Election Day Rally Casts Ballot For Housing

Nora Grace-Flood photo

Activist Alexis Terry.

A coalition of unhoused New Haveners and advocates rallied at City Hall on Election Day to vote” for public bathrooms, safe storage spaces, and a long-term commitment to helping the city’s most vulnerable. 

A new organization called the Unhoused Activist Community Team led that demonstration Tuesday afternoon.

The group of a half-dozen attendees pledged on Election Day to return to those same stairs well after the actual ballot casting is done — and to keep showing up until the city takes additional steps to make New Haven more hospitable for those without homes this winter and beyond.

Norm Clement

Homelessness in this city is a permanent condition,” Hill peace activist Mark Colville said into a microphone as he mourned a lack of living wage jobs and affordable apartments across New Haven. Acknowledge it!”

Mayor Elicker, people will be camping out on your lawn soon!” he said. We don’t need tent cities. We need small home communities that serve as transitional housing.” 

Antar Adams, who has been sleeping on a yoga mat along Union Avenue since April, listed a short slate of demands that would help those without homes improve their daily quality of life until they find more permanent housing.

Donna Abate, 50, became homeless this summer after an eviction from her Ansonia home. She said she now relies on sinks in McDonald's bathrooms to clean up every day.

Our demand is that people’s belongings don’t get thrown away in the process of you kicking them off the Green,” Adams, 43, said. 

He shared that he and others living on the streets have lost medication, vital records, and priceless keepsakes after having their items stolen or trashed outside. He requested that the city notify those living in public spaces about potential encampment sweeps prior to destroying peoples’ belongings — and suggested a city-run and funded storage unit for those without secure locations to keep their things as well as public bathrooms, showers, and laundry rooms.

Norm Clement, a drop-in center site specialist at the Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen (DESK) and longtime local social justice activist, said that low-income people in New Haven are excluded from the process of political and social change.” He argued that Tuesday’s Election Day ballot was not accessible to or representative of those without housing.

Organizers Mark Colville and Do Walker.

He argued that the majority of New Haven is also one or two checks away from being out here homeless.”

It doesn’t take much. You lose your job and a month or two later you can’t pay your rent. And you’re out here joining us. So before that happens, why don’t you join us now?” he asked.

In addition to reaching out to homeless New Haveners to connect them with food and other essential resources, the crew will meet at DESK every Wednesday from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. to provide lunch for all and strategize about ways to catalyze long-term housing change while developing local interventions to raise daily quality of life for those without shelter.

Bring a friend. We’ll keep agitating until they respond,” Colville concluded.

Antar Adams: Don't throw away what belongs to us.

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