Allan Appel Photo
John Aiello with his “kite,” or sign he uses to panhandle on East Street, near Sports Haven
“People walk by you like you ain’t nothin’, like you got the plague,” said the older homeless man. “And at night it’s a ghost town.”
“The libraries are closed, and you can’t apply for a job. And the only place to stay warm is riding the bus,” said the younger one.
Those were two grassroots perspectives on the effects of the COVID-19 corona virus pandemic on the homeless population in New Haven
One came from an almost career homeless guy whose sense of isolation — call it social distancing — has always been there, but is now more acute than ever.
The scene at the Sunrise Cafe breakfast take-out program, Olive and Chapel streets.
The other comes from a man on the streets only for a few months after having been kicked out of his sober house. He’s now trying to better himself. Now he finds the public resources he needs to get his life back together are suddenly shut down.
Clifford Stanford, 55, has been struggling with drugs and been homeless for the last 20 years. Tuesday, he was having a cup of coffee with his friend, who wanted to be called Anonymous, on the steps of the St. Paul and St. James Church.
They’d gotten their much appreciated java and bag of breakfast foods from the Sunrise Cafe housed in the church.
In keeping with new pandemic protocols, the dine-in breakfast program has shifted to take-out, with masked Sunrise staffers distributing the food from a table.
Dozens of homeless people took the bags Tuesday and used the location and the interlude not only to eat, but to socialize and, when a reporter showed up, to talk about homeless life during the pandemic.
The older guys were split. Some asserted that things hadn’t changed much. Except the spots they might go to warm up, like Sports Haven or Starbucks, are now closed.
Clifford Stanford taking a pause with his coffee.
However, Stanford and a friend, who declined to give his name, both expressed something more personal just in the way people pass them by on the street. “There’s no compassion from anyone,” said the friend.
“People walk by you like you ain’t nothin’,” Stanford added.
Neither of these two older men knew of anyone who had been infected. However, Anonymous added, “A lot of people don’t have televisions, they don’t know where to go. You got people not getting checked out.”
“I feel neglected,” said Stanford. “This place feels like a lockdown.”
James Aiello, on the other hand, said the pandemic “doesn’t bother me much.”
Aiello, 59, said he has been homeless since he got out of prison in 2017. He said he has continued his business “flying his kite,” his sign soliciting money usually from drivers stopped at the light near Sports Haven. He was proud of the $160 he had made on Saturday.
Generational Split
The two younger men interviewed saw things very differently.
East Havener James Nuzello (who declined to be photographed) was in a wheelchair with a hip that needs an operation as a consequence of a car accident. That also triggered this interlude of homelessness, he said. When he was able to work, he made good money, he said. Now things are tough. “I’ve seen both sides,” he said.
People in the non-homeless world talk about COVID-19 and quarantine a lot, he said. Not so in the shelters.
Nuzello said he spent Tuesday night at the overflow shelter on Grand Avenue.
“People don’t mention the virus much,” he reported. “On the street some people even make jokes. ‘The Chinese caused it.’ Or they think Trump is using it to save money,” he reported.
Unlike some of the older guys, Nuzello said he still has family and friends he can count on. He’s working with a case manager and has a physician managing his hip condition and, he hopes, an upcoming operation to restore him to be able to work and resume his life.
He has received advice from his various practitioners about how to handle the pandemic on the street. “My podiatrist says to stay six to ten feet away” from others, for instance.
By far the most dire view of the streets in pandemic times came from the youngest of the two dozen or so homeless folks socializing around the cafe.
He was wearing a mask to guard against the virus. He asked not to be named or photographed. When he heard Nuzello and the others express themselves, he was not shy about a different point of view: “It’s fucked over the homeless! It doesn’t take rocket science to know the homeless are in the worst case. There’s no place to sit down, no place to go.”
“You can’t go to the library, you can’t apply for a job,” which was a focus for this 24-year-old who said he had recently been asked to leave the sober house where he was living, he said.
The small income he has been able to make since, through delivering liquor from liquor stores to places like restaurants, gigs set up for him through a temp agency, are also all drying up.
“The [temp agency] company I work for says the virus is killing them, so I can’t put together enough money to get a room,” he said.
“I’m trying to better myself. Older guys are not. I was delivering liquor, but now they’re not open.”
The young man looked around the Sunrise Cafe table and at the socializing, such as it was, among the younger and older men and a handful of women. “This,” he said, “is the best you’re going to get.”
