The Center for Inclusive Growth photo
At Wednesday's "All In" convo in the Hill.
An ad for the Hill's "All In" meetup.
Dark streets due to the lack of public lightning. Living day to day with the fear of not being able to provide enough food for their children. Suffering from PTSD from the stress of where they live until they fall physically ill and can’t work anymore.
These are only a few examples of struggles that members of the Hill community brought up Wednesday night during the latest “All In” community meeting hosted by The Center for Inclusive Growth, at Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School at 150 Kimberly Ave.
The Center for Inclusive Growth is a Yale-affiliated nonprofit created as part of the six-year deal that the university struck with the Elicker administration in November 2021, and that was approved by the alders in April 2022.
Its focus, as explained by Executive Director Dawn Leaks Ragsdale at the meeting in front of a crowd of about 15 people, is on supporting initiatives that help people move up the economic ladder, expanding access to financial tools, and providing resources and support to small businesses and entrepreneurs.
Wednesday’s meeting was the fourth one Leaks Ragsdale’s team has done so far, with more to come in the fall. Led by Leaks Ragsdale and her other two team members, Communications Manager Markeshia Ricks and Programs and Community Engagement Coordinator Christian Reyes, the purpose of the meeting was to give a chance for community members to speak up on the issues that they face on a daily basis.
Starting the night off with some free water and pizza, Leaks Ragsdale’s team introduced the center to those who have never heard of it before. People who had mobile phones could scan QR codes and answer five different questions about changes they’d like to see in their neighborhood. The answers were then presented on a PowerPoint that later led into an open discussion.
Doubts resonated throughout the small crowd in the large, stuffy hall, as the two fans on either side of the room tried their best to keep the air flowing.
When consultant Kia Levey-Burden, who partnered with the center to bring these talks to various communities across New Haven, stood up to moderate the discussion, she was met with questions about the center.
Levey-Burden, a New Haven community stalwart who holds a Bachelor’s Degree from Central Connecticut State University and serves as adjunct faculty at Southern Connecticut State University, spoke of the importance of not talking at the members of the community, but talking with them.
“The community already knows what it needs,” Levey-Burden said.
But oftentimes, as evidenced by some responses Wednesday night, members of any community feel ignored and not respected by the city.
“What works for one area does not work for the other,” one attendee pointed out.
According to the Connecticut City Neighborhood Profiles, the Hill has a poverty rate of 31 percent and a low-income rate of 59 percent. It is a very densely populated community.
The audience members on Wednesday — many of whom asked to remain anonymous for this article — expressed that new housing in the area is rarely affordable, despite being called just that, “affordable housing.” New housing rarely takes into consideration the actual income of neighbors, they said.
“Below-market housing is not low-income housing,” said one attendee.
Another important point discussed was the way education is handled in New Haven. Critics said that children receive the bare minimum, and do not learn how to, for example, properly file taxes or anything else related to financial literacy. Along with that, neighbors said they would love to see targeted education centers that would help those in need find a job. However, even those with a job often struggle to get to them as the transportation infrastructure desperately needs improvement.
An attendee at Wednesday’s meetup told her story about sleeping in a car outside of her home. In case she was to be attacked by the father of her children, she’d rather her kids not see it happen in the house.
“People will see me and say, ‘She’s fine,’ ” she said. “But I don’t get a day off. I can’t check out. But my kids? I’m definitely on top of that. I make sure that their mental health is taken care of, but my mental health isn’t.”
She expressed that she was not looking for anyone’s pity by telling her story, but rather to raise awareness about the insufficient policing in the neighborhood as well as the limited access to mental health resources.
“I never enjoyed my childhood. It was an era of surviving,” she continued. “It’s like a generation curse and I’m trying to break that.”
People in attendance at Wednesday’s meeting also emphasized the need to invest into local business rather then depending on larger corporations that often leave the communities’ economies devastated behind them.
To boil it all down to one point, all present members of the community just wish to rebuild their village, but need some help with that.
Leaks Ragsdale explained that this meeting was for research purposes and that the center will be back once their proposal is drawn up, to show it to the community before filing it with the city.
