Lopez Assumes New (& Old) Challenge

Laurie Lopez is about to start a new city job that continues the mission she has pursued with passion for decades in Fair Haven: cleaning up trashed public areas so everyone can enjoy them.

Only now she’ll be doing it from another perspective, and citywide.

When she began her current job as an LCI (Livable City Initiative) neighborhood anti-blight specialist, Lopez tackled Fair Haven’s epidemic of abandoned cars, illegal repair shops, car-part-strewn lots, absentee slumlords, and bulk dumping.

Nearly 19 years later, Fair Haven is a whole lot neater, safer, and thriving, in no small measure is because of Lopez’s dedication, gift for working with colleagues and partner agencies, energy, and love of helping people.

Thursday night at the regular meeting of the Fair Haven Community Management Team, Lopez announced that in coming weeks she’ll transition from her LCI job to a new post at the Department of Public Works. Her assignment there will be to help supervise a revitalized team of inspectors responsible for maintaining the city’s sidewalks and public spaces.

The Zoom-assisted meeting, chaired by the group’s co-chair, Lee Cruz, attracted nearly 50 attendees, many of whom expressed their gratitude to Lopez during her report and on the Chat function.

Lopez described the moment as ​“bittersweet” to be leaving her Fair Haven ​“family.”

She assured attendees that in her new capacity she will continue to help people and to clean up the streets. But now she will work ​“from the curb to the yard” —- on bulk trash, public space violations, snow not being shoveled — as opposed to being responsible for the uncut grass of the yard and the house and what goes on in it.

“I’m eternally grateful,” she said in a phone interview after the meeting. ​“I couldn’t fix everything, but I’m leaving [Fair Haven] better than I found it. I just believe in it so much, what LCI does as a group.

“I mean we have a chance every day to fix something for someone. What more can you ask for, especially) for the folks with the least, who don’t have a voice? But you have to give it your all.”

LCI is often the first agency citizens contact about barking dogs, streetlights gone out, chop shops. One of the keys to solving problems is learning how effectively to partner with like-minded people at the buildings, public works, health, the whole range of the city departments.

For Lopez, that has meant working simultaneously as social worker, construction worker, maintenance worker, and part mom and dad delivering stern conversations about enforcement.

Click here to read about her work staying on top of foreclosed-upon abandoned buildings; here to read about her work at LCI busting a cock-fighting den on Grand Avenue; here for an example Lopez’s and her agency’s blight fighting on Poplar Street; and here for a canine rescue on Pine Street.

“It’s the right job for the right person but you’ve got to believe. You can’t do it by half.”

Lopez inherited her grit from her late mother, Ana Lopez. Ana worked two to three jobs at a time. (Dad was disabled.) She was also a New Haven Latino community pioneer. She helped found the community group LULAC. She worked with immigrants decades before the issue hit the broader public.

Among the most fulfilling aspects of the LCI job, Lopez said, has been working with colleagues quietly going about helping children and families out of sometimes very difficult, ugly situations and often brainstorming creatively to find solutions.

An example: Bed bugs.

“There was a woman who called our office complaining of a bed bug infestation. I went there and it was so bad! The bugs were walking around the wall saying hello asking for lunch money. That bad. She was distraught, didn’t know what to do with the landlord.”

Upon arrival, Lopez and her crew found the woman’s daughter was covered with bed bug bites.

“I felt awful, but thought how could we creatively solve this.

“We emptied the apartment and we put all their laundry, every stitch away. Here’s someone in a bad way already, but we bagged it and asked the local laundromat to do the right thing.

“We contacted the landlord to do some immediate abatement, and we got rid of her furniture, every table, every chair, every bed. It turned out ultimately the bugs came from a couch she had brought in from the street. We kept their clothing bagged and secured. because it required multiple applications.”

“There are a lot of families we’ve touched,” Lopez continued. ​“The police and others see things and have called us, so we end up helping on the housing side too.

“I’ve seen some really hard things and great things, and the best part of my job is you see something through to fruition, you feel you’ve really helped someone. It’s been very fulfilling.”

While other LCI specialists have been on the job longer than Lopez, she has served the same neighborhood for the longest continuous stretch.

Lopez said she views her new DPW post as a continuation of her mission.

“I get to do it from a different side,” she said ​“I’m excited about the two coming together, LCI and DPW. We are all trying to work toward having a clean city.

“I want everyone to feel they can wake up in a safe, clean city and live in New Haven with a quality of life. There are things I was never able to fix and will forever haunt me. I’ve lost people and that’s been sad. It’s like being in a family. I could always tell when something’s changed on the street. I couldn’t fix everything, but I gave it my all and I’m leaving it better than I found it.”

“No way I can walk away from Fair Haven. We’ll work out a plan to keep things at bay in Fair Haven triaging things and sending them to our partners while acclimating myself for the new challenge.”