Hannah Qu

The Hill is a neighborhood that lies just below downtown New Haven, nestled in the southwesternmost corner of the city. According to Connecticut Neighborhood Profiles, it has a 39 percent poverty rate and 64 percent low-income rate, the highest in New Haven: among the 15,069 residents, 5,924 are in poverty and 9,701 in the low-income population. 

The Hill recently appeared in the news when Newhallville protesters opposed an APT methadone clinic relocation to the neighborhood by referring to the clinic’s negative influence on the Hill. But the tension between nonprofit organizations and the Hill neighborhood cannot simply be characterized by the “Not in My Backyard,” or NIMBY, phenomenon. It is an interplay between residents’ frustration and aggressive service work. Hill residents who spoke to the News resisted the notion that their already struggling neighborhood has to care for the Greater New Haven area’s vulnerable groups. But nonprofit organizations said they strive to provide vital services while controlling for the danger and despair that homeless and vulnerable people live through every day. 

When I asked Jose DeJesus, treasurer of the Hill North Management Team, to comment on the APT methadone clinic’s influence on the Hill, he was frustrated that people would assume the Hill should be the host of the methadone clinic just because it has an ongoing history of drug trafficking. “I don’t think you understand,” he said. “You’re being misled that you think the opioid problem is a Black or Brown problem, and the Hill Section in New Haven is mostly a Black and Brown neighborhood.” 

“But I’m going to tell you the opioid problem [is] in all races, and it’s hard in the suburbs,” DeJesus went on. “Most of these people that you see milling around Congress Avenue don’t even live in New Haven. This APT Foundation is a regional methadone clinic, so it calls people from the whole county of New Haven, and that’s the problem.” 

The real problem, according to DeJesus, is that the Hill is too crowded with nonprofit, regional organizations. 

Residents: We are A Dumping Ground for the City

According to residents who spoke to the News, the Hill is absorbing statewide suffering.

7,695 people across the state died of an overdose between 2012 to 2020. Fatal overdoses in the New Haven area increased by 40 percent between 2019 and 2020, reaching a record high. 

Connecticut residents are also losing their homes. As of January 2020, Connecticut had an estimated 2,905 people experiencing homelessness on any given day. Of that total, 306 were family households, 199 were veterans, 148 were unaccompanied young adults aged 18-24 and 177 were individuals experiencing chronic homelessness. 

Right now, the Hill has 18 non-profit organizations that deal with homelessness, substance abuse, domestic violence, displaced veterans and other issues. The APT Foundation provides substance abuse treatment and moved into the Hill around 2000. New Reach works to end homelessness in Connecticut and has partnered with the Hill management team for almost 30 years. Columbus House, which also provides homeless people with shelter and housing, has been in the Hill since 1982. 

These organizations are on the front lines in the battle against homelessness and the opioid crisis; however, according to residents, they are also the least popular organizations in the Hill. People in the neighborhood said they do recognize the need for these services. But some allege that the organizations put in the neighborhood to help people are hurting the area at the same time. 

Outside methadone clinics there are often open-air drug markets. Drug dealers tail methadone clinics and rehabs to find their target customers: people with drug addiction problems. 

Similarly, disadvantaged groups, including homeless people, are especially vulnerable to substance abuse and violence. According to the National Coalition for the Homeless, 38 percent of homeless people are alcohol dependent, and 26 percent are dependent on other harmful substances. Residents who spoke to the News said they understand that clinics and shelters themselves are not the problem, but they are concerned with the exposure to those unwanted elements that are introduced to the neighborhood.

DeJesus stressed that the APT Foundation does a great job with treatment. However, he said he was frustrated about the secondary problems brought by the clinic. “You have problems with people loitering, you have drug dealing, drug use, you have dirty needles around the school, you have fights, you have stabbings, you have shootings,” he said. “And all of this is attributed to the crowd of folks that are not necessarily APT foundation patients, but they run in those same circles.” 

To Angela Hatley, who is also on the Hill Management Team, the Hill is a “dumping ground” for the city. Around 30 years ago, after her service in the army ended, Hatley returned to the Hill where she was born and raised. Working at two different jobs from Monday to Saturday to make ends meet, Hatley didn’t really know what was going on around her. But quickly, she said, the impact of the APT Foundation and Columbus House has become impossible to ignore. A couple of years ago, a seemingly-high woman who came to the methadone clinic collapsed on the ground against the fence, which was three doors away from Hatley’s house. Hatley was concerned that the woman might have been raped when she started to remove her clothes, so she called the police. 

