Yale Daily News

A homeless encampment at a New Haven-area park was abandoned by its residents — not evacuated by police — New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker told the News. His account clashes with that given by leaders of the Yale orientation program FOCUS on New Haven, which cleared the encampment under the supervision of city officials over a month ago. 

On Aug. 24, members of Yale’s FOCUS first year orientation program traveled to West River Memorial Park, where employees in New Haven’s Parks and Public Works Department directed them to clear a homeless encampment of clothing, tents and other items left there by former residents. 

A previous statement released by program leaders claimed that the encampment’s former residents were “forcibly evacuated” by New Haven police. City officials, however, have contended that the encampment was abandoned long prior to the cleanup, with Elicker defending the city’s treatment of people experiencing homelessness. 

Nevertheless, advocates for New Haven’s homeless community have raised concerns with the critical attitude toward encampments that some allege city policies have historically reinforced. 

“People who are homeless are living on the precipice of sort of life and death in a way,” said Mark Colville, a longtime community activist for the rights of homeless people in New Haven. “Your possessions become, in some ways, an anchor for you.”

FOCUS

One of the University’s five “Camp Yale” orientation programs for incoming first-year students, FOCUS leads participants on community service projects throughout the city. Directors of the program, whose volunteers helped to clean up the West River site at the behest of city officials, said that the “violence” they participated in was “antithetical” to the program’s values. 

FOCUS leaders did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this article.

Peter Davis, who supervised the project as a volunteer with Parks and Public Works and has been homeless in the past, told the News that he was certain the site was abandoned, saying he had visited the area multiple times. He claimed that his work regularly involves scouting out sites full of litter in need of cleaning. 

“There were two spots, and both spots were littered with debris, and it was an abandoned homeless encampment,” Davis said. “I find out by going to these areas three times a week … I discovered the area needed to be cleaned up. When I was told that we could have some students from Yale to help out, I decided that would be a good spot.”

Davis acknowledged that New Haven police had been at West River earlier in the week, but said he was unsure of why. 

While FOCUS leaders previously stated that this year’s partnership with the Parks and Public Works Department was new, Davis told the News that the program had partnered with the department numerous times over the past three decades. 

Elicker said he believes FOCUS leaders mistook the West River Memorial Park encampment for a different encampment on state property which he said had previously been cleared by state workers. 

“The other part of this story conflated state property and a separate encampment removal that the state initiated,” Elicker said. “And they did so in a way that apparently was quite different than how we would have done.”

Elicker told the News that the site cleared by the FOCUS group was located farther down the river, in neighboring West Haven. Following the incident, he told the News he spoke with city staff and the supervisor of the FOCUS site and determined that no one still lived in that area. 

According to Elicker, FOCUS participants and the Department of Public Works played no part in discarding the items of homeless people actively living at the site.

“They were removing materials that were dirty, old and clearly not used,” Elicker added. “During the experience, they talked with the Yale students, they had a break with them, and no student raised to them any concerns whatsoever.”

Elicker said that the city of New Haven, “more than any municipality in Connecticut,” puts resources toward supporting the homeless and ending homelessness.

New Haven’s clean-up policies 

Elicker said the city has “an understanding” that when encampments are clean and free of violence, not posing a disruption to any neighbors, there is no need for removal. 

The city chooses to clear out tent cities when they fall onto private property or there are public health and safety concerns, said Mehul Dalal, a city Community Services administrator. When this happens, the city posts a 72-hour notice for residents to evacuate, which most homeless people observe, according to Dalal. When people choose to remain, the police are called for “assistance in getting folks along” as a last resort. Still, he claimed that arrests are rare. 

Colville pointed to this statement as a sign that homelessness is criminalized in New Haven.

“It indicates that there’s this standing illegality about the reality of being homeless,” Colville said. “So, by the mercy of the cops, they’re saying, ‘we rarely arrest people.’ That statement is made with an assumption that they have every right to arrest people for doing what is their human right when the state doesn’t provide people with housing.”

Nonetheless, Dalal maintained that the city approaches the issues homeless people face through collaborations between departments and with nonprofits. For example, a Homeless Outreach Task Force involves representatives from the Local Cities Initiative, the New Haven Police Department, Public Works, library services and other partners, meeting monthly to discuss the health and safety needs of the homeless. 

The city also has a Department of Community Resilience, which collaborates with local nonprofits to address “complaints” by homeless people on a case-by-case basis, connecting them with resources. New Haven’s budget allocates over a million dollars toward homelessness services.

Elicker said that through these partnerships and task forces, the city engages with homeless people to find “alternative solutions” when they must leave a tent city. While Elicker said that the city tries to help these homeless people keep their property during evacuations, although Colville recalled instances where people had been “roughly” evicted. 

Encampments’ importance

Alexis Terry, who used to be homeless, told the News that living in homeless encampments can be “the better choice” compared to living in homeless shelters. Still, she said she’s witnessed evictions from tent cities and seen volunteers and other groups throw residents’ items away, attributing these practices to the city and police. 

Colville noted the importance of tent cities as “transitional housing.” He explained that many people are not completely ready for life in apartments or public housing after long periods of surviving while homeless. Tent cities, however, can allow these people to get used to social settings and develop trust with neighbors.

At a Wednesday morning meeting of homelessness activists at the Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen, Colville and others — including people who are currently and formerly homeless — discussed the city’s treatment of the homeless, the pressing needs of homeless people and their goals moving forward. 

They called upon the city government to codify homeless peoples’ rights to privacy, pointing to the state’s Homeless Bill of Rights. 

Colville told the News that homeless people must play a role in facilitating tent city evacuations, adding that they should be able to publicize the eviction process. He speculated that public pressure would encourage the city to “get a handle on” the notification and monitoring system when people must leave tent cities.

“When they go to evict people, homeless people should have the option to make it public, so that other people can see what the experience is of being evicted from your home,” Colville said. “Let’s not do these things in secret, because if the public knows what’s happening, then the public might have an opinion on how it should be done — or if it should be done at all.”

A new tent has gone up at the site cleaned by the FOCUS group in the month since the incident.