For days, an unidentified stench permeated Shaqwella Payne’s apartment in New Haven’s Church Street South building complex. When inspectors from New Haven’s Livable City Initiative arrived, Payne watched Rafael Ramos, the deputy director of Housing Code Enforcement, pull her fridge forward and recoil at what he found. Mold, in shades of white and black, caked the pipes inside her kitchen walls.
Payne’s apartment is one among the increasing number of units at the affordable housing complex that LCI has deemed unlivable. The apartments have cracked walls, peeling ceilings, rampant mold, and water damage from frequent flooding—they have been dilapidating for over a decade. That trajectory would have continued uninterrupted, if not for a group of residents that brought overdue attention to their rights violations. This past August, they filed legal action against the negligent private developer, Northland Investment Corporation, which has owned the property since 2007.
Now, Northland, the mayoral administration, the Housing Authority, and the City at large face the challenge of relocating all 289 families while determining the future of the site.
On Wed., Sept. 16, the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, Northland, and the City determined that all residents will be evacuated. After years of being ignored, it is, in some ways, a victory for the residents. But as they prepare to leave their crumbling homes, an uncertain future awaits them—and Church Street South.
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Church Street South sits across from the stately, Beaux-Arts train station that attracts most of the attention and traffic along Union Avenue, a stark contrast to the low-slung, concrete bunker-like structures. But long before the housing complex existed, before the collapsing ceilings, and before the high asthma rates, the land across from the gates to the city offered hope for New Haven’s
prosperous future. The city’s economic development administrator, Matt Nemerson, said, “It is part of the whole history of how New Haven thinks of itself.”
The property has figured largely in city planning for the past century. New Haven’s 1910 Civic Improvement Plan designed a grand boulevard that would occupy the valuable real estate, connecting the train station to the downtown business district. Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. (son of
the Frederick Law Olmsted who designed Central Park in New York) and Cass Gilbert, the architect behind Union Station, envisioned a beautiful plaza, but the city never executed the plan. “The city couldn’t afford politically or financially to realize such grand plans,” Yale Architecture and Urban Studies Professor Elihu Rubin, SY ’99, said.
The site still figured in the imagination of the next generation of New Haven city planners. In 1955, Mayor Richard Lee hired Yale Professor Maurice Rotival to update his 1941 city plan for New Haven, which resulted in the construction of the Oak Street Connector and the destruction of a neighborhood. Rotival originally hoped to use the Church Street Property as a commercial boulevard consisting of shopping centers, parking lots, and hotels to connect the train station
to downtown. In a 1955 letter to Lee, Rotival wrote, “Extended Church Street will become beyond question New Haven’s ‘Fifth Avenue’—the main thoroughfare along which the commercial and business life of the city will be arranged. The area in which we have been concentrating so much of our time, and which presently is depressed, will become one of the most valuable sections of the city.” Looking back, the idea that Church Street South might be to New Haven what ritzy Fifth Ave
is to New York seems distant and improbable. But the ultimate choice of housing on an inhospitable site for residency should have seemed more so.
Ironically, the population dislocation and dearth of low-income housing caused by the Oak Street Connector prevented Rotival’s dreams for the Church Street property. Nemerson said, “The city had a set of challenges because they were required to replace housing, affordable housing that was torn down.” The city’s demolition of a neighborhood, along with the burgeoning political movements of the 1960s, forced the city to abandon its plans for commercial zoning. The city hoped to restore housing as physically close to the old neighborhood as possible, which, according to Nemerson, qualified the developers for federal funds. Residents’ voices had been heard, a precursor to the impetus behind today’s action at Church Street South.
Initially, the city commissioned Mies van der Rohe, who contributed to the birth of modern architecture, to design luxury housing units in 1965. His plans, which included some middle- and low-income housing, did not come close to meeting the community’s needs. Two years later, a riot engulfed the city after a white merchant shot a Puerto Rican boy. The tide of public opinion in relation to racial and economic injustice which swelled after the riot pushed the Lee administration
to reconsider the plan. Van der Rohe walked away from the project, and the new plans, designed by Dean of the Yale School of Art and Architecture Robert Moore attempted to address the housing needs of the city’s low-income citizens.
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When Church Street South was built in 1967, city planners across the country replaced existing buildings and streetscapes with high-rise modernist structures broken up by parking lots.
Many geared the idea of the city towards suburbanite-driven cars rather than the urban pedestrian. Moore worked against that dominant mentality. “Moore was trying to do something more enlightened than the high-rise projects that were going up in New York, Chicago, everywhere,” Rubin said.
Moore worked against more than just popular urban planning policies. Interstates, freight yards, and train tracks isolate the property from the larger downtown area. “It’s not the most sympathetic site for housing,” Architectural Historian Richard Hayes said. But Moore attempted to overcome the unfortunate realities of its location through a commitment to social justice in his architectural choices.