The woman’s presence near Hatley’s house was not necessarily a direct result of the APT clinic. But Hatley said it is possible that her afflicted state was related to the drug dealers hanging out around the clinic or the clinic’s policy: methadone is provided to people even if they are still on drugs. 

The clinic adopts this policy because this will ensure no one will be excluded from access to medical assistance. However, this also means that a certain percentage of the clients coming to seek the services are still suffering from their addiction. 

Hatley’s mom lives half a block away from Columbus House, across a park. Hatley said that as the shelter only opens at night, its clients usually sit in the park all day and “monitor people’s comings and goings and know when the house will be vacant.” She remembered that one day her mom came home from work only to see someone break into her house. The intruder fled to the Columbus House, and the police weren’t able to go into the shelter for sanctuary reasons. 

Now retired, Hatley said she simply wants to feel safe and know that she can come in and out of her house without an issue. 

Hatley’s friend Roni Elliott, who has lived in the Hill for 52 years, echoed her sentiments. Columbus House left Elliott with the impression of an overflowing station that was often surrounded by people waiting to enter.

Kellyann Day, the CEO of New Reach, disagreed with the idea that homeless people are bringing trouble to the neighborhood. Day argued that just because someone is homeless doesn’t mean they are dangerous. 

“I can say that none of our folks have been involved in any of that [gun violence] that I’m aware of,” she said. “I don’t hear from my staff and my colleagues that the people they are serving are bringing any more danger level than other people in the city to neighborhoods.”

Day said that the Hill site of her organization cares for young people.

“Imagine living in a building with seven other homeless youths, and knowing that the neighborhood doesn’t like you and doesn’t want you there,” Day said.

But besides worrying about their safety, the residents also take issue with the lack of communication from the organizations.

Elliott had no problem with New Reach when they only hosted women and children, but she was concerned when they changed their policy and began offering permanent housing for 18 to 24-year-olds. She claimed this shift came without any consultation or even informing the community.

In response to Elliott’s complaint that New Reach didn’t notify residents ahead of time about the young adult permanent housing program, Day said that the organization did have an open house, in which they invited Alders and any interested neighbors to tour the building and offer their opinions on New Reach policy before making any changes.

While trying to work out those problems with the organizations, residents proposed to me a more fundamental question that they said has always been hovering over their heads: why the Hill? Why are those organizations always located in the Hill? Why is the Hill home to a disproportionate amount of the city’s nonprofits? Why does the Hill need to bear the brunt of responsibilities — and their unforeseen consequences — for the Greater New Haven area?

“The neighborhood will be better if other cities and towns in Connecticut would put a methadone clinic in their town,” DeJesus said. “We’re not anti-treatment, we want more treatment. And we need more treatment in the areas where these people live, so they don’t have to commute to Congress Avenue. New Haven doesn’t need more of those programs. You know who needs those programs? Branford, Guilford, Madison, North Branford, Cheshire, Woodbridge.”

Nonprofits: Vital services are needed

The APT Foundation serves about 8,000 individuals across its five clinics around New Haven, according to Lynn Madden, the CEO of the APT Foundation. It offers patients treatment regardless of their ability to pay, and for individuals who need intensive support to help stabilize their lives, they can choose to be visited three days per week and attend a minimum of nine hours of group sessions, individual sessions and psychiatric consults. In addition, it has also offered vocational services to help people facing substance use disorders and mental health issues overcome barriers to employment. 

New Reach served 3686 people in 2020, 56 percent of whom are children. Additionally, 98 percent of served households were able to avoid eviction through the organization’s Stable Families Program. New Reach helped 73 percent of households move to long-term housing from their shelters, and 90 percent of households were diverted from shelters. 

Across its different sites within the Greater New Haven and Middletown area, Columbus House’s Housing Service program serves over 150 people who are living in apartment buildings and duplexes dedicated specifically for supportive housing and 250 people in individual apartments owned by private landlords, for which the client receives a state or federal housing voucher. Through the Shelter Service program, Columbus House provides beds, meals and case management for 81 adult men and women nightly at their New Haven Shelter.  

“I think people who use drugs and have a diagnosed drug use disorder deserve our empathy,” Madden said. “They have developed a chronic illness that bonds to medical treatment that’s difficult to access.” 

