New Director Pitches Improved Shelter

The new director of the Grand Avenue homeless shelter has grand ambitions for the oft-maligned social service space: a full interior and exterior building rehab, better connections to permanent housing and jobs, and an expanded footprint with a new program space and full laundry room.

Emergency Shelter Management Services (ESMS) Executive Director Aaron Haley laid out that vision for the single-story homeless shelter at 645 Grand Ave. Tuesday night during the regular monthly meeting of the Downtown-Wooster Square Community Management Team on the second floor of City Hall.

Haley, who was born on Kensington Street, grew up in Fair Haven and in West Haven, and worked for over 20 years for the Connecticut State Police, took the helm of the 75-bed men’s shelter in March.

Since then, he told the group, he has prioritized connecting the agency’s clients with local service providers like Fellowship Place so that they have productive places to be during the day and don’t just line up on Grand Avenue waiting for the shelter to open every afternoon at 4 p.m.

Now, Haley said, he’s looking to overhaul the look and feel of the shelter on both the inside and out, so that the clients have a more pleasant and comfortable place to sleep at night and so that neighbors don’t feel like they’re walking by an ​“institution” every time they cross 645 Grand.

Haley said the shelter has no intention of moving to a new location anytime soon, despite his predecessor’s long-stalled plans to find a new building somewhere, anywhere, in town.

“We’re definitely going to stay where we are,” Haley said.

Wooster Square resident Mona Berman said that she has heard a number of rumors that the shelter plans on adding a second-floor. Is that true?

No, said Yale School of Architecture student Carina Gormley, who is writing her thesis about the shelter and is helping Haley with design work and interviews with the shelter’s clients.

While the homeless youth shelter service Y2Y plans on building a second-floor on top of Youth Continuum’s 924 Grand Ave. headquarters further down the block, she said, ESMS plans to expand its building only sideways, into a vacant surface lot that it owns immediately adjacent to the shelter.

Haley said that that extension, which he described as a longer-term goal, would hold a full laundry room, a kitchenette for preparing and heating up meals, and a program space to be used by the shelter’s clients and partner social service agencies.

Will expanding that footprint increase the number of beds offered by the shelter? Berman asked.

No, Haley said. The number of beds will remain at its current level of 75, which are offered on a first-come, first-serve basis between 4 p.m. and 7 a.m. every day of the week.

“And it’s free?” Site Projects President Laura Clarke asked.

Yes, Haley replied, with a catch. Some clients have day jobs, he said, and like to reserve the same bed night over night. Those clients can pay $8 per night, he said, to keep that bed theirs. That was the protocol of the shelter’s previous directors, he said, and he’s kept that going since he took over last spring.

Lt. Sean Maher, the district’s top cop, said that he and his officers frequently interact with homeless people downtown who tell them, ​“I’ll never go there again.” Maher didn’t elaborate on the critiques that he frequently hears from the city’s homeless about the conditions of the shelter, though some clients (see below) complain of bed bugs, ticks, and fleas plaguing the building.

Around 20 percent of the current client base complains about conditions at the shelter, Haley said. He said the vast majority are happy with the building and the service, and grateful for having somewhere to sleep each night.

“The ones we deal with are the ones not at the shelter,” Maher said. Those people who have given up on the shelter because of concerns with its habitability are the ones that Haley should prioritize reaching out to as he sets out on rehabbing the property.

Haley agreed, though, he added, it’s difficult to help those who don’t return, don’t stay in touch with the shelter, ​“and don’t want to help themselves.”

Management team Chair Caroline Smith recommended that Haley reach out to the Connecticut Bail Fund. New Haven Design League President Anstress Farwell recommended he hold a community meeting and workshop at the nearby Mill River Crossing public housing complex. And Wooster Square filmmaker Steve Hamm and New Haven Free Public Library Public Services Administrator Xia Feng recommended that Haley coordinator services with the library, which already serves a large swath of the downtown homeless population during the day.

“The Building’s A Mess”

Outside on Grand Avenue on Tuesday afternoon, one shelter regular, Michael Pearson, had a different take on the upkeep of the building.

“It could use a lot of cleanup,” the 55-year-old Hill native said. ​“The building’s a mess.”

Pearson said he has been sleeping at the Grand Avenue shelter since April, when his wife kicked him out of their home in Providence, Rhode Island.

The city shelter provides full meals to its clients every night, he said, courtesy of donations from area restaurants and grocery stores.

But the shelter could use some new beds, he said, which have ​“ticks and fleas,” as well as some new toilets.

“I shouldn’t be homeless and on the street at my age,” Pearson said. He said this April marked the first time in his life that he has lived without a home.

At Tuesday night’s meeting, Haley said that the shelter strips the sheets, washes the linens, and sprays the beds with a disinfectant every day. He said he’s currently in talks with an exterminator about how best to keep the bug problem at bay. That can be quite a challenge, he said, because sometimes clients inadvertently bring bugs in with them after spending the day out on the street.