Maya McFadden Photos
Orchard St. shelter client Tony Briggs: "Whether it's mats, pads, or the floor, it's better than freezing your ass off."
Career student Aleika Pizarro: The new shelter is "actually a good thing."
Just before sunrise, Tony Briggs stepped out of the city’s newest overnight “warming center” at a former school on Orchard Street — roughly half an hour before Career High School senior Aleika Pizarro arrived early for classes right across the street.
Briggs left the shelter grateful for a warm place to spend a cold New Haven night. Pizarro arrived at school with compassion and understanding that all city dwellers deserve a safe place to lay their heads.
That was the scene between around 6:30 and 7 a.m. on Tuesday on opposite sides of the same stretch of Orchard Street.
Briggs, 53, and around ten others without a home began their day in 30-degree weather as they left the warming center at the former Strong School at 130 Orchard St. That newly opened city overnight warming shelter has space for 47 people to sleep each night, and is located right across the street from Hill Regional Career High School at 140 Legion Ave.
The school-turned-shelter opened last Friday along with two other warming centers as part of the city’s annual wintertime effort to help those without permanent housing have a warm place to sleep at night. Each of the city’s warming centers, including the one at 130 Orchard, will be open from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., seven days a week, from Dec. 1 through April 15. The other sites include Varick Memorial AME Zion Church at 242 Dixwell Ave. and The 180 Center at 438 East St.
Career parking lot entrance across the way from the warming center exit.
Twenty to thirty minutes before students at Career started getting dropped off by school buses and parents, around a dozen New Haveners who spent the night at the ex-Strong School departed into the cold morning to walk about a mile and a half to the Sunrise Cafe for a free breakfast at 57 Olive St. in Wooster Square.
Briggs was among them when this reporter caught up with him at around 6:40 a.m. Brigg said Monday night was his second night sleeping at the Orchard Street site, which he described as less busy than other shelters he’s been to in the past, including those on Grand Avenue. He left the site Tuesday with a small duffle bag of clothes for the week ahead.
Briggs has moved back and forth and back and forth between Harlem and New Haven over the course of his life. He arrived back in New Haven late last week to get a prognosis for his father, who is receiving dialysis for his chronic kidney disease.
He said the hotels have been booked up since he returned and so he plans to stay at the warming center for the time being. Typically when he returns to New Haven to check on his 86-year-old father he avoids “dealing with people’s drama” by staying in shelters or hotels rather than with family.
He spent Monday submitting transfer papers to move his job at FedEx in Stratford to Florida using the computers at the public library, he said. He hopes to finish his studies to become a mortician in the next two years. Now he plans to travel down south over the coming weeks, making a stop in D.C to pick up a school transcript before finally arriving in Florida.
Briggs said he arrived at the Orchard Street site at around 6:30 p.m. Monday. He stood in a small line to get in, as the doors opened at 7 p.m. He was required to check in his bag and got scanned for weapons by a metal detector wand.
He sipped on coffee while being allowed to take smoke breaks outside of the building until 10 p.m., he said about Monday night. Briggs said that there were only about a dozen people who stayed at the Orchard Street shelter each of the past two nights, even though the site has capacity for 47 people.
The center has been comfortable enough for him over the past two nights as he doesn’t plan to stay all winter, and he added that he knew many of the staff who were Hillhouse High School graduates of 1988, just like him.
“It’s not like Grand Avenue was before it closed, so far you don’t have to stand outside early for two hours hoping to get a spot,” Briggs said about the Orchard Street site. “It’s a better atmosphere and bigger spot.”
Inside the space were two security officers, Briggs said, along with two staffers who each do a shift from 7 p.m. to 12 a.m., then another two staffers work from 12 a.m. to 7 a.m. The site is run by Upon This Rock Ministries, which has contracted with city government to run the Board of Education-owned property.
He theorized that the site will get more regulars as the winter gets harsher, but believes it won’t hit capacity because “it’s way over here,” further from downtown.
Briggs did say he doesn’t like the unisex bathroom, but besides that complimented the staff who provided the group with a chicken and rice meal and snacks Monday night. “They care about your welfare,” he said.
He added he’s heard no complaints from others using the center overnight because “whether it’s mats, pads, or the floor, it’s better than freezing your ass off.”
After joining the others who stayed at the center overnight for breakfast at the Sunrise Cafe, he planned to head over to Liberty Safe Haven on State Street to wash his clothes and charge his phone.
Damon, father of a Career student.
All individuals staying at the warming center were out before 7 a.m. Tuesday. Most left at around 6:30 a.m.
Right across the street, Career’s school parking lot was completely empty until about 7 a.m. when the first buses and parents began dropping students off for classes minutes later.
