Joel Nieves is lucky if he gets two hours of sleep with his CPAP machine before the battery pack dies. “You try to sleep at night and it’s like you’re being smothered,” Nieves, who suffers from sleep apnea and other health conditions, said. Nieves relies on the CPAP machine to keep breathing through the night, but, for more than three weeks, Nieves has been unable to plug the device into the walls of his tiny home after the city of New Haven ordered United Illuminating to cut power to the micro neighborhood where Nieves lives after the units fell out of compliance with the state building code.
As temperatures in July and August soared into the 90s, Nieves described the conditions as a “nightmare.” “Without the power, it’s about 15 degrees warmer inside than it is outside, and with this heat wave, it’s impossible to even function,” Nieves said. “You’re sitting there (at night) and you’re crying because you’re just trying to figure out, ‘Okay, how am I gonna get out of this hole?’” While the heat finally broke this week, tensions between Rosette Neighborhood Village , a first-in-the-state tiny home community for individuals experiencing homelessness, and city hall showed no signs of cooling down.
Mark Colville, who operates the Amistad Catholic Worker out of his home where the six prefabricated tiny-homes have sat in the backyard since October, said the city’s actions are putting residents at risk. “What they’re participating in here is a human rights violation, and it could very possibly lead to serious health conditions and possibly death,” Colville said. In an interview with the Courant, New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker said Colville and the residents of the village knew that the tiny homes would no longer be sanctioned after a 180-day temporary structure permit from the state expired on July 15.
“It was very clear on the document that Mr. Colville signed granting the 180-day (permit) in bold letters at the top of the page, ‘no extensions,’” Elicker said. “Folks have known for a very long time that this was coming and we have for all this time been ready to help people that are there to find other options.
” Elicker said city representatives and outreach workers have visited the village and offered services to residents before and after the permit expired, triggering a cease-and-desist order from city hall demanding that all residents vacate the units. The Department of Administrative Services is processing an appeal from the property to extend the one-time permit. Leigh Appleby, the director of communications for the department, said the state Codes and Standards Committee will “review the next step in the (appeal) process” at their Aug.
14 meeting. After cutting power to the site, issuing a $100 fine and placing a lien on the property to enforce the order to vacate, Elicker said Nieves is the first resident from the village to accept the city’s offer to assist in securing alternative housing and shelter. Elicker said the options available to other village residents vary on a “case by case” basis.
“I understand that they have told you that we have not reached out and that they do not have access to resources. That’s concerning to me because we have reached out and will continue to do so. And the organizers have deep knowledge of the city’s resources and should be connecting residents to city resources so that we can get people that are very vulnerable in our community the help that they need,” Elicker said.
In a statement to the Courant Friday, Colville said “Residents aren’t refusing services.” “They’re refusing to be removed from the neighborhood to receive them,” Colville said. “They’ve come to see the community here .
.. as essential to their own personal healing, and their way out of homelessness.
” “City hall employees have intentionally and consistently ignored this place, with two exceptions,” Colville added. “(One) when they want to send us ‘cease and desist’ orders, and (two) when they have nothing to (offer) an unhoused person in crisis so they send them here.” Colville, the village’s residents and their supporters continue to criticize Elicker for not making a personal visit to the site.
They argue that the city’s order to cut power in July was premature and that the electricity should stay on while the state processes the village’s appeal. Elicker said the city has no control over state permitting. “We are required to follow state law, and if we don’t, with respect to the (electric) power, we open ourselves up to significant liability,” Elicker said.
Elicker said that he is “not sure how productive” a visit to the village would be, however, he said he has spoken with organizers many times and that the city and the village have “the same goals ...
of helping vulnerable people in our community.” “We would be able to get a lot more done if we worked collaboratively together than in this confrontational way,” Elicker added. Suki Godek, one of the lead organizers at the village said she sees Elicker’s support as inconsistent.
“Each time we get a small victory, the mayor hops in and says how he supported us,” Godek. “Whenever it comes down to things that we actually need or doing something that’s important or lasting for the health of all the citizens, he just kind of passes it to the next person. It’s upsetting.
