Suffering from hip pain and spinal injuries, Becerra says he reported his workplace injuries to MDF Painting. Instead of providing worker’s compensation, MDF fired him and tried to send him on a flight back to Guatemala days later. 

Since his arrival in New Haven, Becerra has been living at 200 Peck St. in Fair Haven, at a house owned by his boss, Mark DeFrancesco, along with at least 19 other migrant workers who had come from Guatemala on H-2B visas sponsored by MDF. While still living at 200 Peck St. Becerra filed a workers’ compensation complaint on Oct. 23; two weeks later, his boss and landlord, DeFrancesco, served him and another tenant-employee, Josue Mauricio Araña, an eviction notice. 

Becerra and MDF have been embroiled in two legal disputes: Becerra’s worker’s compensation case and DeFrancesco’s eviction claim. On Monday, the Connecticut Superior Court denied the eviction, but left the door open for DeFrancesco to evict Becerra and Araña through a different method. Becerra is awaiting his worker’s compensation hearing next week. 

The News spoke to two experts who said that obstacles to reporting make it difficult to quantify workers’ compensation abuse, but cases like Becerra’s are part of a wider pattern of thin protections for migrant workers.

Tyrese Ford, Becerra’s housing court lawyer, said he hopes Becerra’s case raises awareness about the ways migrant workers in New Haven remain vulnerable. 

“Hypothetically, if Edgar had never reached out to us and let us know the situation, would the public have known about their situation?” Ford said. “How would we have known that was going on around the corner on 200 Peck St.?” 

Becerra suffered multiple injuries, allegedly slept on the street after eviction 

MDF’s website advertises a close-knit team, urging workers to join a company that’s like an “extended family.” But Becerra’s experience with MDF, as he described it, paints a different picture. 

Becerra arrived in New Haven in July 2023 on a temporary work visa sponsored by MDF, slated to expire on Nov. 30. When Becerra arrived at 200 Peck St., he discovered at least 19 other MDF workers from Guatemala already living in the house, according to documents filed by his attorney. According to Becerra, no bed was available and he slept on the floor of a third-floor bedroom. DeFrancesco denied this at trial, saying he provided the tenants with mattresses. MDF paid Becerra almost $17 an hour; DeFrancesco set rent at $75 a week. 

In August, Becerra fell from a 32-foot ladder while painting for MDF and suffered leg and hip injuries, according to documents submitted by his attorney. Becerra said he reported the injury to MDF, who required him to continue working. 

MDF and Mark DeFrancesco’s attorney did not respond to multiple requests to comment. 

In September, Becerra said he fell head-first from a second-floor window while working; MDF again allegedly ignored his injury and told him to return to work. 

At the trial, Becerra claimed that MDF did not provide safety equipment, such as helmets, gloves or cable, to its workers, according to the New Haven Independent. 

The documents introduced by Becerra’s attorney claim that on Sep. 26, Becerra, “unable to manage the pain,” was admitted to Yale New Haven Hospital and diagnosed with a lower spine and hip injury. The next day, MDF allegedly told Becerra they would fire him and send him back to Guatemala if he did not return to work. When he did not return to work, Becerra was fired.

On Sep. 30, Lisa Hollingsworth, DeFrancesco’s sister and a principle of MDF, texted Becerra telling him DeFrancesco had bought plane tickets for him back to Guatemala the following day. 

“Great news. Mark approved to pay for your flight,” the text read, instructing Becerra to “pack and have your things ready,” according to the court decision. The next day, Hollingsworth texted Becerra the flight confirmation code. Becerra did not board the flight. 

Becerra alleges that in October, MDF changed the lock code to the Peck Street residence. Unable to access the house, Becerra and Araña slept outside for two days before contacting New Haven Police, who ordered MDF to allow Becerra and Araña back into the house. During the trial, DeFrancesco claimed that the lockout was purely accidental, according to the New Haven Independent. 

Becerra filed a report of injury with the Connecticut Workers’ Compensation Commission on Oct. 23; his workers’ compensation case is still pending. Around this time, Becerra was hospitalized for over a week for work-related injuries. 

On Nov. 6, MDF served Becerra and Araña an eviction notice, ordering the men to leave 200 Peck St. within the week. In late November, DeFrancesco and his attorney Joshua Brown filed an eviction complaint against Becerra and Araña in court, officially beginning the legal dispute that culminated in Monday’s decision. 

Housing court denies eviction, for now 

The eviction dispute was heard first on Jan. 11 and again on Jan. 16. DeFrancesco claimed that both tenants were bound by weekly, oral lease agreements. 

On Monday, Judge Walter Spader issued a decision siding with Becerra and Araña, ruling that MDF had not proved the existence and terms of a week-to-week oral lease.

However, the decision noted that Becerra and Araña have not paid DeFrancesco for the continued residence in the house, leaving open the opportunity for MDF to file another eviction claim under “right or privilege terminated.” 

A footnote in the decision stated that there was nothing to suggest that MDF’s eviction case was retaliation against Becerra’s workers’ compensation claim — a major part of Becerra’s defense. 

“Did this decision inch us toward justice? I would say yes,” said Ford, Becerra’s attorney at New Haven Legal Assistance Association. “Did it do enough? No. But it did provide us with more time and opportunity to seek justice.” 

Becerra’s case example of limited migrant protections

According to Glenn Formica, the attorney representing Becerra in his workers’ compensation case, workers’ compensation can be one of the most expensive components of a construction job, and construction companies often use undocumented migrant workers to skirt those costs. Formica said he has encountered many undocumented workers who fear deportation if they file a workers’ compensation complaint against their employer. 

While Becerra came to New Haven on an H-2B visa, Formica estimated that around two-thirds of the workers he represents are undocumented. Becerra stands out from other cases of migrant workers injured on the job because he has gone public with his case and is pursuing legal compensation, Formica said. 

