Ex-School Reopens As Winter Overnight Shelter

Forty-seven sleeping mats laid out in a shuttered school’s auditorium are now available to lie down on at night for those without a home, as the city opened a new overnight ​“warming center” at the former Strong School on Orchard Street.

Mayor Justin Elicker, city Coordinator for the Homeless Velma George, Upon This Rock Ministries Pastor Valerie Washington, and a handful of other city officials and local homelessness services leaders marked the opening of the city’s three warming centers for the season during a press conference held at 130 Orchard St.

Those three warming centers are located at Varick Memorial AME Zion Church at 242 Dixwell Ave., The 180 Center at 438 East St., and, newly opened for the first time this year, the former elementary school site at 130 Orchard.

Each overnight warming center will be open from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., seven days a week, from Dec. 1 through April 15, according to Elicker and George. 

People in need of a place to sleep at night can walk in, without a reservation, on a first-come, first-served basis. Each center is open to people ages 18 and up only, and will provide clients with a place to sleep, meals or snacks, clothing, and wraparound social services designed to help those in need of shelter find more permanent places to live.

The new 47-space warming center at the former Strong School, which is owned by the Board of Education, will be run by Upon This Rock Ministries, which also contracts with the city to run a 50-bed emergency shelter on Terminal Lane in the Hill. Washington said that her church will have four employees on site at 130 Orchard to staff the warming center. 

“As a city, it’s important to be sure people are safe and warm, and to have pathways to connect to more permanent” places to live, George said about the goals of the city’s warming centers. 

The opening of this latest shelter comes as the city amid a citywide increase in homelessness. City government has sought to address that rise through the conversion of a Foxon Boulevard hotel and a Hill industrial building into spaces to sleep for those with nowhere else to go. A leading local homelessness services nonprofit is looking to build a new 80-room shelter with one- and two-person bedrooms and private bathrooms on Ella T. Grasso Boulevard. A community of Hill activists have also set up tiny homes on a private backyard and tents on adjacent public space to provide shelter for those displaced from government-cleared tent encampments. And another local homelessness services nonprofit is looking to open the city’s first warming shelter exclusively for young adults.

At Friday’s presser, Margaret LeFever, the director of the Connecticut Coordinated Access Network (CAN) for the United Way of Greater New Haven, said that there are currently 270 individuals ​“unsheltered, outside,” in the New Haven region. ​“We believe in a Connecticut where no one should be living out on the streets,” she said. Where homelessness does not exist.

Click here to read more about the city’s warming centers and shelters.

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

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