Nora Grace-Flood photo
Yale claims its "campus custom" is to reserve housing for university "affiliates" – including at 57 Broadway.
Tenant Lewis Nelken’s new landlord sent him unwelcome news this December: He can renew his apartment lease on Broadway for another year, but, after that lease runs out, he has to move. Just because he doesn’t work or study at Yale.
That’s the new rule for living in a stretch of downtown that Yale has continued gobbling up this year.
Nelken, a 25-year-old New Haven native, said he has come to love living in his one-bedroom apartment at 57 Broadway, which Yale bought last month. He can walk ten minutes over to public high school where he teaches biology. He can step outside his front door during a moment of downtime to busk on the saxophone.
Elm Campus Partners, the property management company that manages Yale’s rental services, informed Nelken and his neighbor, Nick Rivera, via email on Dec. 12 that both would be able to sustain their leases through 2025. But after that, the university will terminate contracts with all non-Yale affiliates.
A spokesperson for Yale confirmed that news to the Independent.
“Residences managed by Elm Campus Partners provide housing to Yale staff, graduate, and undergraduate students throughout the City of New Haven,” the spokesperson said.
“When the purchase of 57 Broadway was completed, the two non-Yale affiliated tenants were offered the option of renewing their lease for one year as they look for new accommodations, with the flexibility to terminate the lease at any time within that window.”
Nelken and Rivera have both lived at 57 Broadway for around a year, alongside another neighbor, Sarah, who works at the Yale School of Medicine. It is unclear whether a couple living in the fourth apartment are connected with the university. (The tenants interviewed for this story declined to be photographed.)
“I feel wronged. I feel disrespected,” said Nelken.
“I’ve finally moved out of my parents’ crib, I’ve managed to move downtown, and I’m doing my service to the people, teaching, and not getting paid enough. Now this super corporation, the university, is gonna come and kick me out just because they have the dough.”
Nelken, who grew up in Westville and attended New Haven public schools, said that he loves his new place downtown. He had hoped to stay in the apartment for the foreseeable future.
“This apartment is really important to me,” he said. It’s his first apartment on his own. He can bike to work everyday, a plus given that he’s a teacher helping develop a curriculum for high school students to learn how to ride and maintain their own bicycles.
He also likes living downtown.
“At home [growing up], there would always be someone bugging me to stop playing my saxophone,” he said. “Now, I never get noise complaints — I can take my saxophone case and start busking in front of the shops.” The Broadway building’s business owners encourage him to keep churning out tunes.
As much as he enjoys his latest living location, Nelken said it’s been hard to witness Yale’s Broadway takeover.
“It’s been turned into these dime-a-dozen shops,” he said, “where basically exclusively Yale kids are gonna go and spend their parents’ dimes. It really excludes the rest of New Haven.
“Yale is a vine that’s choking out the culture of New Haven, and not even slowly or subtly.”
Rivera's apartment: "I’ve started making this place my home."
Nick Rivera, on the other hand, told the Independent he moved into 57 Broadway not just because of its walkability and price-point, but partly because he “thinks Yale is great.”
“I really love to be in a city that values community events and outreach. That’s more conducive in a college environment — there’s always a vibe of everyone’s working really hard, and there’s a passion they’re working towards,” he said.
Rivera, 26, came to New Haven last year after making moves between Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, where he said he experienced threats to his physical safety as well as political anxiety.
“The big reason I don’t wanna live in Pennsylvania is because the politics are scaring me as a trans individual,” he said. “I want to at least be guaranteed respect from people and the ability to medically transition.”
He said he has felt safe in New Haven during a tumultuous period in his life. He’s been able to build community while working remotely as a graphic designer.
“I’ve had to move a lot in the past two years. I feel upset. I feel sad, because I want to continue living in this place,” he said.
“I started my transition here, I’ve started making this place my home — the people in this building are my friends,” he said. “Yale was a benefit to me and now it’s a detriment. Just let me stay!”
Rivera has started a petition, signed by his neighbors and next-door business owners, asking Yale to let the pair keep renting on Broadway for as long as they want, and to open the apartments to Yale-affiliates once the current tenants independently choose to move out.
Sign the petition here.
A third tenant, Sarah, who declined to give her last name, said Yale has told her she’ll be allowed to stay indefinitely given that she works for the School of Medicine. While she does intend to remain in the apartment for now, she is pushing for the university to let her neighbors stay, too, she said.
“I’m really happy here. I have no plans to leave Yale anytime soon,” she said, “but I think it’s super disrespectful the way this has all been handled.”
Sarah, 29, moved to New Haven last year for the Yale job after graduating with her masters from Dartmouth. She juxtaposed that with her neighbors’ stories: “Lewis grew up here and is a public school teacher who obviously contributes tremendously to the community. Nick moved here specifically to become a part of that same community.”
“What does Yale want? Do you want your school to be in a thriving city?” she said. “Because you want to attract people like that. It contributes to the city. We’re just three people in the grand scheme, but this just does not seem well thought-through.”
She emphasized that as a Yale employee, she would rather continue living with a diverse array of neighbors than with other university affiliates only.
“I learn so much from the New Haveners I interact with,” she said. “You don’t get that if you’re in a bubble.”
The university spokesperson did not respond to repeated requests for clarification regarding the motivation behind establishing exclusive housing for Yale-affiliates, but said that “the university is happy to maintain an ongoing dialogue with the two tenants who may be impacted.”
I have for some time been very alarmed and beyond disgusted by yale's formal and informal actions negatively impacting the average New Havener. This is another flagrant example of a need for the city of New Haven to put some type of policy mechanism to ensure that not one single additional housing unit (or commercial unit) is lost to the university. People have literally been forced out of their homes by yale and each commercial unit lost, in both cases, it is obvious that it means displaced lower income New Haveners, or just plain New Haveners- that towns folk, city folk, our residents, are not allowed. This is our city. Step back yale - stay in your lane - step back. They are setting the ingredients for a back lash. Thankfully, we have more active affordable housing leadership in recent years. So now, City hall please do something. Do something yesterday!