Streater Tackles Housing At Street Level

Troy Streater turned the key to the Lloyd Street apartment door, walked inside, and inspected the fresh gray paint job he’d recently commissioned so new tenants can move in.

Hours later, he arrived at the 180 Center to make his trademark hazelnut coffee for clients who have no apartment to sleep in.

Between managing properties, staffing a warming center, and serving on the Board of Alders, Streater finds himself on the front lines of the city’s housing crisis from three different angles on a daily basis.

By day, he collects rent, checks on maintenance concerns, tends to lawn care and snow removal, and recruits tenants for five properties he manages across the city. 

By night, he offers refuge to unsheltered people in need of a warm place to sleep as a staffer at the 180 Center, a warming center and ministry on East Street.

In between, he responds to constituent concerns and votes on legislation on behalf of the neighborhood at the epicenter of New Haven’s residential construction boom.

In Ward 21, the wonkily-shaped district spanning Dixwell, Newhallville, and Prospect Hill where Streater grew up and now serves as alder, a slew of new developments are rising up. These include affordable apartments where Dixwell and Orchard meet Munson, a massive new luxury development at 201 Munson, and a forthcoming mixed-income housing complex in Science Park.

Some residents have expressed fears of being priced out with this wave of new largely-upscale housing in a majority-Black neighborhood, where most current tenants can’t afford $3,000 to $4,500 a month rents. Meanwhile, proponents of the uptick in development argue that building as many housing units as possible for all income levels is the only way to ensure that wealthy New Haveners don’t edge out lower-income residents from the city, given that there’s a shortage of housing supply.

Streater is largely a supporter of this second approach — mostly because he believes there’s a chance those higher-end units will eventually become more affordable.

“Something that may be built at first that is intentionally not affordable may eventually become affordable,” he said, predicting that it will be a challenge to find tenants for so many expensive units in the neighborhood.

Streater, who is 57 years old, spends his days focused on the nuts and bolts of housing people rather than the theory.

On Friday, Streater was gearing up for a tenant searching for a recently-vacated apartment on the second and third floors of a Lloyd Street house. He offered this reporter a mock tour of the apartment, pointing out the new paint job and the versatility of four bedrooms. 

Streater doesn’t own the house; he works for the landlord, a company called Encore ostensibly based in Queens, as a property manager with a self-started company called ​“T and T.” In addition to finding tenants for the five apartments he manages, Streater serves as a rent collector, lawn mower, snow clearer, and maintenance coordinator.

He explained that while searching for a tenant, he typically reaches out to local anti-poverty and homelessness organizations, such as the Community Action Agency of Greater New Haven, to see if they know of prospective tenants in need of a place to live. As a result, many of his tenants have recently been unhoused. 

“I try to stay with people that’s in need,” he said, to ​“give a person a second chance.”

Streater first found work at the 180 Center five years ago, shortly after he left prison for a crime for which he was recently pardoned and then exonerated. It had been challenging to find work at the time, given his record. For four nights each week, Streater stays up all night at the 180 Center, witnessing a dire need for the very kind of housing he provides in his other line of work.

Streater prides himself on working at a place that, in his view, prioritizes the dignity of clients.

For instance, he noted that 180 founder Pastor Mike Caroleo created a storage system for the warming center clients ​“so they don’t have to walk around downtown” with clothes on their back, ​“being humiliated.” Caroleo is working on converting the warming center into a homeless shelter, where a more formalized roster of clients would be able to sleep in real beds.

After visiting Lloyd Street on Friday, Streater prepared for his shift at the warming center as usual. He drove to Aldi’s to pick up two flavors of coffee cream, French vanilla and the ever-popular hazelnut. 

He spends his own money on the sweetened cream every afternoon before a shift at the warming center. He’s become well-known among 180 clients for his coffee, and said he often gets told, ​“You need to work at Dunkin or Starbucks!” He recalled once running into a formerly unhoused client, who now has an apartment, who remembered him as ​“the guy who made the good coffee.”

Each night, Streater and the other staffers set up freshly-washed mats and blankets for the clients who line up each night to sleep indoors. They offer food alongside the coffee each night and each morning. While the clients sleep, Streater uses the overnight shift to read up on issues he’ll have to weigh in on as an alder and jot down points he plans to raise at community meetings. 

Streater said that most of the 180 Center’s clients move on to a more permanent housing situation. But a handful of the people who find housing eventually end up losing their apartments and returning to the warming center. One man, Streater recalled, lost his voucher because he kept sleeping in the apartment building’s hallway instead of inside his unit. ​“I don’t want to be alone,” the man had said. There’s a need for more mental health treatment among people transitioning into housing, Streater said.

In his own property management work, Streater said, ​“sometimes you get tenants not really keeping things like they should.” His approach then, he said, is to ​“have a conversation” and identify the ​“root of the problem.” 

Conversations with his tenants and unhoused clients alike shape Streater’s approach to being an alder.

“You get ideas from them,” he said, especially by asking questions like ​“What do you need to see?” and ​“What is hindering you?” He’s learned, for instance, that eviction records are a massive barrier for many people seeking a new apartment.

Next, Streater is planning to add yet another role to his array of careers in the housing market: He’s hoping to purchase a property in Hartford and become a landlord.