Nora Grace-Flood photos
Encampment residents unfolding their egg and cheeses Tuesday morning.
A view of the tents around Amistad House's backyard.
Refugees from a bulldozed West River encampment are taking shelter at an alternative, mission-based outdoor site in the Hill as they plan next steps to get back on their feet — while amping up their commitment to addressing the roots of housing injustice.
That transition was on display on a drizzly Tuesday morning as some of the former members of the now-cleared Tent City convened inside a hut erected in a Hill backyard for coffee and breakfast.
Over donated dishes that included a cooler of tin-foil wrapped egg and cheese sandwiches, pan fried potatoes with chicken sausage, and meatballs plus kale and feta, the ex-Tent City residents also engaged in a conversation about how to build up their temporary safety net in the face of chronic housing instability.
The backyard belongs to Mark Colville, the leader of the Amistad Catholic Worker House at 203 Rosette St. He began welcoming people experiencing homelessness onto his lawn about a year ago. He took in five more individuals last month after a total of eight were displaced during the public eviction of a three-year-old encampment just off the West River. That means a total of around 10 people are now camping out in the Amistad House’s backyard.
While the city reportedly promised each individual displaced by the eviction a bed at the local homeless shelter Columbus House, the majority of people chose to move their tents a few blocks over to live outside Amistad House.
Suki Godek, 39, and Marcus Williams, 65, are two former Tent City residents who are adjusting to a new life of structured communal living along a street filled with Mariachi music and nightlife following months spent governing themselves in a secluded space off Ella Grasso Boulevard.
"This Is Very Temporary"
Marcus Williams: Encampments are kinder than landlords.
Williams briefly found housing in a Hill apartment building, but left following disputes with his landlord and complications surrounding financial support that he said the city had guaranteed him.
He said the city had promised to pay for his first and last month’s rent should he find housing following the public eviction, but that after an incessant game of phone tag with the city’s offices, he was left without a path forward. “The lady from the city kept saying the same thing, go do intake. What the hell is that? She’s speaking like a politician and acting like I know what she’s talking about. I don’t even know how to use a computer!” he said.
At the same time, he said he felt that his landlord was biased towards and mistrustful of him. One day, Williams said, a tenant with whom he shares a kitchen reported that some of his food had gone missing. Williams said his landlord called up accusing him of having stolen those groceries — and that his neighbor then recovered the groceries after realizing he’d simply forgotten where he had last unloaded them.
“I was pissed,” he said. “You gonna call me and disrespect me like that?”
Plus, he said, he was spending nearly all of his income as a housekeeper on his $800 rent to live in a shoebox apartment.
By April 1, he had already moved out and was living outside Amistad House.
“Here you know the people and it feels more open, better than over there!” he said of the contrast between Amistad and his old apartment.
He added that he still misses the community that existed at tent city. “We’re around a lot of new people,” he said of himself and the four others who moved to Amistad from the West River encampment. “They’re not bonded in the same way that we were at Tent City.”
He and his former Tent City neighbor Godek are practiced in the self-motivation it takes to keep a community functioning. For example, Williams picks up trash each day from around the site and cleans out the porta-potty on an as-needed basis. Godek wakes up each day to wash dishes and bring breakfast to the common hut. Individuals finding refuge at Amistad House after living on the streets or in shelters, they said, aren’t necessarily practiced in that kind of group work.
Suki Godek: Tent City "was our own little area."
Suki Godek said that the adjustment to Amistad after living in Tent City has been hard, despite the fact that the new encampment provides new benefits such as electricity, access to a building with laundry and cooking facilities, and a wood burning stove to keep warm.
“This is very temporary,” said Godek, who had made plans to move to Amistad in advance of the eviction rather than risk being separated from her boyfriend by submitting to a shelter. The pair recently started working for a moving company and said their new boss has leads on housing that they hope to use as a way out of tent life.
Tent City “was our own little area,” she said, out of the way from city life that allowed for a particularly tight-knit community of independent neighbors. Now, “we’re smack in the middle of everything,” she said, noting that her mental health struggles can make it difficult to be around so many new people, including the other outdoor residents at Amistad House who she previously didn’t know.
Next Up: Tiny Homes?