I asked officials from the APT, New Reach and Columbus House how their organizations have communicated and collaborated with the neighborhood, and if and how they have made an effort to ensure the safety of the neighborhood while providing services. 

“We want to be responsible and good neighbors, and we want to respect the people that live there.” Alison Cunningham DIV ’84, who served as CEO of Columbus House for 21 years, said. Cunningham told me that the organization hired a security guard to monitor the shelter from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., which she said helped reduce crime across the neighborhood. 

Day also said that she understands residents’ wariness toward the youth in the shelter being in their neighborhood, so New Reach has security on-site 24/7.

Madden said that since 2018, APT Foundation has been paying for an off-duty New Haven police officer to be stationed outside of its primary methadone dispensary at the clinic in the Hill from 7:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Monday through Friday. In addition, the APT also changed its hours of operation to decongest the area when school buses and other pedestrians may be frequenting the area next to the clinic. 

The NHPD Hill North and Hill South District Manager Justin Marshall wrote in an email to the News that in his time leading the neighborhood he has “developed a great relationship” with Kathy Eggart, director of the APT Foundation. “I understand that she is trying to help people with substance abuse problems and she is doing everything in her power to get those people the help they need,” Marshall added.

Both Hatley and DeJesus said that they knew the APT Foundation was trying to help, but that it couldn’t solve all the problems. “The clinic has been trying to be a better community neighbor,” DeJesus said, “but they cannot control people and the problems that type of environment brings.” For example, the presence of police in front of the clinic only pushed illegal activities to the peripheral streets. “If you go around the corner,” Hatley said, “then you’ve got the same stuff happening.”

The APT, New Reach and Columbus House all maintain that they regularly attend meetings with the Hill Management Team and try to address any concerns that may arise. Hatley agreed, but she said the meeting felt more like “they make you feel good by getting things off your chest,” and nothing’s really changed. 

Hatley claimed that when she and other community members have brought their concerns to nonprofits like New Reach, they have been met with an “arrogant” attitude. 

“It’s like if they tell us about their whole background, we’ll change our mind and let them come in. They were busy, you know, peppering us.” Hatley said. 

Columbus House was founded as an emergency shelter at Columbus Avenue, which is located in the heart of the Hill, in 1982. The local Catholic Church, its landlord, refused to renew its lease in 2001 and forced Columbus House to move its primary emergency shelter to Boulevard with three housing sites remaining at Hill. Elliott said that they “cleared out the area” at Hill. 

Cunningham said that Columbus House had decided not to move into some neighborhoods because of the fierce community backlash. However, she also had experiences where staunch opposition to a Columbus House location gave way to acceptance as the neighborhood and the shelter developed trust and communication.

In response to the community’s demand to open nonprofits in other areas, the three organizations all said that though they would like to expand accessibility, it would not be in their best interest to allocate funds to building new sites and hiring new staffers rather than supporting their clients, they said. 

Giovanni Alicea is a client at Columbus House. But for four months in 2021, Alicea was in the homeless shelter system waiting for a spot. During that time on Dec. 17, a man walked up to him and asked for a lighter when he was sitting on his friend’s porch and stabbed him twice in the right eye. Six days later, Alicea was assigned to Columbus House. He appreciated being there. “They help you with everything,” he said. However, Alicea also said that “not everyone there deserves the service.”

According to Alicea, Columbus House prohibits smoking, drinking and drug use. However, the region’s shelter policy prioritizes those who are most at risk, which often includes people suffering from addiction. The system also does not require any document regarding one’s criminal record for the sake of protecting privacy and preventing discrimination. Alicea said that he believes that those who violate the shelter’s bans do not deserve a spot in Columbus House.

“I don’t want to go to bed next to somebody that’s an alcoholic and drug addict,” Alicea said. 

Hill History: Pain from the old wound

On Feb. 5, Howard Boyd, the Hill North Community Management Team Chair, said in a protest against the APT Foundation that “our kids have enough stuff in their minds, enough trauma.” 

Dr. Robert M. Lattanzi, who was raised in the Hill, recorded the city’s history in his book “Oyster Village to Melting Pot: The Hill Section of New Haven.” His book traced back the different factors that influenced Hill: racism, industrial revolution, Great Depression, World War II, post-war redevelopment and city renewal. 

Peter Crumlish, executive director and general secretary of Dwight Hall, Yale’s student-led center for public service and social justice, said that there is a lot of history and complexity behind the paradox of service organizations and neighborhood resistance. 

