People, Partners, Pets Settle At Ex-Hotel

In less than a month of staying at New Haven’s newly opened hotel-turned-homeless shelter, Debra Jimenez got a new job and has started hunting for an affordable apartment for her partner and three pets while staying on track to earn her second master’s degree come spring.

Jimenez, 43, is one of the first 12 people experiencing homelessness to have moved into the former Days Inn at 270 Foxon Blvd. since it reopened in mid-December as non-congregate, 24-hour, supportive crisis housing. The others, like Jimenez, said this week that the shelter has already set them on pathways towards stabler lives. 

The city, which bought the building for the conversion, expects a total of 55 people to move in by the end of January. The city is working with nonprofit partner Continuum of Care to get the operation running at full tilt.

Construction is still underway to ready unoccupied rooms and build out communal lounge areas. Continuum is figuring out how to get the shelter fully staffed and functioning as planned with on-site housing coordinators, case managers, and healthcare professionals.

“There’s a lot of facilities that are slowly coming online, like security cameras, door locks, key fobs. I know there’s an urgency to this and we’re actively trying to get everything up and running,” said John Labieniec, a clinical director with Continuum of Care. 

In the meantime, the first 12 residents are already claiming vast improvements in their day-to-day lives thanks to access to steady meals, warm beds, internet access, and their own private bathrooms.

Weeks before she moved into the shelter, Jimenez said she was living in a shed with her disabled partner, two huskies named Marlee and Mya, and their cat, ​“Mr. Mew.” At her lowest point, the only plans she was making were ones to take her own life, she said.

Today, she said, ​“I have hope for the future, even if my present isn’t that great.”

After experiencing a major depressive episode last winter, Jimenez lost her job and was evicted from her apartment by landlord Ocean Management. She squatted in that apartment with her girlfriend and pets from February until October, when she found an abandoned shed in Milford where the crew bundled up in blankets and hoped a shelter would take them in.

“I had a couple of flashlights and I put blankets down on an old air bed I had,” she said. When she could afford it, she’d go to a nearby gas station which charged $12 for customers to use their shower.

Jimenez said that the first shelter to offer a room would allow her huskies, but not her cat, to stay in the facility. ​“I couldn’t give up my babies,” Jimenez said. ​“They’re homeless with you too.”

She had adopted the pets with her long-term partner, Cassie Saxton, around the pandemic as emotional support animals. After growing up between foster homes, Jimenez said the animals have helped her regulate long-standing depressive episodes she attributes largely to childhood trauma. 

Navigating homelessness along with her pets and partner, who has also been unemployed for months as she prepares for knee surgery and tries to secure disability benefits, has posed additional emotional turmoil.

“It would’ve been easier to take care of myself,” Jimenez reflected. ​“I could’ve gone to Virginia and stayed with my family. It was a sacrifice and strain on my relationship: Do I leave my partner and my pets behind and take care of myself?”

When she finally got a call that the city had opened a new shelter that offered family members private rooms and didn’t bar animals, ​“I was so relieved. I think I’ve said thank you to the staff here a million times.”

It’s not perfect. The hotel room can feel stuffy with two large huskies jumping on the bed and it’s been an adjustment to abide by a nightly 7 p.m. curfew and have her medicine administered to her by nurses. As someone who used to work in case management, it’s strange to submit to the kind of supervision she’s had experience providing herself.

But, she said, ​“overall it’s got me relaxed. I’m able to focus on making my medical appointments and catching up on all the things I’ve needed to take care of.”

The curfew has, in some ways, been a ​“helpful structure — it’s helping me to be still, to wind down everyday at the same time and set my anxieties aside.” When she needs to work late, she tells the staff in advance and they grant her an exception. 

Now that she doesn’t have to worry about surviving freezing temperatures each night, she’s had the time and resources to get back into therapy, to secure a new job as a case manager for a New York City nonprofit, and to start looking more seriously for alternative housing options. She doesn’t have to stress as much about her partner, who suffers from severe knee and back pain, now that the pair have an accessible room with a private bathroom and bed. She no longer has to worry about whether she can shower before her classes at Albertus Magnus College, where she’s getting licensed as a drug and alcohol worker. 

Jimenez said she’s done all of that work — calling Cornell Scott Hill Health Center and local housing authorities — on her own, without the help of the on-site support staff. She said she had yet to meet the housing coordinator that Continuum says they’ve hired to work with clients. But she’s looking forward to getting the help, especially since certain housing applications require verification from staff that she’s living in the hotel. 

The main goal, she said, is to find an apartment where she has to pay only 30 percent of her income towards rent on a monthly basis so that she doesn’t have to worry about her income waning from month to month as she experiences ups and downs with her mental health.

Jimenez is uniquely equipped to navigate bureaucratic obstacles given her professional background. Other residents like Laurie Mercer and Lewis, who declined to give his last name, said that the on-site staff support have made all the difference in their time at the ex-hotel compared to other shelters.

Both Mercer and Lewis were previously staying at the Columbus House shelter on Ella Grasso Boulevard before receiving referrals to Foxon Boulevard.

“I used to own a house right down the street,” Lewis said. When he and his ex-wife sold the house, he said he was kicked out of Columbus House for ​“having more money than the staff.” With back problems putting him out of his standard work as an electrician, he spent the money on nightly motels and hospital bills, he said, until he found himself living in the bus stop right by the Days Inn. While taking showers at Liberty Safe Haven, he was told a new shelter opening across the street from his sleeping spot could accommodate him. 

He similarly agreed the curfew ​“takes some getting used to — I’m 63 years old and you’re telling me I gotta be in by 7?” 

But the Foxon shelter is better than any place he’s been in the past. Here he feels like he’s finally found some version of ​“home.” It’s not just a nice bed. ​“Once you leave most of those other shelters, you lose the help,” he said. ​“Here, the staff are here all day.

“I’m trying to take advantage of that while I’m here,” he said, by getting signed up for disability, writing a resume, and seeking a housing voucher and apartment.

Mercer, meanwhile, said she’s mostly hoping for help finding a job — not just to make the money she needs to afford an apartment, but to feel a sense of purpose as she ages.

The 63-year-old moved from New Haven to Florida three months back to live with her sister after her kids and grandchildren had moved up and out of her home. But her sister’s landlord said Mercer wasn’t allowed to stay in the apartment — and Mercer found herself staying in warming shelters and, for a period of time, at Columbus House, while she struggled to find work.

In December, she had an asthma attack that left her in the hospital for five days. If the city hadn’t connected her with the bed on Foxon, she said she didn’t know how she’d be able to recover in a room crammed full of people sick with the flu, like at the Columbus overflow shelter.

That said, it would be nice if more community existed in the old Days Inn, she reflected. ​“Since it’s hotel, we all have a T.V. in our room and internet. Everybody just kind of does their own thing. It would be nice to play dominoes or a card game or something.”

That’s also why she is hoping to find a job as soon as possible. 

“The kids are married, even the grandchildren are grown now. Nobody wants to go to grandma’s house, even though I sprained my hand getting on a hoverboard for them.

“It’s not just about having some income coming in. It’s about not feeling obsolete.”