Professor Sheila Hayre, who teaches immigration law and serves as the faculty advisor for the Human Trafficking Prevention Project at Quinnipiac University School of Law, said that the protections for undocumented workers compared to those with temporary working status are like “night and day.” 

However, she emphasized that workers with legal working permission still face hurdles in reporting workplace injuries, and oftentimes, return back to their own countries to receive care before receiving compensation. 

“You can imagine yourself [suffering a workplace injury on a temporary working visa], and just feeling like I just want to go home,” Hayre said. “Situations like that, where you feel like the employer has provided housing and a job and everything else, the logistics of ‘how do I even survive while I’m fighting this case?’ I think it is a really huge issue.”

Hayre noted that difficulty in switching employers, who sponsor the visa, can prevent migrant workers from leaving exploitative or problematic employers. She also said that employers can “blacklist” workers from future work visas in the U.S., enabling employers to hang this potential ban over workers’ heads. As a result, many workers “put up” with unfair working conditions because they feel like they lack other options, according to Hayre. 

A lack of awareness among migrant workers of their labor rights additionally reduces reporting and obscures the extent of migrants working in unsafe conditions on a national scale, according to Hayre.

“What I’m proud of Edgar about as a client, is that he’s standing up and saying, ‘hey, I’m every bit as human as the next guy. I’m injured, and I’m taking advantage of it,’” Formica said. “I think in a general sense, Edgar is just trying to stand up and assert his own humanity. By example, he’s trying to assert the humanity of all foreign workers.” 

Becerra’s workers compensation case hearing is scheduled for next Thursday, Feb. 15. 

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Residents of the Lenox Street Tenant Union, leaders of the Connecticut Tenants Union and Mayor Justin Elicker spoke about the importance of tenants unions in checking landlord power. Organizers then stuck a printed petition to Ocean’s window after borrowing tape from the thrift shop next door, Witch Bitch Thrift. 

“We want Ocean Management to be able to sit down with us and have a real conversation so that we can have real things happen,” said Alisha Moore, an organizer of the newly formed union.

The Lenox Street Tenants Union, the city’s fourth tenants union, formed in November at 195 and 199 Lenox St. in the Fair Haven Heights neighborhood. Residents organized after discovering that Ocean Management was looking to sell the two properties and that the majority of residents were on month-to-month leases. Fearing eviction or significant rent increases if the building changed ownership, residents from all 11 units voted to unionize. 

The petition alleged that Ocean has not addressed mold and water damage, failed to perform regular maintenance and did not regularly collect garbage. 

Hannah Srajer GRD ’25, president of the CT Tenants Union, said that Lenox Street Tenants Union members had spent hundreds of dollars of their own money on maintenance after Ocean failed to respond to multiple calls and emails. Srajer said that one union member had been injured after a porch collapsed beneath her.

“Do we need members of our community to break their bones and pay for lawyers for the landlords of the city of New Haven to follow our housing laws?” Srajer said. 

Last September, the Blake Street Tenants Union — the city’s first tenants union — made history as the first tenants union in Connecticut to enter collective bargaining negotiations with their landlord, Ocean Management. 

Srajer expressed a desire to engage in similar negotiations between Ocean and the union at Lenox Street. She explained that future negotiations with Ocean will ultimately look to secure leases that provide tenants with safe conditions, stable rent, improved communication with Ocean and protection from retaliation against union members.

“The families at the Lenox Street Tenants Union don’t just deserve an actual lease — which many of them don’t have,” Srajer said. “They deserve a multi-year lease with terms and conditions that they negotiate based on what they know they need and deserve.”

Union leaders demanded that Ocean respond to the petition within one week, asking for a reply before Tuesday, Feb. 13. Srajer noted that establishing this deadline will help keep Ocean accountable and establish a timeline for negotiations to begin. She also noted that if Ocean does not respond to the petition, representatives of the union will continue to push for negotiations.

New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker shared that he “stand[s] in solidarity” with Lenox Street Tenants Union, noting the influence of 2022 legislation that enabled the formation of tenants unions in the city.

“Ocean Management is not keeping these properties at a level that is healthy and safe and humane for the tenants, and whether it’s flooding or mold, rodents or just general maintenance,” Elicker said. “The expectation and the requirement of landlords is to keep their properties at that level so that tenants have a good place to live.”

Elicker also noted that the Liveable City Initiative, a government agency that enforces housing codes across the city, currently has two open cases at the 195 and 199 Lenox St. properties.

Other tenants affiliated with the union also spoke about their past experiences with Ocean Management. 

Ocean Management did not respond to a request for comment.

Cruz Vasquez said that in her four years living at the Lenox Street property, Ocean Management never removed snow from the ground or salted the road outside her home, which made for “very dangerous winters.” According to Vazquez, Ocean’s responses to tenant inquiries have either been ignored or delayed.

Another tenant, Claudia Figueira, said that rainfall often floods her first-floor apartment, and that Ocean has failed to answer her maintenance requests.

“That’s why we’re asking that someone from management is there to pick up the phone when we call,” Vasquez said in Spanish.

All four of New Haven’s tenants unions formed at Ocean-owned properties. 

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The resolution has not yet been assigned to committee and was not discussed at Monday’s meeting. According to Chloe Miller, one of the organizers who helped submit the proposal, the resolution was submitted to the Board of Alders on Nov. 28. 

Alder Tyisha Walker-Meyers, president of the Board of Alders, could not be reached for comment on when the resolution would be assigned to committee. 

“Locally, organization and municipal action helps build a national consensus,” Miller said. “We’ve seen a lot of gridlock at the federal level … I think it’s super important that cities speak out and pass resolutions to reflect the views of the residents that live within the cities.” 

Miller also pointed to polling showing national support for a ceasefire. The Reuters poll Miller referred to, dated Nov. 15, found that 68 percent of respondents agreed with the statement “Israel should call a ceasefire and try to negotiate.”

