hamden Strong took the lead on calling on the city to work with APT to find a different location for their services. The group is comprised of community members on both sides of New Haven’s northern border
Speaker after speaker stressed that they support access to addiction treatment; many said they have loved ones who have struggled with substance use.
They argued instead that Newhallville, a largely residential neighborhood, would not be an appropriate place for a methadone clinic. They took issue with the APT Foundation itself — noting the organization’s lack of communication with neighbors about the move until it was reported by the Independent in this article in early January. And they pointed to challenges with drug use and criminal behavior outside the healthcare nonprofit’s current Long Wharf and Hill locations.
“We are pro-help,” stressed Hasan, who spoke as a representative of the Abdul Majid Karim Hasan Islamic Center one block away from the proposed new clinic site. “We want for our sisters and brothers whatever we want for ourselves: to go to a proper environment to get help.”
At the same time, Hasan added, “We don’t want our children to live in an environment where everyone they see needs help.”
Prior to the rally, Hasan had researched alternative properties in more industrial areas where the APT Foundation could move. He suggested properties at 350 State St. in North Haven, as well as 261 Skiff St. and 299 Wallace St. in Hamden.
Laura Glesby Photo
Rally organizer Jeanette Sykes, second from right, with politicians and protestors.
A majority-Black and working class neighborhood, Newhallville is one of the New Haven neighborhoods that has been hit hardest by the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as by the last two years’ uptick in gun violence. State Rep. Robyn Porter Saturday asserted that the neighborhood is “not getting the funding, resources, and opportunities that we need to thrive.”
Lifelong Newhallville activist and Ward 20 Democratic Co-Chair Barbara Vereen spoke of the vibrant points of community that neighbors have worked to revive amid these and other challenges — from block watches to the park and bird sanctuary on Cherry Ann Street.
Mary Gates described a culture in which residents can sit on their porches at night and chat with one another about their days. She worried that this sense of community could falter if the methadone clinic moves: “If APT comes into our community, we will be right back where we used to be.”
Porter, who said she has loved ones who struggle with substance use, compared the situation to an airplane emergency: when oxygen masks fall from the ceiling, she noted, airlines emphasize that passengers should put their own masks on before helping another person. “We gon’ put the mask on us first, and then we are going to help everybody else,” she said.
Members of the crowd on Saturday.
The APT Foundation’s current location in the Hill neighborhood is also a majority Black and Latino area grappling with a disproportionate lack of resources. Howard Boyd, a Hill activist and community management team chair, criticized the organization’s commitment to the neighborhood where it currently resides. He described regularly encountering litter and syringes outside the methadone clinic on Congress Avenue.
He blamed the APT Foundation itself for not doing more to address these issues: “They’ve been there for a while and never stepped out of their door to say, ‘What can we do?’” While the organization sent a representative to the Hill North Community Management Team to engage with neighbors, Boyd argued that the effort wasn’t enough: he would have liked to hear from leadership, he said, and to hear more than just “placating.”
In a Saturday afternoon email press release, the New Haven Republican Party announced its opposition to the methadone clinic’s planned move to Newhallville by citing a fatal stabbing that took place in 2017 outside of the Congress Avenue site in the Hill, which is across the street from an elementary school.
“While it is of vital importance that those battling drug addiction receive appropriate care and treatment and we stand fully behind plans to fight the ongoing opioid epidemic,” that email press release reads, “New Haven Republicans stand against the location of drug treatment facilities in residential neighborhoods, near schools, parks and playgrounds. Let’s put the safety of our residents and children first!”
(Update:) In an interview, Lynne Madden, the CEO and president of the APT Foundation, told the Independent, “It’s a relatively common experience that folks are afraid of what will transpire if a treatment program is in their general location. A lot of these are fears that don’t actually come to pass.“
Madden defended the APT Foundation’s community outreach in the Hill. “We’ve done a lot of work there on our Congress Ave. location with the city, including the police department and the management team of Hill north. There are significantly improved circumstances there… Many of the problems that are laid at the feet of the APT Foundation are probably shared by all of us in that neighborhood, not solely by APT Foundation or the persons that are.“
Madden added that “literally hundreds of people” are dying each day of opioid use disorder. “When we as a society constantly protest the location of evidence-based treatments, we contribute to the stigma around the necessity of care,” she argued.
According to Vereen, 700 people have signed a petition against the APT Foundation’s planned Newhallville move.
Mayor: "The City Can't Just Decide To Put It Somewhere Else"
Mayor Justin Elicker: "I’m not gonna stand up here and give promises I can’t deliver on."
One of the speakers at Saturday’s rally was Mayor Justin Elicker. He promised to work with Newhallville-Hamden Now and the APT Foundation in the hopes of finding another location for the clinic — but said there were limits to what he could control as mayor of the city.
Elicker offered measured support of the APT Foundation’s track record of providing substance use treatment. “It is vital that we provide treatment to people that are facing substance use disorder. If anything, we need to provide more treatment, rather than less,” he said. “Historically, we have criminalized substance use disorder and addiction —”
“In this community,” someone interjected.
Elicker continued to express support for a medical approach, rather than a criminal justice or shame-based approach, to addiction. “APT has had challenges in the Hill community,” Elicker said, “but inside those doors, everything I have seen and heard from the experts is that their clinical approach is appropriate and research based.”
“That’s not the issue,” called out Aquil Abdul-Salaam from the crowd. He was echoed by a few other heckles.
“I understand that people in Newhallville and the Hill feel like, ‘Why does it always have to be in our neighborhood.’ I hear that frustration,” Elicker said. “The city wants to work with you all and APT to see if there is another solution.”
“But I want to be real with people,” he continued. “I’m not gonna stand up here and give promises I can’t deliver on. The city can’t just decide to put it somewhere else.”
Longtime Newhallville resident Jeanette Sykes, who ran the committee that organized the rally, said that during the rally, she felt that the mayor was “hiding behind” the notion that the protesters opposed medical treatment for addiction.
“We understand about treatment,” she emphasized, noting that ahead of the rally, she asked every speaker not to stigmatize substance use disorder.
Sykes said that her group plans to meet with the mayor next week to continue the conversation.
Watch the rally, and a conversation about the issue on WNHH Radio’s Tom Ficklin Show, below.
“You don’t set up trauma sites in communities that are already traumatized.”