New Haven experienced its economic peak at the early 20th century, Crumlish explained. Industry was booming, and immigrants flowed into the city with the dream of flourishing. But the increasingly overcrowded city dropped in population and economic vitality as the middle class fled to the suburbs. 

After World War II, industry in the States started moving out of old, traditional port cities like New Haven, thus taking away a large portion of their economies. By the 1950s, New Haven was struggling with its unbalanced demographic: it had a large, poor population, a small traditional elite  — Yale — and an even smaller middle class, Crumlish said.

On Feb. 1, 1954, Mayor Richard Lee, who had been in office 31 days, said his first goal was redevelopment. He initiated the biggest city renewal program in the New England area at the time: $57.41 million came to 12 of New Haven’s neighborhoods. He launched one, the 714 Hill Project, with the vision of schools, business relocation and affordable housing for families. 

New Haven became the nation’s star city, Lattanzi wrote. Photos of the New Haven skyline appeared in national magazines and newspapers, and city planners from across the country visited the Elm City to study its successful renewal plan. Lattanzi remembered this time as one filled with headlines like “An Awakened New Haven Builds Towards Its Future” and “The American people do not believe in slums.” For a moment, it was the spring of hope.

But then the city was outrun by its ambition. Crumlish described the renewal plan as “a fairly aggressive kind of surgery.” The city tried to replicate the benefits of the suburbs. Countless buildings and homes were torn down to accommodate for changes such as widened, car-friendly roads.

Neighborhoods that had been filled with poor working-class people were completely gutted. The Hill was one of these neighborhoods. The Hill’s population dropped from approximately 34,000 in 1947 to 17,000 in 1980, losing half its residents in 33 years. Lattanzi memorialized the outcry from the Hill’s residents. 

Lattanzi wrote that “On the Hill the changes were dramatic…before the plan was initiated, someone in the city hall should have asked “What do we do with the residents of the Hill…We buy their homes and raze them long before we have any place to relocate them. Then we wonder why they move elsewhere.”

Approximately 250 retail businesses were lost in a decade. Grocery stores, automobile repair shops, restaurants … These basic businesses for a functional neighborhood either went out of business or lost their base and had to move. “Eventually almost the whole Hill Section fell victim to vandalism and decay. Landlords became unsure of the future and began to neglect their properties. Worse, they moved away, becoming absentee landlords. Blight set in!” Lattanzi wrote.

But the Hill lived on beyond the pages of Lattanzi’s book. 

Amidst the white middle class making their exodus, a Black woman, Dora Brown, moved into the Hill in 1966. She witnessed the neighborhood deteriorate and the rise of drug use and gun violence. During the 1980s, Brown said, “there was a young fellow who set up a drug-selling ring right across the street from me, day and night, they were there to three o’clock in the morning selling drugs … it took over a year for the police to shut it down.” 

Drug trafficking became a norm on the Hill during the 1980s. Ray Boyd, who was born and raised in the Hill, told me that he started selling drugs when he was twelve and was charged with the crime of murder at the age of seventeen.

“I went through a very bad time,” Brown remembered. “At the time, I also had taken on a second job, and you come home and you see your neighborhood going down. I had to clean up every morning from where they had been out there. They just [throw] trash from the street…they would just throw their coke cans and trash in my yard…You have so many people like that living here who don’t give a care about anything.”

In his book “The Model Inmate,” Boyd discussed the Jungle Boys, a former New Haven gang with which he was associated. The Jungle Boys, who formed in 1984, had virtually taken over a housing complex and intimidated the local neighborhood residents and businesses for more than five years.

The tectonics of history transformed the Hill into a traumatized neighborhood, according to Lattanzi’s book.

“We have enough headaches as it is,” Hatley said. “We don’t need the region’s headaches on top of it.” 

Numerous nonprofits moved into the Hill for its proximity to Yale New Haven Hospital and its zoning. According to Crumlish and Hatley, more affluent neighborhoods have found ways to protect themselves from nonprofits and their clients, while the Hill is taken for granted to be the “dumping ground for anything that’s detrimental to any other section of the city.” 

It’s a long history of “vicious circles,” Crumlish said. The neighborhood is trying to pull itself together while resisting organizations trying to pull up the region’s needy as well. It is asking other neighborhoods, other cities, to contribute without placing the onus on a neighborhood that is already struggling. 