On Oct. 7, Hamas attacked Israel, killing at least 1,200 people and taking 240 as hostages, according to Israel’s Foreign Ministry. In its military response against Gaza, Israel has killed more than 15,890 Palestinians, the Associated Press reported on Dec. 5. The Associated Press called the December estimates from the Gazan Health Ministry a “sharp jump” from the previous Nov. 20 count of over 13,300 killed, noting that officials in the Hamas-controlled region have only been able to sporadically update the count since Nov. 11 and fear thousands more might be dead under the rubble. 

Monday’s Board of Alder’s meeting came just days after the end of a seven-day pause in fighting. The temporary ceasefire began on Nov. 24 and was initiated to allow for the release of some Hamas-held hostages and to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza, according to the Associated Press. That pause ended early on Dec. 1. Israel resumed airstrikes on Gaza after claiming that Hamas violated the ceasefire’s terms in its final hours by firing toward Israeli territory.

Reuters reported that Israeli airstrikes between Friday, Dec. 1 and Monday, Dec. 4 killed around 900 people in Gaza, according to the Gazan Health Ministry. Israel expanded its ground offensive to cover all of the Gaza Strip on Dec. 3, with its military vowing to hit south Gaza with “no less strength” than the north, the Associated Press reported.

The resolution proposed to the Board of Alders follows several similar municipal-level resolutions across the country calling on the U.S. Congress to support a ceasefire. 

In October, the city council of Richmond, California passed a resolution that condemned Israel for “ethnic cleansing and collective punishment” in Gaza — a move that marked one of the first municipal-level resolutions in the U.S. supporting Palestine. 

Early last month, the city council of Cudahy, California passed a resolution in support of “Immediate De-Escalation and Cease-Fire in Israel and Occupied Palestine.” The city council of Providence, Rhode Island passed a similar resolution calling for a ceasefire and for the federal government to “send and facilitate the entry of” humanitarian aid into Gaza. 

On Nov. 14, the town council of Carrboro, North Carolina narrowly passed a similar resolution, as did the city councils of Detroit and Akron, Ohio during the week of Nov. 19. Last Monday, the city council of Oakland, California, joined these cities in calling on Congress to demand a ceasefire.

There is precedent for the New Haven Board of Alders to take a stance on international foreign policy issues. In 2022, alders unanimously passed a resolution urging Biden to end the embargo against Cuba, and in 2020, the Board affirmed a resolution to oppose a war with Iran. 

Harmony Solomon Cruz-Bustamante, the senior student representative on the Board of Education and a political literacy teacher with the Connecticut Democratic Socialists of America, was at Monday’s meeting to show support for the proposed resolution. 

“Representing 19,000 students in New Haven public schools — they all come from very diverse backgrounds, ethnicities, races, genders, ages and a lot of them are refugees,” said Cruz-Bustamante, who is a senior at Wilbur Cross high school. “I feel like it would be disingenuous of me to not show up with solidarity with the Palestinians who are being expelled and cleansed and killed and pushed out of their homes when I’m in charge of representing those students.” 

Nigel Harris, a DSA-affiliate who attended Monday’s meeting to support the ceasefire resolution, also called on Yale to divest from weapons manufacturers. 

On Friday, Dec. 1, Yale students rallied outside of the Schwarzman Center, demanding that Yale divest from arms manufacturing companies such as Lockheed Martin, which supplies weapons to Israel. 

“I want Yale to show up,” Harris said. “Yale students have been showing up, there’s a lot of action on campus, and it won’t stop until they divest.” 

The next Board of Alders meeting is scheduled for Dec. 18.

The post Organizers propose city resolution calling for ceasefire in Israel-Hamas war appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Fearing a mass eviction, the tenants organized under the guidance of the Connecticut Tenants Union, with all 11 units unanimously voting to unionize. On Nov. 17, residents of the Lenox Street properties filed with New Haven’s Fair Rent Commission to officially form the Lenox Tenant Union.

“Unions are so important in this moment when tenants face high rent increases or no-fault evictions that totally upend people’s lives, sometimes overnight,” Luke Melonakos-Harrison DIV ’23, the vice president of the Connecticut Tenants Union, said. “When there’s no legal protection to fall back on, what [tenants] fall back on is each other and the power of acting collectively.”

The union at Lenox Street is the fourth tenants’ union to form in New Haven. All of the city’s tenants unions — located at 311 Blake St., 1476 Chapel St., 1275-1291 Quinnipiac Ave. and now, Lenox Street — are at Ocean-owned properties.

Alisha Moore, one of the members of the Lenox union, recounted knocking on doors to talk with neighbors and create open communication about shared complaints with Ocean. When tenants met at one of the apartments in the building to discuss unionizing, a bilingual tenant interpreted between English- and Spanish-speaking residents to facilitate communication.

“This community — we’re a family,” Moore said. “[The possibility of eviction] feels like we’re being forced to break our family apart. When things don’t happen that we need to happen, we do it together. This has just brought our community closer together.”

Moore explained that residents of the Lenox Street properties did not receive notices regarding the renewal of their month-to-month leases, which sparked concerns among residents that they would all be asked to leave the property during the holiday season once their leases were up.

Continued miscommunication between Ocean and residents at Lenox Street exacerbated these concerns. According to Moore, two tenants at 199 Lenox St. had signed new leases on their apartments. However, when they accessed an online portal that Ocean uses for tenants to pay rent, they found that the dates on the lease were different from the dates on the lease they had signed.

Tenants feared that if their building switched ownership, they would either be evicted or face significant rent increases. Organizers from CT Tenants Union, a statewide tenants rights organization, helped residents through the unionization process. Mark Washington, a member of the Blake Street Tenants Union who helped organize the union at Lenox Street, said that many tenants feel they are “not being valued as human beings” by their landlords.