Looking for opportunities to create community spaces despite the inhospitable location, Moore hoped to make the Church Street South property as livable as possible. Looking back at photographs taken of the development in 1968, colorful graphics adorn the gray walls and young kids ride bikes around the tree-lined property. Accommodating the buildings’ position between heavily trafficked four-lane roads, Moore oriented the housing units inward—parents could look out their windows and watch their children playing in the courtyards, instead of at the smog-filled highway and freight yards. He crisscrossed the land with wide, grassy walkways. To give the living spaces individual
identities, he divided the property up into smaller villages with names like Christopher Green, Station Court, and Malcolm Court.
El Crudup grew up at Church Street South in the late 1970s. “It’s sad because it was a beautiful place back then, and there was a lot going on for the kids,” he said. “There were block parties, there
was no violence.” He described an idyllic childhood in a family-oriented community; he played basketball, baseball, and football with his neighbors.
Moore had a wider audience than New Haven families like Crudup’s in mind as he conceived of Church Street South’s role in New Haven. “One of Moore’s ideas was to use it as an example of city building, to make it a part of the fabric of New Haven,” Hayes said. Church Street South made the architectural headlines upon its completion—magazines in France, Germany, and Japan featured it on their covers. A bold image of one of the structures against a bright blue sky filled the cover of the May 1972 edition of Progressive Architecture.
Moore’s plan foreshadowed the trend of mixed-use complexes, which gained popularity as part of the New Urbanism movement beginning in the 1990s. Moore tried to introduce commercial spaces
within the housing development—when the site opened, a laundromat, convenience store, and offices for community agencies opened with it. “He wanted to create a microcosm of the city. It was a big gesture trying to introduce commercial and small civic scale uses that would bring life,” Hayes said.
Those commercial spaces didn’t last long—today, there are no businesses at Church Street South.
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Soon, there won’t be any residents either. Mayor Toni Harp, ARC ’78, has projected that full relocation of the 289 families will take a year, with priority given to those already living in hotels
and those with serious health issues. “It’s a nightmare. Something should have been done years ago,” Mayor Harp told the Independent.
Long before Northland acquired the property in the 1990s, the complexes had deteriorated. Ward Six Alder Delores Colon, BR ’91, said, “I got here in 1989, and the apartments were in terrible condition.There was vermin, mold, and they needed serious repairs.”
El Crudup’s family moved out of Church Street South in 1982, when his sister bought a home in West Haven, but he lived there long enough to witness the complex’s decline. “The downturn came in late 80s and 90s, when you had the drugs come in. Once that infiltrated into the city, it hit the housing project hard.” The timing of the influx of drugs from New York was compounded with the passage of its ownership to increasingly disinterested developers. The community-oriented Church Street South of Crudup’s childhood transformed into a symbol of the city’s economic, racial, and social tensions.
Little has improved in the apartments since the 80s. Made evident by the recent, more thorough LCI inspections of the property, neither Northland, which acquired the buildings in 2007, nor the previous private owners, have invested in the maintenance of Church Street South. For decades, Northland has ignored the decaying property through a strategy of evasion. “Inside those apartments when I first tried to seek the votes of residents, they would talk to me,” Colon explained. “Things they would say: ‘Oh, I wish I didn’t live here, the owners are so terrible. You tell them things are broken and when they show up to your apartment they say they didn’t bring the right
tool.’ And then they never see the person again.”
When I walked down to Church Street on Sat., Sept. 12 with Colon, she seemed to know everyone we passed. “They don’t all know my name, but they do know me as ‘The Lady,’” she said.
Before I met her in the central courtyard, she had already run into Wanda, a tenant at Church Street South. Within minutes, Wanda took me into the apartment her parents have rented for 15 years. She
apologized for how dark it was inside, and pointed out the evidence of disrepair with the familiarity of a seasoned tour guide.
Her elderly father, an amputee, lives in a room with water-stained and molding walls. In the hallway, her family has patched a gaping hole in the wall where a fan should have been. Every time someone flips on the power switch in the bathroom, an odd whirring noise starts up as the lights flicker—they do not turn on the bathroom light anymore. Many of the outlets do not work. Upstairs, fresh curtains, family photos and potted plants brighten the living room, but black spots stain the ceiling near the windows. Wanda said that they usually try to paint over the peeling walls and mold stains, but the newly involved lawyers told the tenants not to cover anything up.
The opening text on Northland Investment Corporation’s website reads, “We own and manage our properties with a focus on customer service and long-term success.” Church Street South isn’t apparent among their property listings.
