“Tent City” Survives City Cleanup Order

Marcus Williams tied up a load of litter in a black bag and dumped it beside a brand new shower shed and a well-used grill — growing a pile of ​“garbage” the city demanded be disposed of this week as part of an ultimatum to a self-governed encampment off the West River to clean up or move out.

People living outdoors in the so-called ​“Tent City” complied with the order, and will be able to stay for now, even as they push back on the city’s threatening to trash belongings they see as necessary to survive.

That encampment was bustling with volunteers and housing advocates Friday morning as residents of the tent city sought to remove not just debris but heating appliances and a large prefabricated shower that had just been donated to the community. They did so in order to align the site with newly enforced and spelled-out city regulations — and to avoid the possibility of seeing the site shut down in its totality. 

Velma George, city government’s homelessness coordinator, laid out rules regarding what devices and behaviors are allowed or barred at the encampment in a lengthy notice that was papered in late February onto about 20 tents congregated along the river just off Ella T. Grasso Boulevard. (Click here to read that notice in full.)

If the residents did not clear out garbage lining the property, take down the shower shed and remove all heating devices by 9 a.m. Friday, that notice warned, the city would step in to take down any tents in the name of health and safety. 

The notices also marked the Elicker Administration’s first coordinated response to a rising movement among members of the encampment to make tent city a legal space recognized and protected by the city — by reiterating that the encampment is a ​“temporary site” and that the city will not endorse permanent interventions or dwelling on the public property. 

Residents and volunteers worked together Friday while catching up over a breakfast of Spanish rice and coffee to complete the final stages of the clean-up, a week-long process of collecting trash and abandoned tents and tarps around the site. 

“There’s a grill in everyone’s backyard, but those aren’t fire hazards?” one organizer questioned as people worked together to lug a stovetop frequently shared by residents out of the camp.

“Hey, Paul, how are you doing?” another organizer shouted across the camp, excited to see the familiar face of a tent city regular.

“Same shit, bigger pile, more flies,” Paul C., replied. After spending two weeks ​“carrying plywood, leveling out skids, and nailing down” a home in the encampment after his tent was torn during a storm, he had just heard separately from the city that he would need to relocate his new tent and platform once again in order to concentrate the encampment over a smaller sector of land.

It was a drag to move his set-up of colored Christmas lights and carpeting even just a few feet further north — let alone to think about the possibility of having to find somewhere else to live entirely if the city evicted the encampment.

As he sipped his coffee, trucks from the city’s Parks Department waited in a parking lot separated from the encampment by a gate, a screening of sparse trees, and a vast soccer field, ready to pick up whatever waste residents hauled their way.

While a crew of organizers and unhoused individuals known as the Unhoused Activists Community Team (U‑ACT) have been calling for the city to install running water, bathrooms, mailboxes and electricity at the tent city for months, New Haven has now replied that while it does not intend to dismantle the community so long as residents remain as collaborative as they proved to be this past week, the city views the more than three-year-old encampment as an entirely ​“temporary site.”

In a notice addressed to ​“ALL occupants at the West River Temporary Encampment,” George specifically named a prefab shed that could be utilized as a shower a ​“permanent structure.”

“This temporary encampment is located within park land, more specifically in the heart of the bird sanctuary. Therefore, permanent structures are not permissible. In addition, this is a temporary site so there will be no mailboxes, no running water and no electricity installed,” she wrote. 

The city’s Community Services Administrator Dr. Mehul Dalal told the Independent that outreach workers from agencies like the non-profit shelter Columbus House had informed the city that debris around the site had been increasing in recent months and that regular visits from the fire department to the scene had unearthed evidence of open burns. However, he said that ​“what triggered” the city’s recent ultimatum to the encampment was ​“a permanent structure on the site.”

However, residents of the encampment said that the shower had been donated by students only a couple of weeks ago and no one had even used the shed before the city demanded its deconstruction.

Suki, one of tent city’s residents who declined to give her last name or be photographed, said that the encampment is important for those with nowhere else to sleep but the streets because it ​“provides a feeling of safety and a sense of community.”

“Everyone looks out for each other and tries to help genuinely when we can — we police ourselves.”

She said basic resources that would support the survival of people on the site, such as electricity and water, were being denied to residents because the city worried ​“they would add an element of permanence.”

The relative stability of place offered by the encampment, Suki countered, in an economy rife with uncertainty, is exactly what is important to the West River residents. 

While sleeping on the Green last summer, Suki said she feared for her life. At tent city, where she has lived for roughly eight months, ​“there’s only a couple entrances in here and everyone keeps an eye on it.”

“Here,” she said, ​“you get to know your neighbors.” 

To All Occupants of the West River Temporary Encampment

The city’s notice, dated Feb. 24, specifically states that ​“the city received a report of a fire in one of the tents caused by a prohibited heating source. During a subsequent site visit, the city staff noted a structure being used for showers with gray water being discharged into the West River. In addition, there was an extreme amount of trash and debris at the site. These are serious health and safety violations that are of concern to the city.

“Given the serious health and safety issues you are hereby directed to remove all heating appliances from the site, cease and desist all open burns, remove all trash and debris from the site and place such items in the provided dumpster, and deconstruct and remove the shower structure from the site no later than 9 a.m. on March 3, 2023.

“Failure to comply with the directive by the specified date and time will result in the City treating any and all structures remaining on site as violations in accordance with Sec. 19 – 5 of the New Haven Code of Ordinances — and we will clear this temporary encampment of all of the structures and debris.”

