New Haven Encampment Coverage

by Jabez Choi, Oct. 17, New Haven Independent

[T]he Unhoused Activists Community Team’s (U-ACT) latest encampment… [was comprised of] 25 tents right behind the United Church on the Green in protest of encampment sweeps, as well as to advocate for an allotment of land for unhoused people to take refuge.

This encampment comes four months after the last one-night encampment on the Green at the end of June, in which U ACT set up some 20 tents in protest of the exact same conditions… Earlier in the night, before the encampment was erected, Mayor Justin Elicker attended the Hill South Community Management Team meeting… to discuss homelessness and open-air drug use. There, Elicker listed off the city’s recent attempts to address the homelessness issue with the opening of another shelter next month on 645 Grand Avenue. This comes after the city’s purchase and conversion of a 55-room hotel on Foxon Boulevard into a shelter, with rooms large enough to accommodate those with partners.

He also highlighted the efforts of the non-cop crisis response team COMPASS and a new outreach effort of navigators with the health department who will work with those in the community and offer them resources for those struggling with substance abuse.

Alongside UACT, the current encampment is a collaboration between CT Dissenters, Jewish Voice for Peace New Haven, Yale Hunger and Homelessness Action Project, Yale Endowment Justice Coalition, The People’s Clinic, Party for Socialism and Liberation, and Rosette Neighborhood Village… [T]ents that had stood overnight on the Upper Green came down on Thursday morning… U ACT decided to tear down those tents as of 11 a.m. Thursday, with the intention of setting camp back up later in the day…

No arrests were made, though top cop Lt. Brendan Borer confirmed for the Independent that the tents had to go…

City homeless outreach workers were also on the scene, including city homelessness services director Velma George, who went tent by tent offering support — including referrals to nearby homeless shelters…

Thursday morning, city workers and unhoused activists argued about next steps. The former cited city ordinances

that barred tents from remaining on the Green, encouraging the campers to work with social workers and be sent off to shelters for the night. The latter aimed to stay until the city promised to allot a plot of land for unhoused individuals to remain without threat of arrest, alongside the end of encampment sweeps….

“We have now created a community here that is safe, where people are coming out from sleeping on the cement over at Union Station,” U ACT organizer Billy Bromage said. “Now they’re safe and together. And I don’t see what’s the problem.”

Read the articles in entirety at https://tinyurl.com/3946hrmv.

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