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In 2007, Northland Investment Corporation acquired the site with the intention of gutting Church Street South and constructing a development that would capitalize on its valuable location. Although it was the only Department of Housing and Urban Development-subsided property in their portfolio, they recognized its advantageous location, so Northland began working with New Haven’s Livable City Initiative on developing a new complex. The City Plan Commission had already received funding from HUD to create a master plan for a mixed-use, mixed-income development to help connect the Hill neighborhood to downtown businesses. Church Street South fit nicely into that
picture. Erik Johnson, the former director of LCI, said, “It was a city issue since the building was on the verge of ending its useful life. There were housing code issues, and [issues with] dealing with the
relocation of 300 families in the largest concentration of four to five bedroom units in the city.”
Despite these difficulties, the 2013 Hill-to-Downtown Community Plan pointed to the repurposing of Church Street South as an opportunity to strengthen the neighborhood and connect it to the rest
of the city. It proposed 750 residential units, and included spaces for offices, retail, and entertainment centered around a public square—it named Church Street South “a new destination open space at the doorstep of downtown.”
Execution of that plan required cooperation and investment from Northland alongside a coordinated effort from the city—in the end, Northland decided that the financial and political risks outweighed the benefits of pursuing the project. Post-doctorate Chloe Taft, GRD ’14, who teaches “History of Housing in America” at Yale College, described the mentality of many private companies running affordable properties: “I’m a developer, not a social worker.” By letting Church Street South stand, they would avoid messy public opposition, and continue to receive an annual $3 million in rental subsidies from HUD. “They know they’re sitting on a gold-mine, and that parcel will only
increase in value,” DuBois-Walton said last April, before the current crisis peaked this month. Northland backed away from the project, and internal politics within New Haven stalled further action.
The fate of the site divided the Board of Alders and the Mayor’s office. Former LCI Director Erik Johnson said, “Mayor DeStefano wanted aggressive action. He wanted to pursue eminent domain, because he thought Northland was taking advantage of the city and its residents.” He tried to leverage his power at the federal level, pressuring HUD to revoke their funding of Northland. From HUD’s perspective, however, Church Street South was meeting the minimum criteria for safe and sanitary conditions, so they couldn’t defund the property on those grounds.
The Board of Alders opposed the Mayor’s Office, because, according to Johnson, they did not want to deal with the political consequences of displacing the people they represented. Colon explained her opposition to the plan: by only designing smaller one- and two-bedroom apartments, Northland failed to accommodate the larger families that under federal law have the “right to return.” Ultimately, inaction won out as Mayor DeStefano, lacking the financial and political capital, did not pursue eminent domain. Northland backed off, while continuing to make a profit, and the city turned its attention to other, less controversial redevelopment projects.
The lack of political will and a disassociated developer left Church Street South in the same deteriorated state for two more years, until the residents mobilized and demanded attention this past August. “There’s a level of urgency about Church Street South,” DeStefano said. “There’s the
emerging consensus that they need to come down—it’s not a fit solution for families.”
The attention these residents have attracted from the Harp administration and from HUD has, in fact, compelled some response from Northland as well. “You never saw Larry Gottesdiener [Northland’s chairman] quoted back in 2012, 2013,” DeStefano noted. “One thing you notice [now] is that Larry has been to New Haven several times. He’s made himself available. All of a sudden you see the principal being quoted. That’s different.” Although Gottesdiener couldn’t be reached for comment, he and Northland have been responsive to the city’s inspections. Residents generated the
requisite urgency, and now Northland has money to lose and and a public image to maintain.
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Church Street South’s concrete courtyards buckle and sag, uneven from years of hasty patch jobs. Clear from the physical evidence at the site, Northland has invested little of its HUD-subsidized
income stream into maintaining the property.
Northland now needs to figure out how to move mounting numbers of families out of the complex and it has the help of the city, the Housing Authority of New Haven, Legal Aid, and other property owners to try to find adequate relocation options.
Since Northland has no prior experience relocating tenants in an affordable housing market, they have been meeting with HANH for assistance. Karen DuBois-Walton, HANH’s executive director, said, “We can assist with community meetings, getting real time info to residents. Then we’ll proceed with individual assessments of each household. Our role is to help residents find safe and decent housing.” According to DuBois-Walton, HANH has successfully redeveloped 1,200 units, so it can offer the community trust that Northland lacks.
On Fri., Sept. 11, Northland requested pass-through vouchers from HUD, which would transfer Northland’s subsidy to landlords offering temporary housing for displaced residents. Those vouchers are temporary, so federal housing and city officials along with Northland need to find more permanent housing solutions. Rhonda Siciliano, HUD spokesperson said, “We haven’t seen anything like this on this scale in New England. It’s complex because of the location and the shortage of affordable housing. With a large development with 301 units, it adds to the complexity of the issues we’re facing.”
