Contributed Photo
Lunch this week on the patio at the Amistad Catholic Worker House, where inside dining is limited to eight people at a time while others get grab-to-go meals.
Mark Colville, who with Luz Catarineau operates the Amistad Catholic Worker House on Rosette Street, sent the following open letter to Mayor Justin Elicker.
Dear Mayor Elicker,
Warm greetings from the Amistad Catholic Worker house of hospitality, on Rosette Street in the Hill Neighborhood. We appreciate your diligent, proactive response to the Coronavirus emergency thus far, especially in light of the scandalous incompetence and terrifying ill-preparedness of the federal government in facing the crisis. Your intervention has already saved lives and will, I’m sure, continue to do so. In these crucial days ahead, we pledge our full cooperation in the hard work of limiting the spread of this deadly virus, and as a neighborhood-based collective dedicated to prayer and the works of mercy and justice, we want to be an instrument of the extension and deepening of that effort.
Here at the Amistad house, we have worked hard to implement the city’s directives and precautionary measures with regard to gatherings and the delivery of services to the most vulnerable of our people. This has of course not been without its challenges, as we struggle to ensure that the restrictions imposed do not leave behind those for whom our Catholic Worker community has always maintained an open door. My intention with this letter is to try to speak a word from the perspective of those whose current circumstances pose the greatest risk, both to their own personal health and that of the public- namely, those who have no place of safety from which to ride out this life-threatening storm.
Homelessness in the U.S. is a systemic and permanent problem (directly resulting from the lack of affordable housing and living wage jobs) that, for more than forty years now, has been addressed through individual, limited and temporary remedies (advocacy, job training, addiction services, shelters and soup kitchens). In New Haven, as in hundreds of cities nationwide, the bill for our feeble response to the crisis of homelessness is now coming due in all its cold reality. No amount of social work can hide what this pandemic lays bare: there is a permanent underclass of people dwelling in our nation’s cities who have no way to safely comply with the directive to shelter in place and maintain social distance. They simply have no place to stay, and nowhere to store personal supplies for daily survival. To live, they have to keep moving. Before COVID-19, this wasn’t a particularly troubling reality for the society at large. On the contrary, people experiencing homelessness have always been given a far different directive by the system- and by this city- an instruction perhaps easier to enforce but no less impossible to comply with: scatter and disappear. Unlike the rest of us in New Haven, for the homeless the crisis started a lot longer than a month ago.
Here on Rosette Street we’ve heard of the plan you’ve set in place to open Career High School as a refuge for the unhoused who become infected with the virus. This seems like a prudent initiative, but many of us are wondering why it has not yet been expanded to those in need of shelter who have not yet been infected. The Amistad Catholic Worker is one of the very few centers for direct help that remain open today in New Haven, and we are a small operation. We’ve never been equipped to serve masses of people, much less provide the opportunity for more than a few to shelter in place. In this life and death emergency, with all of Yale’s dorms sitting empty and hundreds of vacant apartments, it seems absurd that we are still feeding, providing showers and laundry services every day to people who are coming from tents, vacant buildings, park benches and bus shelters scattered all across this city and its surrounding towns.
In 2014 the United Nations asserted that the U.S. was in violation of the Universal Declaration On Human Rights, due to of a laundry-list of policies and laws enforced in most of our cities which criminalize homelessness. Prominent among these is the denial of the right of unhoused people to take refuge in public spaces and on unused public land- in effect, what amounts to a standing order to scatter and disappear. You may recall, Mayor Elicker, that the Amistad Catholic Worker attempted to amplify the U.N.’s admonishments that summer by setting up tents on a vacant city- owned property almost adjacent to our home. Our purpose was to offer the possibility of a self-sustaining community of mutual aid to those who come to our table every day; the larger point was to assert the legal right of human beings to take refuge, together, in times of emergency. As that campaign unfolded, we made it clear that we were not asking the city for money, services, resources or equipment, nor even for a building or title to any property. The responsibility for maintaining the cleanliness and safety of the space we were requesting to occupy was to be totally assumed by those dwelling there. We only wanted New Haven to designate space where a person without a home or shelter bed would be legally sanctioned to exist.
As director of the New Haven Land Trust at that time, you seemed to be sympathetic to this cause and did not hinder or publicly oppose our efforts, despite the fact that the Land Trust had been designated by the city as caretaker of that parcel. Nevertheless, city officials evicted us within 48 hours. Had they not done so, I am certain that your job today would be a whole lot easier. Imagine what an advantage it would be now if our most destitute folks could be found in one or more legally- sanctioned places of refuge designated for them, rather than hiding out, trespassing and constantly moving simply to stay off the street and out of trouble. Imagine how much safer we’d all be if these same folks could stay where they are and still be able to eat, bathe, use the toilet, and sleep in the same place every night until the pandemic subsides.
Unfortunately, our city’s longstanding refusal to permit such a space obliges us to implore you now, on an emergency basis and for as long as the order to shelter in place is extended, to open an existing facility for this purpose. Thus far you’ve taken bold, timely and commendable actions to keep us all healthy and safe. From the vantage point of Rosette Street, this option would now appear to be the most prudent and expedient next step.
As for the longer term view, I am convinced that the benefits of doing this for New Haven would soon oblige you and other civic leaders to find ways to move it to a more permanent status. Perhaps the best outcome we can all hope for, after we’ve defeated this virus, is that our shared suffering might radically change the way we think. Thank you for your attention.
Blessings and Peace.
Mark Colville
One of the ways to stop the spread is to house homeless who aren't infected yet, we all need to self isolate to flatten the curve, and that includes the homeless. Not doing so during a pandemic only risks more infection spread. During the revolutionary war and civil war tents were set up on public green spaces in our country to house the soldiers and the victims of war. We are in the process of setting up camps in buildings for the soldiers on the front lines of this war, we need to set up camps for the victims as well. Cities and towns across this country need to put up portable toilets, tents and buildings to house everyone who needs a place to live during this battle. Only by creating safe spaces to socially distance people can we win this war on the virus.