“What we did at CT Tenants Union was just help them collectively put their voices together and use that power to achieve their goals,” Washington said.

Poor living conditions also motivated tenants to unionize. According to Moore, multiple tenants had complained to Ocean about a mouse infestation that was never addressed. There were also safety concerns: Moore said the building’s fire escape was falling down, there were problems with lighting on the property at night, some doors had broken locks and there was a severe leak above her shower.

According to Moore, a Liveable City Initiative inspection revealed broken smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors. She said that the poor conditions made her fearful for the health of her newborn son.

Rosa Ferraro-Santana, the Ward 13 alder representing Fair Haven Heights, said that tenants’ unions can help ensure that renters receive the living conditions they expect when they initially sign their leases. Ferraro-Santana identified patterns of neglect at properties owned by Ocean, one of the largest mega-landlords in the city. Ocean owns over 1,000 apartments across the city. 

Ocean’s attempt to sell 195 and 199 Lenox Ave. may also be part of a larger pattern. The New Haven Independent reported last summer that Ocean and Mandy Management, another mega-landlord in the city, have been selling properties, particularly in the Newhallville and Dixwell neighborhoods.

Tenants across Ocean properties have accused the landlord of poor living conditions and neglect, and Ocean has been fined multiple times in housing court for housing code violations. 

Ocean Management did not respond to a request for comment. 

While state law allows local governments to establish fair rent commissions, which handle complaints and prevent landlords from charging excessive rents, state law does not allow local governments to establish their own rent control laws, nor does the state have any laws limiting the amount that landlords can raise the rent.

“Part of the unionization process is people realizing that protections for tenants in this state are thin,” Melonakos-Harrison said. “Landlords can do a lot. They have a lot of unchecked power to displace people overnight and break up communities that have been neighbors for a long time.”

Moore said that the Lenox Street union hopes to contact the Fair Rent Commission as well, and explained that one of the primary goals of the union is ensuring that, if the properties are sold, the new landlord will provide tenants with new leases with fair rent prices. 

According to Wildaliz Bermudez, Executive Director of New Haven’s Fair Rent Commission, there is a precedent of tenants’ unions contacting the Fair Rent Commission. 

Blake Street Tenants Union filed retaliation complaints against Ocean in August after Ocean served eviction notices to 16 union members amid negotiations. The union withdrew the retaliation complaints after signing a memorandum of understanding with Ocean, where the landlord agreed to rescind the evictions and re-enter negotiations. The Chapel Street tenants union also filed a complaint with the Fair Rent Commission due to concerns about living conditions. The complaint was closed after Ocean made the requested repairs.

“There’s power in numbers,” Washington said. “We’re fighting power structures, systemic structures that have been in place for years … to form these unions and give that power back to the people is everything.”

Lenox Street is located in the city’s Fair Haven Heights neighborhood, east of the Quinnipiac River.

The post City’s fourth tenants union forms at Lenox Street in Fair Haven Heights appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Now, providers are adapting their cold weather plans for shelters and warming centers ahead of winter. 

The proposed $50 million would have included funding for staff to receive raises and updates to the 211 emergency response system. All of the approved $5 million is for emergency cold weather services. Service providers have raised concerns about a response system with aging infrastructure and staffing shortages due to what they say is a lack of state support. 

“We have a homeless response system that is critically underfunded,” Sarah Fox, CEO of the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness, said. “We need our system to be actually operational and working to meet the needs of Connecticut’s residents today, so that no one dies this winter.” 

On Sept. 25, the Connecticut Department of Housing distributed the $5 million throughout the state’s coordinated access network, which connects regional homeless service providers. The Greater New Haven Coordinated Access Network, which includes 19 municipalities, received $1.16 million.

Kelly Fitzgerald, director of New Haven’s coordinated access network, said that she believes the $1.16 million from the state, coupled with additional funds from the city of New Haven and the town of Hamden, puts the greater New Haven area in a “good place” with cold weather funding. 

Cold weather funding, Fitzgerald told the News, pays for emergency services to protect unhoused people from extreme weather. One example of emergency winter services is warming centers, where unhoused people can take temporary overnight shelter. 

Last year, Hamden contributed $100,000 toward the Hamden warming center, according to Fitzgerald. Velma George, New Haven’s homeless coordinator, wrote to the News that the city was still working to “fine tune” its cold weather plans. 

“We are confident that we will have enough resources to support the unsheltered need this cold weather season,” Fitzgerald said. “I know that’s not necessarily the case in every region.”  

After the pandemic, the rate of homelessness in Connecticut rose for the first time in eight years — increasing by 13 percent in 2022 and 3 percent in 2023. 

On Oct. 1, a new Connecticut law declared homelessness a public health crisis. 

Last legislative session, the Connecticut House of Representatives housing committee voted unanimously to approve the initial $50 million proposal to support homeless service providers. The bill was scaled back by the Appropriations Committee, which ultimately granted only a small portion of the request — the $5 million toward cold weather funding. The committee also approved $2 million in “flex funds” for homelessness services and the 211 system. 

Rep. Geoff Luxenberg, who chairs the housing committee, attributed the funding cut from the proposed $50 million to the approved $5 million to a lack of available funds in the state budget.  

Connecticut ended the 2023 fiscal year with a $745 million budget surplus. 

“I, too, had some misgivings about it only ending up at five million, but I was glad we got five as opposed to zero,” Luxenberg told the News. 

According to Fox, state funding for the homeless response system has not kept pace with inflation or the increase in minimum wage. Fox added that the majority of the nonprofit providers the coordinated access network works with need to privately fundraise around 50 percent of their costs.

Luxenberg also highlighted the difficulty of staffing warming centers, saying that it is difficult to hire people to work overnight for relatively low pay at a temporary job that ends in the spring. 

“There are some real structural flaws with how we address taking care of the people in our state who are most in need of support. And we end up paying through the nose,” Luxenberg said. 