Unlike Tent City, Amistad House is a mission-based entity. It aims to let anyone in need join the community, unless they explicitly disrupt the neighborhood and encampment by, as Colville put it, “coming in at midnight, shooting drugs, raising hell and making a lot of noise and not respecting the people living there.” He noted he recently had to kick several residents out of the encampment for engaging in such activities — but that since the Tent City residents have joined the community, “it’s like a library at night now.”
That’s because many of the Tent City alumni, he said, have created rules among themselves to make the community run more smoothly, such as a rule that silent hours start at 10 p.m.
Godek said that it’s taken time to accept Colville’s philosophy and learn tolerance for various residents, such as those coming into the encampment with a host of diverse mental health issues without the tools to self-manage them. (Former Tent City members have detailed how they often resorted to kicking problematic people out of the group by force.)
“It’s definitely different,” she said. “It has pushed me into being more active in trying to help other people in bad situations.”
Since the eviction, she has also become more involved in community organizing around long-term housing rights even as she focuses on improving her immediate and individual circumstances.
For example, she is planning to speak at an upcoming fundraiser partially organized by Colville to bring in money for tiny houses to bolster the current encampment. Since the encampment eviction, she’s done countless interviews with the press speaking to why she believes tent cities should be protected.
“Homelessness in New Haven and our country is a permanent condition,” she said, in the face of underpaying jobs and overpriced or unavailable rental opportunities. In the meantime, she hopes to help Colville replace tents with tiny homes to develop a sturdier source of shelter as she independently works to move on from the encampment.
Those tiny houses were the topic of Tuesday’s breakfast banter, as Colville explained his plan to expand the encampment over time.
Prior to doling out a communal breakfast of donated dishes, Colville broached the idea of investing over $40,000 of fundraised and grant-matched money into mobile tiny homes.
Colville inspects some donated lockers he moved Tuesday morning to provide storage for residents.
Ultimately, he said, in addition to building permanent structures in his own yard, he hopes to gradually expand the encampment into a nearby community garden.
“It’s taking a little bit of a risk with city policy,” he admitted, noting the possibility of another bulldozing. However, the pre-fab houses which could be assembled and disassembled, he noted, should prevent the type of destruction seen on the West River property. “In order to change city policy,” he added, “people have to be willing in some ways to stand outside of the law.”
The fact that his backyard had not already been targeted by the city as in violation with the law, he said, “is due to the way we’ve conducted ourselves — we’ve done this with integrity and honesty.”
After that pitch, to which residents responded favorably, it was back to the day’s to-do’s. “Let’s spread more wood chips, everybody down with that?” Colville asked, part of a plan to prevent mud by surrounding the tents with natural landscaping.
The meeting was a chance to get fed, talk about long-term ways to protest housing injustice, and discuss ways to make life more livable and smooth on a day to day basis within the encampment.
Tuesday's breakfast spread.
Colville explained that participation in those Tuesday meetings, which usually involve distributing breakfast to other individuals experiencing homelessness throughout the city as part of Amistad House’s hospitality mission, is one of the few rules that residents must adhere to while staying at the encampment.
“Chronic homelessness enculturates people into not being able to live in a neighborhood or be a neighbor. They’re enculturated into competition or mistrust,” Colville said. With structural changes needed to provide people with safe homes, he said, those living outside the system must fight for permanent pathways towards their own caring communities.
Blyss Sarania, who just arrived at Amistad House the previous night after leaving a bed at Columbus House, agreed with that sentiment while experiencing her first breakfast at the encampment.
“One of the hardest things about being at Columbus House was that I was raised sharing and trusting, but I had to cut that off” to protect herself within an every-man-for-himself community defined by scarcity.
“You can forget how to be a part of the world because you’re made to forget.”
“Thank you for taking this stance,” she said to Colville.
“We’re all taking this stance,” he said. “The reason I’m taking it is because I’ve been fortunate enough to be hanging out with all of you these past years.”
See below for more recent Independent articles about homelessness, activism, and attempts to find shelter.
• 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
• Tent City Campers Start To Clear Out
• “Tent City” Hit With New Move-Out Order
• “Tent City” Survives City Cleanup Order
• Competing Visions Emerge For Homelessness $
• 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
Is this legal or is it a housing/health/building violation?
As for the squatter--- yeah, how dare the landlord ask anything of you!!