Laura Ospina, Contributing Photographer

Sally Noel has been homeless for over a month, resting her head between Union Station and the New Haven Green. Her status as a homeless transgender woman has drawn frequent transphobic threats and harassment, she said. 

But when she was approached by local housing activists about a community encampment on the Green last week, she finally knew someone had her back. 

“One of the most beautiful things and the moment that I knew that these people had my best interest in mind was when I was walking with some of the folks who were headed to the Green, and I said, ‘Are we taking the Union Station shuttle?’ They said, ‘No, we’re driving together,’” Noel said.

Support has been at the forefront of the encampment erected by the Unhoused Activist Community Team, or U-ACT, on Wednesday night. Members of New Haven’s unhoused community slept in 25 tents on the Green that night — before New Haven police told them to take the tents down Thursday morning. 

With community members now sleeping on the ground, the encampment plans to remain throughout the winter or until the city offers a different plot of land for the homeless population to occupy. 

The encampment stands both in protest of previous police sweeps of unhoused encampments and to serve homeless New Haveners who find their needs unmet by the shelter system, organizers and participants told the News. “

The theme of this whole campaign is ‘Where then shall we go?’” Mark Colville, the lead organizer of U-ACT, said. “I know it’s a sort of a rhetorical and biblical question, but we’re asking it in a very practical way because people are being evicted every night, and, in the case of the train station, people are literally being placed on the sidewalk.”

After setting up the tents Wednesday, U-ACT organizers gathered people sleeping at Union Station or around downtown and invited them to the encampment on the Green. 

All 25 tents were full within 45 minutes, according to Colville.  On Thursday morning, New Haven police officers asked the group to remove their tents, citing a city ordinance that bars tents from the Green. Although taking down the tents was a setback, Colville said, the group decided to comply with the order to maintain a claim over the space, instead of risking forceful removal. The encampment has remained on the Green since, relying on tarps, blankets and sleeping bags. 

Alexis Terry, a student at Gateway Community College and a two-year member of U-ACT, explained that the encampment is focusing on making decisions and communicating to the city as a collective, which is why the decision to take down the tents was made after a group discussion.  Terry said that the encampment serves to loop unhoused residents who are under the radar into a community and a network of services, as well as to share their stories and learn from one another. 

On Thursday night, guitar melodies wafted through the encampment as organizers handed out long socks, hand warmers and toilet paper to those who approached the supplies table. Organizers — many of whom have been homeless themselves — offer two meals a day and all-night security to encampment participants.

Michael Cutler, who has experienced homelessness several times, said that he usually errs away from sleeping on the Green, citing dangerous conditions. But he said due to the “wonderful people” at the encampment, he felt secure enough to sleep on the Green Thursday night.

Officials from New Haven’s Office of Housing and Homelessness Services approached the encampment Thursday morning along with the police, offering people beds at one of New Haven’s homeless shelters. Mayor Justin Elicker told the News that 10 people accepted the city’s offer. 

However, some individuals participating in the encampment do not view shelters as an adequate solution to homelessness. Shelters often separate couples or families and tend to offer beds on a temporary basis. Terry also criticized the conditions of some of the shelters and explained that some people are not well-suited to living in shelters due to various mental health statuses. U-ACT organizers called on the city to move away from the shelter system as a catch-all and towards a public plot of land for New Haven’s unhoused community. 

Mary Fitzgerald, who has been homeless since April 2023, said she hopes to use her master’s in psychology, her professional background in social services and her experience being unhoused to positively impact the community in the future. She plans on writing a book about her experiences or starting a nonprofit.

According to Fitzgerald, the best way to support the unhoused community would be to increase dialogue between the homeless population and city politicians. “A lot of us know what we have to do,” Fitzgerald said. “We have to contact 211, we have to get an assessment, we need to work with the case [manager], we need to find employment, get sober, maybe go to therapy, things like that, but having the opportunity to do that and the resources available are another thing.” “Most people don’t want to be dependent,” Fitzgerald added. 

Colville explained that for homeless individuals to access city services, they have to approach them from a position of helplessness, which can feel dehumanizing, and that these services strip people of their independence, privacy and agency.  He added that to really help unhoused people, the city should really be focusing on creating affordable housing, rather than trying to “manage people’s lives.” ​​

“Homeless people are human. I don’t care if they’re addicts or mentally ill, they’re still human,” Cutler said. “We need more resources. We don’t need more luxury apartments that no one can afford.”

Elicker felt some of the accusations against New Haven were unfair. He said that New Haven has done more to support unhoused people “than any other city in Connecticut,” citing the city’s purchase of a Days Inn that was transformed into a shelter and the Elm City COMPASS program, which connects individuals struggling with mental health or substance abuse to social workers and recovery specialists. 

The encampment has been supported by various groups from Yale and from around Connecticut, including Connecticut Dissenters, Jewish Voice for Peace New Haven, Yale Hunger and Homelessness Action Project and Yale Endowment Justice Collective.

These groups have asked their members to show up to the Green in solidarity with the encampment or to donate supplies like blankets, warm clothes and hand warmers. U-ACT and partner groups also called for Palestinian solidarity, freedom and a ceasefire to the war in Gaza, Colville said.

Germs Hancock, an organizer with CT Dissenters, said that a secondary demand of the encampment is for Yale to divest from war and reinvest in New Haven. 

“We’ve partnered with [other groups], recognizing the same oppression as the source of our two movements, or the response of our two movements, which is the denial of personhood as a means to the denial of land,” Colville said. “It’s a common oppression that both unhoused people in New Haven and, of course, Palestinian people in Palestine are experiencing.”

City Hall overlooks the New Haven Green, which is located at 250 Temple St.