One father, named Q, dropped off his daughter at Career Tuesday morning and said he doesn’t see anything wrong with having the warming center across the street “as long as there’s no chaos.”
“As long as there’s no problem coming from neither way, leave it the way it is,” he added. “All bringing in security is gonna do is cause problems.”
Career senior Aleika Pizarro agreed after walking to school Tuesday morning, arriving at around 7:05 a.m.
She said it doesn’t concern her that the warming center is across the street from her high school. “It’s actually a good thing,” she said.
She often sees people dealing with homelessness hanging out on Sylvan Avenue, but said they are always minding their business and often are not interested in going near school property.
Pizarro understands the Board of Ed’s previously discussed concerns about having the site across from a school but said “anywhere can be dangerous” and if no one has been hurt so far, then it should stay.
Another father named Damon dropped his son off Tuesday morning and said, while “I wish they didn’t put it here” and called it not appropriate, “where else do you put something like this because if you keep moving it you’re just not being fair.”
He said he hopes the school and the center’s staff stay on top of safety for the full duration of the warming center.
Another father, named Vernon, dropped his daughter off as he does every day at 7:30 a.m. and said “everybody needs a chance” and “as long as the kids are safe.”
One student who declined to share his name said “as long as it helps, it’s welcomed.”
The school’s heaviest point of morning traffic occurred from 7:30 to 7:40 a.m.
The first class of the day began at 7:45 a.m.
Students arrive at Career Tuesday morning.
See below for more recent Independent articles about homelessness, activism, and attempts to find shelter.
• Ex-School Reopens As Winter Overnight Shelter
• Opinion: Homelessness Transcends Urban / Suburban Divide
• Columbus House To Build New 80-Room Shelter
• Suburban Fundraisers Sing For Hill’s Tiny Homes
• 700 Free Turkeys Fly At Food Pantry Giveaway
• Homelessness Update Uncovers Mental Health Toll
• NHPS: 567 Students & Counting Are Homeless
• Youth Shelter Planned, But Not For Hazel St.
• Mike P. Skips Polls, Heads To Scrapyard
• Tiny Homes Hit With 2nd Violation Notice
• City Tells Tiny Home Builders To Cease And Desist
• 6 Tiny Houses Built In Hill Backyard
• $3.5M Hotel-To-Homeless Shelter Contract OK’d
• Hotel-To-Homeless Shelter Contract Advances
• Hotel-To-Homeless Shelter Plan OK’d
• Memorial Uplifts Activist’s Fighting Spirit
• Tents Pop Up In 2 Candidate Debates
• Three Tents Pop Up On The Green
• Unhoused Activists Mourn One Of Their Own
• Homeless Activist Found Dead Outside Soup Kitchen
• Opinion: Don’t Sweep People Away
• Union Station Clears Out
• 50 New Homeless Shelter Beds Open In The Hill
• Tuesday In The State St. Triangle With David
• DESK Preps For Temp Relocation, Major Renovations
• Parking Chief: Homelessness At Union Station Is A Housing Problem
• Closing Time At Union Station
• City Housing Plight Brought To The‘Burbs
• Tent City Exiles Re-Camp On Rosette
• Debate Q: The Lesson Of Tent City Was …
• Homeless Youth Housing Plan Revived
• 6 Crisis Beds OK’d For Winthrop Ave
• Non-Cop Crew Cruises To Crisis Calls
• Don’t Like Encampments? Fund Solutions
• Brennan Slams Elicker For“Cruel” Tent City Sweep
• Why & How We Took Action At The Encampment
• DuBois-Walton: Tent City Reflects Broader Housing Crisis
• Tent City Bulldozed
This article shows how compassionate and realistic New Haveners are towards the plight of the unhoused, as long as both the shelter users and the school continue to give each other mutual respect, this can be a very decent overnight safe haven for the unhoused.
The plight of Tony Briggs having to move around to check in on his aging and ill parent, avoiding other family members drama, and moving up and down the Atlantic coastline for work, and caring for family, and using the local shelter and social services providers to get by, is reminding me of so many stories I heard growing up in the city.
Like Tom Joad in Grapes Of Wrath, our countrys low income workers often struggle to find work, housing they can afford, to deal with family drama, deal with other desperate people struggling to get by, or numbing their misery with substances, and being chased or having to move from place to place during economic depressions, recessions, and being criminalized for just trying to survive.
With the gig economy and robots taking over automated jobs once filled by humans, and higher education leaving people with student loans that are not paid off until youre in your fifties or older, its going to be even harder to earn a living wage and afford housing and pay for the basics of life.
The American Dream is become out of reach for many front line and essential low income, middle income workers, and many of our elderly and disabled are becoming unhoused.
Something has to change.