After seven years of waiting, Esther Pearson got news she’s been waiting for: She’ll be able to move into a new apartment soon. Now she hopes for something else she’s been waiting for: more space.
She and other tenants left at what remains of the old Brookside and Rockview housing projects in the isolated northwest corner of town have heard for years that their neighborhood is being rebuilt. They’ve heard that the housing authority planned to build 475 new homes — nice ones, with a mixture of renters and homeowners — where 490 apartments used to stand. There have been promises, meetings, more meetings, setbacks in the search for federal money. All that the tenants have actually seen so far is the demolition of the old Brookside and Rockview complexes.
Now, they learned at a community meeting Wednesday night, construction is about to begin. In December, the Housing Authority of New Haven (HANH) plans to start building new roads, step one in reconstructing not just housing projects, but also a new, less isolated and more diverse West Rock neighborhood.
The work in December marks the beginning of Phase One in what’s envisioned as a five-phase plan to build 476 new homes. Phase One has a $34 million pricetag and is planned to take 18 months. Click here to read details of the revival plan, in which the housing authority will work with a private developer from New Jersey. Click here to read about Phase Two.
“I’ve been going to so many meetings and fighting,” said Pearson (pictured) has lived in the Abraham Ribicoff apartments for seven years. She’s ready to see action. The cluster of Ribicoff “cottages” for the elderly are all that remain standing at the end of the long, now-desolate stretch once inhabited by the Brookside projects.
Shenae Draughn, HANH’s West Rock project manager, ran the meeting and described the Hope VI program, under which the West Rock complexes are being rebuilt. She said displaced Brookside and Rockview tenants will get first priority to move back into their old projects with an option to purchase or rent a home. Once they do, seniors like Pearson, living in the cramped, older Ribicoff cottages, will then have thenext priority for the rest of the new apartments.
There’ll be plenty available, according to HANH Executive Director Karen DuBois-Walton: Based on experience at other HOPE VI projects, no more than one-third of the 490 families displaced from Rockview and Brookside over the past decade can be expected to return, leaving hundreds of open new apartments. The seniors will probably be steered to a new complex planned to replace an abandoned strip mill at 122 Wilmot Rd.; it will combine first-floor stores with upstairs apartments for the elderly. (Read about that here.)
Ribicoff tenants don’t have to move; for now the cottages will remain standing, although the HANH hopes eventually to tear those down, too. Seniors like Pearson are ready to move now.
No More Isolation?
At one time, where Rockview Circle met Wilmot Road, trees lined the sidewalks and children collected the acorns that fell off the big oaks for acorn fights. This is where people going “in-town” stood waiting for the “city bus,” in front of the “teen center.”
Now it looks as if it’s always been a great big field of overgrown grass and weeds. A large wire fence blocks off what used to be the split between Rockview Circle and Wilmot Road, as if it’s a massive crime scene.
Next month the work will begin to transform the area into a community similar to the sparkling rebuilt Quinnipiac Terrace housing project across town and other developments around the country renovated under the Hope VI program.
Draughn (pictured) explained the plans for construction of the new development to around eight current and former West Rockers at Wednesday’s meeting, which took place at the West Rock Community Center on Wilmot Road.
She said the housing authority wants to make sure that the rebuilt West Rock area no longer isolates neighbors, with only one way out of the neighborhood.
Draughn said officials have been negotiating with Connecticut Transit about putting a new bus route to go to Hamden directly from the complex.
But for that to change, Draughn said, a road would need to connect the neighborhood to Hamden. The neighborhood actually borders Hamden, but for years Hamden has maintained a fence to keep people from the projects out of the town. Currently residents have to ride to downtown New Haven, then catch another bus miles back to Hamden to reach jobs or shopping that in reality is right near their homes.
“We have been in talks with the town of Hamden,” Draughn reported. Hamden officials have told the HANH that they’re open to removing the fence and reopening Wilmot Road to their town. (That commitment will need to be renewed with the administration of a newly elected Hamden mayor.)
Pearson said she’s glad the project is getting started. She can’t wait to see her new place, she said. “We’ve already chosen some of our fixtures that we would like to have.”
Pearson said she’s been attending planning meetings for years, where tenants could give their input on different features of the apartments. She said the original plans she saw for some new apartments didn’t provide enough storage space, and the kitchen area couldn’t comfortably fit a table.
“They were just too small,” Pearson said of the originally envisioned apartments. “There was no storage, and the rooms are really tiny, especially the two-bedrooms. You could get a single bed in there, maybe, and a nightstand.”
Draughn reassured Pearson that the plans are being modified to allow more space.
“A lot of people are still not happy with it,” said Terese Stevenson, a former resident of Rockview Circle, “for the simple fact that they went through this Hope VI thing for years, and it didn’t get done. So hopefully they’ll pass it and it will get done.”
Stevenson, president of the Tenant Representative Council at nearby Westville Manor (where she and many other displaced Rockview residents now live), said many of the people who are on the list didn’t show up to Wednesday’s meeting because no fliers went out about the training and planning session.
She’s not the only one who reacted with some impatience at the meeting.
“I’ve heard it all before,” said Shirley Banks (pictured), a former resident and president of the Rockview Circle Tenant Representative Council. “I’ve been working on this for like 20 years, and I hope it’s gonna come true this time, that we’re actually gonna get back home.”
If Pearson has anything to say about it, this time it will happen.
“Hopefully,” said Pearson, “but if not, we’ll be back squawking.”
The successful neighborhoods in the city are the kind that grew incrementally over time through a natural process of public demand followed by private supply. One problem with massive federally subsidized housing developments is that they are placed randomly because the large amount of funds allows it financially. However, just because a project is federally funded does not mean it cannot accurately replicate something that occurred naturally over time. Unfortunately, this project repeats many of the mistakes of earlier posts WW2 developments in that it takes large isolated piece of land and artificially populate it with boxes and stores. Neighborhoods and more importantly, communities, are not made up merely of the things that occur in them like housing, retail, offices, parks, etc, but the connections between the things in the community and to other communities; that a large part in what determines the success of the neighborhood.
It is imperative that connections be made to Hamden, because not only are the folks on the New Haven side isolated, so are the people on the Hamden side. Expanded bus service is always good, but more important than that is walkability. Every house in the country needs to be within walking distance to life's essentials. It is nearly as important to be within walking distance of work. The streets that lead up to West Rock are not enough of a connection to New Haven, more than roads are needed to make an adequate connection. There has to be a reason to be on the street for a reason other than getting from point A to point B. Ideally, Wintergreen and Springside could be turned into Main Streets with mixed use buildings and tiny residential side streets that could function as a proper gateway up to West Rock. If it is preferred to keep that area natural and uninterrupted by development then do not develop the Brookside/Rockview site either.
Also, "more space" is not always a good thing. In fact, I would suggest it is usually a bad thing. A bedroom only needs room for a bed and a desk. The communal rooms of the house should have adequate space to fit the entire family, and so should outdoor enclosed space. The trend in American housing has been to shrink the semi-private outdoor space that faces the street and enlarge the private indoor space. This does awful things to the public realm and the neighborhood and should be immediately stopped. If more than one child is expected to sleep in a room, more room is appropriate but beds should still be bunked, children should be encouraged to be outside, where they learn much more than they would staying in a large bedroom watching tv.
There should also be a reason for people who don't live in the community to go up there. Possibly something connected to West Rock park, or a public building or an outdoor concept space could be part of the development that attracts outsiders for other reasons beside drugs.