Steve Werlin, the director of Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen, said that volatile weather and an unpredictable economy make it difficult to accurately forecast the demand for homeless services this winter. 

DESK operated a warming center last year, but is closing overnight programming this winter to complete renovations. 

“Last winter [New Haven was] maxed out at pretty much all of our overflow spaces and our warming centers,” Werlin said. “We were routinely going over capacity last winter. As an indicator of the following winter, it’s frightening.”

Emergency cold weather services are only one prong of New Haven’s response to homelessness. Homeless service providers told the News they must also contend with a limited supply of shelter beds and a lack of affordable housing. 

The city faced a shortage of shelter beds last winter, with dozens of families and individuals being stuck on waiting lists hoping for one of the city’s 175 beds. 

Last week, the Board of Alders approved the city’s $9.6 million plan to buy the Day’s Inn Hotel on Foxon Boulevard and convert the space into non-congregate shelter housing. Once opened, the shelter will increase the city’s shelter capacity by 56 rooms, which will house over 100 individuals. 

“At the end of the day, cold weather [services are] an emergency band-aid to really make sure we have some place for people to stay alive during cold weather,” Fitzgerald said. “Our ultimate goal is to have enough year-round beds to meet the need, and the hotel would help us move in that direction.” 

According to Fitzgerald, there are currently around 600 unhoused people in the greater New Haven area identified on the by-name list — a list of people experiencing homelessness that is continually updated. Of the 600 individuals, Fitzgerald said that there are around 250 people who are “literally homeless” — sleeping outside — on an average night.  

According to Connectiuct’s 2023 Point in Time count, there were 3,015 people experiencing homelessness in Connecticut last January. 

The post Homeless service providers sound alarm on ‘critically underfunded’ response system  appeared first on Yale Daily News.

But with rising New Haven rent prices, students and Elm City residents are struggling to find affordable and adequate housing.

“I have, over the six years of my [doctorate], lived in four different places down in New Haven,” Evan Cudone GRD ’20 ’23 told the News. “And I’ve had pretty considerable issues at all four places that made finding the housing, affording the housing and then just generally living there a little more difficult than I think it should be.”

Graduate students living off campus must hunt for housing in a tight market. New Haven is in an affordable housing crisis: between June 2018 and June 2022, the average rent in New Haven County increased 28 percent. According to census data, the rental vacancy rate in New Haven is currently at 3.8 percent — an increase from last year, where vacancy plummeted to 1.4 percent, but still lower than the 4.5 percent vacancy across the state.

According to Alex Rich GRD ’27, Graduate and Professional Student Senate advocacy chair, an estimated 86 percent of Yale graduate and professional students live off campus, with the greatest proportion of students living in the East Rock and Downtown neighborhoods. 

Cudone, who conducted research about New Haven housing costs as part of his Executive Board Fellow Project for the senate last year, told the News that on-campus options are not viable for many graduate students. Graduate students with families, for example, may find dorm-style living untenable.

He added that off-campus housing comes with its own challenges. In his research, Cudone focused on the monopolization of the housing market in New Haven and the relationship between University housing stipends and off-campus rents. 

“I think the primary finding is that the school has been responding to the cost of living increases in New Haven by increasing the stipend for graduate students, which I think is a reasonable response,” Cudone said. “However, all the data that the senate collects on this consistently shows that the housing prices adjust to those increased stipends.”

In a 2023 survey conducted by the Graduate and Professional Student Senate, 33.3 percent of the 523 students surveyed disagreed that they could find “housing that is affordable.” Additionally, 29.7 percent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, “I have chosen housing that doesn’t meet my needs (e.g., space, amenity, distance from campus, whether or not sharing) as a result of financial strain.”

This issue has also been outlined in the GPSS Strategic Plan, a report that guides the senate’s priorities. 

In the strategic plan, the Graduate and Professional Student Senate called on the University to expand its subsidized housing efforts and “combat the price gouging property owners place on student renters and other New Haven residents.” According to the senate’s 2023 survey, 83 percent of graduate students found their current housing through a non-Yale source. 

The strategic plan states that “many graduate and professional students at Yale are subject to the symptoms (increasing costs, absentee landlords) of this increasingly monopolized renters housing market. For students living off stipends, this acts to decrease their quality of living as the cost of renting continues to outpace the growth of the stipend.”

The Yale Graduate Housing office declined to comment on the matter. 

With residential college housing unequipped to handle increasing class sizes, Yale students have increasingly turned to off-campus housing, prompting concerns that affluent Yale students may outbid and displace New Haveners. 

Concerns about accommodating Yale’s growing student body came to the fore last spring, when an unprecedented 72 percent of admitted students in the Yale College class of 2027 opted to matriculate. The large class size prompted Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Jeremiah Quinlan to send an email encouraging students to delay enrollment. 

According to Kate Marie, associate director of graduate housing, her office provides Yalies looking for off-campus housing with a database of information on “properties for rent or sale in the New Haven area, landlord ratings, maps of New Haven and the Yale Campus, and links to additional resources.”

In a February announcement, the University also noted efforts by Yale Graduate Housing and University Properties to create more apartment-style options for graduate students.

The Graduate and Professional Student Senate has also called on Yale to increase affordable transportation options for students living farther from campus. Alex Rich pointed to the fact that students driving to campus must pay parking fees, recently reinstated to full price last July. The senate has also advocated for the University to supply graduate students with U-PASS CT cards, which cover all fees for Connecticut buses and trains.

Rich said that she lives in Westville, where she was able to find more affordable housing. However, she noted, there is no Yale shuttle between her rental unit and her lab.

“When parking rates were reinstated, I was often stressed about my ability to get to campus,” Rich wrote in a statement to the News. 

She added that she took the city bus every day until the city reinstated bus fares last April after a year of free rides.