Beyond those bottom lines, the letter broadly laid out the city’s stance on the encampment, highlighting its commitment to maintaining ​“temporary” services to support residents while denying any right of residents to remain permanent presences on the property.

While electricity, running water, mailboxes, bathrooms, heating, trash pick-up or snow plowing, all services residents have requested in recent months, are off the table, George said that ​“in the spirit of collaboration, we agreed to provide a plethora of onsite services for the occupants of the temporary West River encampment.”

“The city agreed to provide porta lets, sharps disposal containers, and a dumpster,” she said. She pointed to Columbus House and Cornell Scott as entry points for free showers and healthcare. 

Dalal followed up with the Independent Friday, stating ​“our assessment is that the occupants of the site were very adherent to what we asked of them” and that ​“we’re satisfied with the clean-up as of today.” 

He said that the fire department will continue to check in on the property regularly, as will outreach partners from agencies like the nearby shelter Columbus House. Anytime that ​“serious health and safety concerns” appear, he said, dismantling of the site will remain on the table.

Asked further about why the city would describe a parcel of land that has been crowded with unhoused people since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic ​“temporary,” Dalal said that ​“our goal is to make sure that everyone in the encampment has a stable and suitable and safe place to live.

“In that sense, we’re not pursuing the idea that we will legalize and make permanent the encampment. It is public land and it’s supposed to be for the enjoyment of all the public, so we don’t want to have this direction where we’re turning over public land for private dwelling use.

“That said, we acknowledge the situation with a lack of housing, a lack of shelter beds. From the service side, we want to keep working in concert with people in the encampment and to do our best to connect them with housing.”

"The Streets Are Tough"

For 65-year-old Marcus Williams, housing has long seemed fleeting while tent city has served as a surprisingly stable source of home.

Originally from Texas, Williams said that he has been ​“homeless, homeless, homeless, then in Columbus House, then in an apartment and back to being homeless again.

“You just rotate!” he said. 

He said that while at a shelter he got connected with subsidized housing, but soon left the transitional apartment after struggling with the bureaucracy of retaining rental support (“I’m not computer lit, and you had to do everything on a computer,”) and the ​“stupid rules” attached to living in his complex (“there were cameras in the hallway!” he said).

He has lived on the boulevard for the past three years. Over that time, he has crafted a home — he stores his clothes and belongings in two locked tents, sleeps on a mattress kept dry on top of wooden pallets and under a camouflage tarp, and cooks breakfast for himself and his neighbors once a week.

“I cook French toast, omelets, eggs over easy or hard boiled,” he told the Independent as other residents poked their heads out of their own tents to enumerate their favorite meals Williams had made: ​“Pork chops, steak!” 

“I like it here because you know in the morning if the sun is gonna shine because there are birds singing different songs,” he said. 

Still, his dream, he shared, is to be able to move back to Texas after he retires from his work as a housekeeper and open a restaurant with his five sisters.

“This is my third year and there ain’t been no fires!” he said. The only fire he’s witnessed took place recently, he said, when one resident fell asleep with candles burning. ​“She’s new here, she doesn’t know you don’t use a candle in a tent,” he said. Both Williams and a few other residents said they put the fire out themselves in a few seconds without any assistance from the fire department (Dr. Dalal said he was not aware of the specifics of the incident and/or whether the fire department had been called into help). 

Those who have stayed at tent city the longest, Williams said, are typically the best stewards of the space. Those who move onto shelter life are the ones who typically ​“leave this a mess,” abandoning their tents and taking off, he said.

He named Suki, on the other hand, as a relatively new neighbor who has been key in keeping the area clean.

Suki and her husband are originally from Atlanta, Georgia, where they worked as dairy farmers until their business went under and they moved to Connecticut to be with her husband’s ailing father.

Her husband is currently working odd jobs in construction while she commits to walking around the neighborhood each day to pick up and cash in bottles and cans.

“I call it my loop, from Congress Avenue over to Yale,” she said. She also cleans up along the West River before depositing the items at the Dollar Store and using the money to purchase propane for the site. Now, she said, she’ll be stocking up on more hand warmers following the city’s move to bar heating appliances.

Without tent city, she said, ​“I have no idea what I would do.

“It’s been a lot of stress for me this week,” she stated. For the past three days, she said she’s been setting aside six hours at a time to clean the site to ensure the encampment’s preservation.

“The streets are tough. We know people have died on the streets freezing to death or succumbing to violence.”

She said that she and her husband are working ​“to get our lives together again and considering going back to Georgia.

“I miss the warmth,” she said.

In the meantime, she added, she hopes the city will bring a mobile shower to the encampment after extracting the prefabricated donation from the site. The city said that the mobile shower had been making weekly stops at the site but was discontinued for lack of use — Suki said she has never seen the pop-up shower during her eight months living in the encampment. 

When bare bones survival is a daily chore, she said, ​“we don’t necessarily have three to four hours to wait in line for a shower at Columbus House,” she said.

See below for more recent Independent articles about homelessness, activism, and attempts to find shelter.

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• Surprise Drop-Off Turns Bottle Man East
• State Lands $18M Homelessness Lifeline
• Tent Citizen By Choice Builds Community
• Shelter Sought From Cold-Weather Emergency
• Homelessness Advocates Brace For ​“Tidal Wave”
• Breakfast Delivery Warms Up ​“Tent City”
• Warming Centers Open, While City Looks To Long-Term Homeless Fixes
• ​“Human Rights Zone” Grows In Hill Backyard
• Homeless Hotel Plan Scrapped. What’s Next?
• Election Day Rally Casts Ballot For Housing