Yet vouchers do not offer a instant solution. DuBois said, “The beauty of vouchers is that you can go any place. But the reality of life is that people have constraints. There might be a beautiful four-bedroom in Cheshire, but if you’re reliant on public transportation for school and a job, you can’t
move to Cheshire.” As of Sept. 10, 13 families have been living out of hotel rooms. Finding apartments for the families that need four to five bedrooms or wheelchair access will prove a major challenge, requiring a city-wide effort. “The mayor’s primary concern is the several hundred city residents who live [at Church Street South] and are made to live in substandard conditions. They are her primary concern,” spokesperson Laurence Grotheer said.
Soon after Raphael Ramos of LCI discovered the mold behind her fridge, Payne was given a notice of her relocation. She received the keys to her temporary apartment on a Friday, and the developer told her she needed to be gone by the following Monday. “I couldn’t afford the moving expenses on such short notice, so I moved everything over in my van,” she said. She has four children who need to catch the school bus every morning, and so was relieved to find that her new housing, one of the few five bedroom units available, was nearby at the South Orange affordable complex. But after the
Friday and Saturday rain storms, water flooded the floors—the new location offers little improvement.
When Payne returned to Church Street South to visit with friends, she found her old apartment boarded up. Across the courtyard, fresh plywood covered up her former windows. “They’re going to move people back into my apartment,” Payne said. Though they’ve made a commitment to move
people out in the next year, Northland may have to shuffle residents around the property as they wait for new housing options. “I will kindly tell them, they are getting set up for failure,” Payne added, as she waved around her iPhone, displaying a photo of her molded pipes.
Colon walked to the adjacent complex to knock on Mathilde Osario’s door. Colon brings her an absentee ballot every year because Osario has knee trouble, and just recently had surgery. Osario’s health has deteriorated in recent months; she raised her faded housedress to reveal a knee swollen
and scarred.
In the apartment, Colon translated Osario’s Spanish, explaining that after her apartment got inspected, she received a letter stating that the city inspectors would return. Two weeks passed, and she hadn’t heard back. Inside, the air felt dense and steamy. Osario pointed to cracks in the wall that unqualified handymen had supposedly “fixed” on previous occasions. In the bathroom, hot water gushed from the tap in the tub. It wouldn’t turn off, which accounted for the apartment’s climate. She opened the cabinet under the sink, and a swath of black mold was visible. More mold crept across the walls in her bedroom. “If they offer her a voucher, she’ll take it running,” Colon translated. She’ll get her voucher within the coming weeks or months, but where she will go is uncertain.
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The question of how to house American cities’ many low-income residents has occupied the country for as long as New Haven has considered how to best utilize its property across from the train station.
The concept of building low-income housing developments emerged from progressive 1930s New Deal policies. “It was controversial because it faced resistance from homebuilders and real estate people who thought it would undercut the market for housing, and we still hear those same
arguments today,” Taft noted.
Initiatives that had been first viewed as opportunities for upward mobility developed the stigmas around public housing by the 1950s. Government- subsidized residences became associated with housing poor people in poor conditions. Taft said, “There was never enough funding poured in, no money for maintenance, and with maintenance budgets based on rent, low rents meant that the housing fell into disrepair—it’s harder to take pride in where you’re living.” The combination of deindustrialization and urban population loss sponsored by government programs encouraging white families to move to the suburbs contributed to the downward spiral of low-income housing.
Alongside internal infrastructure and funding shortages, those factors ghettoized low-income housing, which became a racially coded word.
New Urbanism seeks to push back against that historical trajectory which still oppresses communities like Church Street South. The focus of affordable housing should look beyond the buildings. It should operate with a set of values in mind, values that help residents exercise agency and access opportunities. “Communities work much better with services that help folks improve economic outcomes,” said DuBois-Walton.
The Church Street South of today failed in that mission. Jim Paley, director of Neighborhood Housing Services in New Haven, said, “If you are an investor-owner of property, you have two commitments: one to the people who are tenants in building. For whatever rent you are collecting, you have a responsibility to provide decent and sanitary and up-to-code apartments. The second has to do with neighborhoods. We’re rebuilding neighborhoods, with sound houses out of blighted buildings.”
It took aggressive action and the assertion of a long-denied public voice on the part of residents for Northland to recognize this two-fold responsibility. Even now, under federal and city scrutiny, media attention, and a suddenly present owner, the residents obtaining full access to their rights to safe, affordable housing remains uncertain.
Back at the property on Sept. 12, Colon and Payne discussed the recent community meeting held at the Wilson Branch of the New Haven Public Library—many residents could not attend. “We’ll hold the next one right here outside, and we’ll get chairs and tables. You need to know your rights,” Colon offered. Payne responded, “We’ll be there, and we’ll stand.”