Cudone noted, however, that while the affordable housing issue creates problems for students, New Haven residents are most affected.

“It seems like graduate students specifically are the most profitable demographic in New Haven for landlords to lease to,” Cudone said. “They generally come from more affluent backgrounds. They have the disposable income that Yale gives them with our very competitive stipend compared to other universities. And [landlords] adjust their prices to match that.”

According to Data Haven’s 2023 Community Wellbeing Index Report, 50 percent of New Haven renters are cost-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30 percent of their monthly income on housing. 

According to Karen DuBois-Walton ’89, executive director of the New Haven Housing Authority, Yale holds enormous sway in the New Haven housing market by providing jobs, admitting students and offering housing to students and faculty. DuBois-Walton told the News that the University’s actions regarding student housing, including “admitting more students than they know they have on-campus housing for,” have contributed to increased demand for housing in New Haven. 

DuBois-Walton explained that demand in the housing market has increased due to a recent influx of new residents brought upon by expanding job opportunities within the city. Additionally, household size has generally decreased, particularly among students living off campus. 

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, it became increasingly common for former roommates to live separately from one another. 

“What might have been a two- … or three-person household breaks apart, and rather than taking up one unit in the housing market, it’s taking up two or three units in the market,” DuBois-Walton said. 

This phenomenon increased demand for housing within the city, further contributing to rising rent prices. DuBois-Walton also identified the University’s actions to incentivize students to live off campus as another factor that led rent prices to increase.

Additionally, the routes followed by the Yale Shuttle indirectly encourage students to populate specific areas of the city. “They incentivize people to move in particular neighborhoods because that’s where the Yale shuttle will easily move people around,” DuBois-Walton explained. This phenomenon concentrates student populations and city residents in particular neighborhoods within the city, such as East Rock, leading rent prices to rise within those areas.

Although various new housing-related projects are still underway in the city — including plans for residential construction at Long Wharf, as well as efforts to convert the Days Inn Hotel into a shelter for unhoused people this winter — DuBois-Walton explained that these efforts have not been enough to meet the rising demand for housing in the city. 

Other efforts to address the affordable housing crisis have included city steps to strengthen the Fair Rent Commission, an organization meant to eliminate excessive rental increases on tenants in the city, as well as building a new below-market housing registry to facilitate the process of finding and accessing affordable housing.

DuBois-Walton suggested that to remedy the growing issue, Yale should take greater steps in contributing to housing development within the city. She discussed the Yale Homebuyer Program, an initiative by which the University subsidizes home purchases for employees in New Haven, as an example. Last fall, the program allocated over $35 million in funding to help employees purchase homes in the city, greatly contributing to development efforts.

Yale might be able to become a “multi-family housing developer” by concentrating more funds into the Homebuyer Program, DuBois-Walton told the News. This action would help boost supply in the city’s housing market.

DuBois-Walton emphasized the importance of making housing in the city affordable for people at a wide range of income levels. She explained that throughout New Haven’s history, the city has served as a “welcoming haven” to immigrants while also doubling as a bustling university town.

“These are the pieces of who we are, and what we want to do is figure out the ways that we can grow New Haven such that it can accommodate all of the wonderful people that want to call New Haven home,” she said.

In June 2022, the average rent in New Haven County was $1,953 per month.

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Over 60 people gathered at Trinity Church on the Green on Friday — young and old, housed and unhoused, clad in a mix of black mourning and everyday wear — all with the shared purpose of commemorating Petrulis’ life.

Petrulis was found dead on Aug. 7 outside the Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen on State Street, where he had been sleeping for several weeks. Petrulis, affectionately known as “Grizz” by friends because of his large stature, was 36 years old.

At the memorial, family and friends remembered Petrulis as an advocate for New Haven’s unhoused community: bold and outspoken, funny and sometimes stubborn, devoted to New Haven’s unhoused community and unafraid to call out politicians on face-saving platitudes. 

“It’s an incredibly deep loss for us in so many ways,” Billy Bromage, who worked with Petrulis as a member of the unhoused activist organization U-ACT, told the News. “Just personally, but also in terms of the activist work we’re doing. The small, but hopefully powerful — or soon-to-be powerful — movement we’re building. It’s an immense hole for us.” 

Petrulis was a core member of U-ACT, which formed in New Haven last year. Petrulis helped shape the group’s central demands: that the city end evictions of unhoused people from public land, stop discarding unhoused people’s belongings and provide permanent public bathrooms and free public showers for all.

Petrulis represented U-ACT at the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness’s 2023 annual conference. He also spearheaded U-ACT’s effort to create lockers on the New Haven Green in which unhoused people could safely store their belongings. Days before his death, Petrulis had met with the pastor of Trinity Church to discuss a plan to install lockers.

Having previously worked as a cook and bouncer at Toad’s Place, Petrulis had been unhoused since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. A month before his death, Petrulis was evicted from a partially-sheltered area outside the Ninth Square apartment complex, where he had been living for over two years. 

According to Mark Colville, a long-time New Haven activist and member of U-ACT, Petrulis had received permission to sleep outside the Downtown New Haven apartment complex and was on good terms with several of the tenants who regularly talked with him and gave him food. 

In June, Petrulis awoke to a man taking pictures of him, Colville said. Someone in the building had called the police, and soon officers appeared and threatened to arrest Petrulis if he did not leave.

Days after Petrulis was forced to leave, members of U-ACT gathered outside the Ninth Square apartment complex to protest his eviction.

“If you want to talk, we can talk now; we can talk quiet, or we can talk loud,” Petrulis said into a megaphone in a YouTube recording of the protest. “I’m a human. You could have talked to me like the person that I am.” 

At the demonstration, Petrulis carried a sign that said “Stop Criminalizing Homelessness.” 

“It took some courage to turn that personal hurt into a public response,” Colville said. “That was maybe his best expression of leadership: take your personal pain, and unite that with others and do something public about it.” 