“I also have a right to live a good life without fear and always looking over my shoulder,” Brown said. “There needs to be some overall discussions with all these other neighborhoods in this area about bearing responsibility.” 

Coexistence: A Privilege to be Welcomed here

So is it possible for the nonprofits and the Hill residents to coexist?

Alan Plattus, the current director of the Yale Urban Design Workshop and Center for Urban Design Research; Douglas W. Rae, professor of organization and management; and Crumlish said yes.

“The first thing you do is that you make sure that local folks are at the table from the beginning,” Plattus said. 

Plattus added that part of the conflict arises when the local residents feel disrespected or ignored by organizations; therefore, organizations should have representation from the community and timely communication throughout their decision processes. Rae concurred, noting that organizations could conduct a thorough survey of neighborhood concerns.

Another way forward is either requiring nonprofit employees to live in the Hill or hiring existing residents to work in the nonprofits themselves, Crumlish and Plattus said.

Crumlish said it is important to factor the Hill’s needs into any decisions about the neighborhood. For example, Crumlish cited an organization called Amistad Catholic Worker in the Hill that seems to have a different dynamic with the Hill residents than the APT, New Reach or Columbus House. A Catholic couple, Mark Colville and Luz Catarineau-Colville, run ACW and unlike CEOs of the other organizations, the couple lives and raises their family in the Hill and therefore have a different perspective on neighborhood concerns.

Neither Mark nor Luz were New Haven residents before they moved to the Hill in the 1980s. Mark grew up in Madison, CT, and Luz in New York City. They decided to come to the Hill to fulfill their spiritual pursuit: to seek justice for the poor and to practice works of mercy and voluntary poverty. 

They opened their home, offering daily meals, sustenance and companionship to those in need. The Catholic Worker does not live off large grants like larger nonprofits do, according to the Colvilles, but it is operated through individual donations.

Their neighbors were suspicious of a white couple moving into the Hill from wealthier areas to serve the poor. However, as the Hill residents observed the couple’s motivation and their service, the concern gradually dissipated. 

Mark said he has received few complaints from the neighborhood over the years.

“I think it’s because they see that the only way through the problems that we have in this society is to open ourselves, not close ourselves, and stop making these boundaries,” he said. To him, the trick to being a good service house and a good neighbor is physical proximity. He explained that he wants to get as close to the people he is trying to serve as possible. The closer he lives to a neighborhood that he wants to help, the more effective he feels his work is going to be. 

“We’re not susceptible to this not in my backyard attitude,” Mark said. “Because everything that we do here, we experienced the implications of it: the good, and the bad. You know, we live with it.” Mark said. This is exactly what he and Luz did — they raised six children in the Hill, all while running Catholic Worker. 

Mark is grateful for the understanding and kindness shown by his neighbors. To him “it’s a privilege to live here, a privilege to be welcomed here.” In a way, the Hill helped him to save himself. Growing up in Madison, a relatively wealthy town, Mark was afraid that he had lost sight of the real world. He came to the Hill, hoping to regain the ability to see through others’ eyes — a goal he believes he achieved. Mark now lives in a small, three-floor house with only necessary old furniture, simple food and simple clothes, but his spirit has never been richer, he expressed. 

Still, it pains him to hear people say “not in my backyard,” as it indicates that people have absorbed an individualistic culture. Mark empathized with other residents’ sentiments and urged other neighborhoods and the government to take more initiative. 

“From looking at this neighborhood, [you can see] it’s way overburdened because of the extraction of resources from here. And the never-ending imposition of pressure, problems, pollution… they’re running out of places to hide the poor, so they just keep pushing as much as they can onto already stressed environments like this. And it does create a lot of frustration,” Mark said.

Mark said he is proud of the Hill from the bottom of his heart. “I love this neighborhood,” he explained. “I love the attitude of this neighborhood. I love the way that this neighborhood takes care of people. And I don’t want to lose that.” He said it is an act of being a good and responsible neighbor when the Hill offers help, healing and comfort to the most vulnerable people across the city and even the state. 

Today, the Hill Management Team adopts a “one in one out” policy — a new organization can only join the neighborhood if another leaves. Meanwhile, the Hill residents live with the current 18 organizations, and nonprofits attend monthly meetings with the management team to discuss any rising concerns. Vulnerable people like Alicea work with nonprofit career consultants to find jobs and get their life back on track. Three interest groups maintain a delicate balance on the head of a pin, or at least, on the top of a Hill.