After losing his place to stay, Petrulis moved around every night searching for a place to sleep: some nights scrounging enough money to stay in a hotel, other nights sleeping in various public places downtown. 

In the weeks before he died, he began sleeping outside of Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen. 

“He felt very disrespected. He felt like he was treated in a subhuman way,” Bromage said.

Jean-Claude Harrison, one of Petrulis’s closest friends, said he was motivated to join U-ACT after his friend’s death. 

“Remembering everything he said to me, it made me realize that if his voice could be heard to that degree, maybe my voice can be heard to a degree as well,” Harrison told the News.  

Harrison remembers one instance when he ran into Petrulis playing music from a speaker. Petrulis teased him for his music taste, and gave him a recommendation: “We Vibing,” a song by the Harlem-based rapper Nino Man. 

Harrison says he sometimes listens to the song and thinks of his friend. The lyrics, which recount rising out of poverty and surviving abuse, Harrison said, remind him of Petrulis. 

“That’s what Grizz was about,” he said. “He had a hard upcoming, and he made the best of things.”                                                           

U-ACT’s slogan is “the emergency is tonight.”

The post New Haven’s unhoused community mourns leader and friend Keith Petrulis appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Elicker has spent much of the past four years managing the COVID-19 pandemic and a growing affordable housing crisis in the city. With ownership vacancy rates across the city around 1.4 percent and homelessness on the rise throughout the state, housing has become a central challenge for his administration. 

“We’re doing a little bit of everything, because there is no one solution to addressing this issue,” Elicker told the News. “Housing challenges exist for someone that has very low to actually no income, but it also is impacting someone that [has] low to moderate income.”

The News spoke to several city officials and activists on New Haven housing to evaluate the successes and failures of the Elicker administration’s housing policy in four areas: pandemic rental assistance, affordable housing, tenant protections and homelessness. 

These experts pointed to a mixed track record for the Mayor, pointing to the strengthening of the city’s first tenant unions and an inclusionary zoning bill that had mixed success creating additional affordable housing. They also noted the failures of the Liveable City Initiative and the controversial bulldozing of two tent encampments that had been home to unhoused residents for several years. 

Millions of dollars to pandemic rental relief

In his first mayoral term, Elicker rolled out new programs to address housing insecurities caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. His administration launched many of the programs with an influx of federal funding that was allotted to the state for pandemic relief purposes, according to Karen DuBois-Walton ’89, executive director of the New Haven Housing Authority, who challenged Elicker in the 2021 Democratic mayoral primary.

According to DuBois-Walton, the Elicker administration used state resources to move people out of congregate shelters and into hotels for extended periods of time, helping to curb the number of COVID-19 cases within the city.

Most prominently, the city initially invested $10 million of federal American Rescue Plan Act funds into an “I’m Home” initiative to fund rental assistance and affordable housing development. 

In 2022, the city allocated an additional $1 million to the program with the goal of increasing  down payment assistance from $10,000 to $25,000 per person for those who earn below 300 percent of the federal poverty level for New Haven. 

“We have programs for every income level to support people with the goal of … having long term sustainable housing,” Elicker said.

As of 2019, only 29 percent of city residents owned the home they lived in, compared to 66 percent of Connecticut residents. Elicker said that the city’s expansion of the down payment program aimed to close this gap.

This past spring, Elicker’s administration proposed spending another $5 million of ARPA money to expand the program again, in order to jumpstart long delayed affordable housing developments in the city.

Another program, the Coronavirus Assistance and Security Tenant Landlord Emergency Program, distributed grants as high as $8,000 to help tenants behind on rent and homeowners behind on mortgage payments. 

DuBois-Walton explained that CASTLE “was an important step at a time when people’s housing was very insecure.” 

The program has also been widely criticized for not utilizing enough of its allotted funding during the peak of the pandemic. According to the New Haven Independent, CASTLE expended roughly $103,000 out of its $800,000 budget between the program’s launch in September 2020 and May 2021. However, as of March 2023, the program expended around $844,000 to 139 different households.

Inclusionary zoning creates some — but perhaps not enough — affordable housing units

One of Elicker’s main policies aimed at increasing affordable housing in the city was an  Inclusionary Zoning Law, which went into effect Feb. 18, 2022. The law requires that new apartment buildings provide a certain number of units at rent prices below market rate to tenants earning no more than 50 percent of the area median income. 

The law has since succeeded in approving the construction of 23 affordable housing units, with 17 more units still in the approval process, according to Lenny Speiller, the mayor’s director of communications. 

DuBois-Walton said she believes that apartments covered by the inclusionary zoning law represent only a small subset of the needed affordable units.

“The vast number of units that we need to develop are not going to come from inclusionary zoning,” DuBois-Walton said. She suggested the solution might lie in city-wide initiatives that prioritize building affordable housing units in larger quantities.

In an interview with the News on Friday, Elicker touted the creation of over 900 units of new or renovated units having been brought online and an additional 900 more units in the pipeline since beginning of his administration in 2020.

DuBois-Walton also discussed city efforts to construct accessory dwelling units, which are smaller housing units added to existing homes or apartment buildings. In 2021, New Haven’s Board of Alders passed an ADU ordinance in order to encourage new apartment development. However, no ADUs have since been built based on the amended zoning requirements.

Mayor Elicker told the News that he intends to submit legislation to further encourage the building of additional ADUs.

According to a report by Elm City Communities, a group that includes the city’s Housing Authority, this lack of AUD building is likely due to the current city requirement that only owner-occupants of housing units can build ADUs.

Other city initiatives, such as LCI’s creation of a Below-Market Rental registry, have helped to facilitate affordable housing research within the city.

Tenants find strength in unions but neglect in Livable City Initiative 

One of the largest steps forward in establishing protections for tenants made under the Elicker administration has been the formal recognition of tenant unions. Last September, Elicker signed an ordinance defining tenant unions and establishing a process through which tenant unions can collectively complain to the city’s Fair Rent Commission. 

Since the ordinance was passed, three tenants unions have formed in New Haven: the first at 311 Blake St., and others at 1275 Quinnipiac Ave and 1476 Chapel St. Last week, mega-landlord Ocean Management agreed to negotiate with members of Blake Street Tenants Union, marking the first time in Connecticut that a landlord has recognized and agreed to collectively bargain with a union. 

“When I signed into law the first state of Connecticut tenants union ordinance, I didn’t know quite how powerful it would be,” Elicker said in a speech Wednesday, Aug. 30, at a march the Blake Street Tenants Union organized to protest alleged retaliation by Ocean. 

Luke Melonakos-Harrison DIV ’23, vice president of Connecticut Tenants Union, told the News he saw the tenants union ordinance as an important first step toward further protections for tenant organizing. 

“Every time a tenants union has filed, the administration has been very celebratory and receptive. And we appreciate that,” he said. “We’re proud that New Haven is leading Connecticut when it comes to unions.”

However, Melonakos-Harrison pointed to the Liveable City Initiative as a place where the Elicker administration has failed in properly protecting tenants. LCI is a city agency created to enforce living standards in rental units. 

LCI has been plagued by delays and unresolved complaints, with tenants living in hazardous conditions, left waiting weeks and months without receiving support from the city. 

“LCI must be reformed. It must be better staffed. It must be more transparent to tenants,” Melonakos-Harrison said. “Tenants have to have better access to information about their own housing conditions and need to be given more tools to hold their landlords accountable and be protected from retaliation.”

In April, Melonakos-Harrison, along with two other tenants living in Ocean Management-owned units, published an opinion piece in the New Haven Independent detailing what they see as the chronic underfunding of LCI. 

In a conversation with the News, DuBois-Walton agreed that LCI lacks the staffing and resources to effectively ensure that landlords comply with city housing standards.  

“To expect that [LCI is] going to be able to do the level of inspection and housing code work… with the number of units that are in this market, with the staffing they have is very unrealistic,” she said.

There are currently twelve full-time LCI inspectors, who are responsible for close to 36,000 rental units across the city. 

Elicker argued that those twelve inspectors are supported by officials in other departments, such as lead inspectors from the Health Department and Fair Rent Commission staff who inspect units. However, Elicker added that he plans to allocate “additional inspectors and funding” to LCI in the budget for the upcoming fiscal year. 

The mayor also hinted at future reforms for LCI in a conversation hosted by the Yale Law Democrats on Thursday night, saying the city is looking to “potentially restructure LCI,” but that no plans have been finalized. 

Officials evict tent cities; administration looks for shelter alternatives

Elicker faced fierce criticism from activists and community leaders for the forceful removal of two tent encampments within the past six months where unhoused people were living. 

In March, Elicker ordered the New Haven Police Department to forcefully evict the West River tent city. In August, another long-standing encampment under a Lamberton Street bridge was bulldozed. Elicker told the News that the second eviction was initiated by the state’s Department of Transportation, who owns the land.  

Elicker argued that the city only intervenes when the living conditions in camps become dangerous — as he said he believes was the case with the West River camp. Back in March, city inspectors repeatedly found signs of burn pits, trash and construction of a permanent shower, all of which are not allowed on the public land. At the Lamberton Street camp, some tenants were located dangerously close to a railroad, Elicker said. 

“We very actively, with outreach workers and with our nonprofit partners, engaged with the people that were on site [in tent cities] … to try to find alternatives,” Elicker told the News.

Mark Colville, a local activist and member of the unhoused activist team U-ACT, strongly condemned the Mayor’s administration for evicting unhoused people without providing adequate alternative housing. Colville runs the Rosette Street Project, where he hosts unhoused people living in tents in his backyard.

According to Colville, after the most recent eviction of the Lambert Street Bridge encampment, fifteen to twenty people who were evicted showed up to the Rosette Street Project seeking shelter. 

“[Elicker] won’t talk about the atrocity of evicting people and not having any legally-sanctioned place for a person to be who has been excluded from the housing economy,” Colville told the News. 

Another challenge the unhoused community in New Haven faces is a lack of shelter beds. In New Haven, there are five permanent shelters, providing a total of 227 beds and 37 family rooms. The city also operates seasonal shelters and warming centers providing 105 additional beds. 

For some unhoused people, staying in a shelter is not an option, according to DuBois-Walton. She told the News that until recently, the city’s shelter system followed a “one-size-fits-all” model, sorting unhoused people into temporary homes solely based on factors like gender or whether they have children. 

In shelters, some married couples cannot stay together, unhoused people cannot keep their pets and the strict curfew prevents some people from working. DuBois-Walton explained that for others, living in shelters with strict regulations and without much privacy can be a re-traumatizing experience. 

“People don’t want to use the shelters; that’s why they’re camping out,” DuBois-Walton said, explaining why some choose to stay on public land. “Or they can’t behave according to the criminal justice model that a shelter is run by.”

To address some of the factors that DuBois-Walton said cause people to avoid shelters, Elicker has proposed the city reallocate $5 million of ARPA money to purchase the Days Inn hotel on Foxon Boulevard. The administration hopes to turn the building into a hotel-style emergency housing that would provide additional 56 rooms, or 112 beds, to shelter unhoused individuals and provide them with flexibility and privacy. The purchase still needs to be approved by the Board of Alders. 

Homelessness in Connecticut rose for the second year in a row in 2023 — increasing by roughly 3 percent.

Correction 9/11: A previous version of this article incorrectly attributed the creation of the Below-Market Rental registry to the Affordable Housing Commission and also has been updated to include more information about the CASTLE program budget and Elicker’s plans to further change the ADU ordinance in the city.

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