” Godek, who has lived in a tiny home with her husband since October and experiences stress-related seizures, said this period without power has been particularly taxing. On Thursday, Godek said she had not recieved any offers of assistance from the city. “From our point of view, it’s just him (Elicker) throwing another thing at us,” Godek said.
“We’re not going to stop helping people and stop doing what we do every day — serving meals and offering shelter and, and being a community — because he wants to turn the lights off.” Elicker said the decision to cut power to the Village is consistent with previous orders from the city. “Whenever there’s an illegal dwelling unit, we will tell the utilities to turn off the power,” Elicker said.
Jacob Miller, Colville’s son-in-law and next-door neighbor, who also works as a partner at a real estate brokerage, said the power shutoff feels like “selective enforcement.” “I do a lot of transactions in this city, hundreds over the past decade, and I can assure you that we are, without question, not the only structure that has any sort of ‘building code violation,’ and I don’t see the electricity turned off in those situations very often,’” Miller said. Miller said the village and its lawyers are working to exhaust all administrative remedies to maintain the tiny homes before taking formal legal action.
Miller and Colville said the village is prepared to defend their right to house people in the tiny homes from a human rights and religious argument. Miller said a land use attorney representing the property has contacted United Illuminating and the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority requesting a reversal of the power shut-off, given the health and safety concerns for the village’s residents. According to the state’s website, “ electricity cannot be shut off during the winter or the summer if doing so would lead to dangerous scenarios and such customers have submitted to their utility a medical protection form.
” “The city’s stance is one of health and safety. And our argument is that these units were safe enough for you to turn the electricity on six months ago (and) absolutely nothing has changed since then,” Miller said. Elicker underscored his concerns that the tiny homes would not stand up to an extreme weather event such as a hurricane or snowstorm.
“Imagine if a tree fell on top of the structure or there were very high winds,” Elicker said. “The building code is there for a purpose ..
. And so while the goals of the individuals involved are admirable, they have to follow the rules just like everyone else does.” The micro-units, designed by the for-profit company Pallet , resemble free-standing dorm rooms.
The shelters have no in-house bathroom or kitchen — that is located steps away in Colville’s house — but there is a bed, ample storage space, a fire alarm and a carbon monoxide detector. When connected to electric utilities, the tiny homes also have heating, cooling and working outlets. According to Pallet, each unit should last more than 10 years and is designed to withstand 110-mile-per-hour winds, 25 pounds per square foot of snow and temperatures as low as 40 degrees below zero.
They are also resistant to mold, rot and pests. In an email to the Courant Thursday, Lenny Speiller, the director of communications for the mayor’s office, contested the “tiny home” label used to describe the village’s units. “That’s misleading,” Speiller said.
“These structures are not ‘tiny homes’ – they are ‘temporary structures.’ The state building code has a definition for tiny homes ..
. Pallet also defines them as temporary housing solutions and shelters too.” The 2021 International Residential Code, which Connecticut adopted as part of the State Building Code, defines “Tiny House ” as “a dwelling that is 400 square feet or less in floor area excluding lofts.
” In order to qualify as a dwelling, the code requires each unit to provide “complete independent living facilities for one or more persons, including permanent provisions for living, sleeping, eating, cooking and sanitation.” While the units at the village may not legally constitute a “house,” to Nieves and his seven neighbors they are “home.” Nieves said he was homeless for two years before he found the village.
During that time, Nieves said he attended a state-funded drug program that provided him with transitional housing for 90 days. “Once my time ran out, they dropped me off at a warming center, and said, ‘good luck,’” Nieves said. “The warming center closed after three days .
.. and I was just out in the street.
” During those two years, Nieves said he spent every moment “on defensive mode.” He rarely slept, trusted no one, and lost parts of himself. “Kids, they’ll throw rocks at you.
You don’t know if you’re gonna get robbed. You don’t know what if there’s a stray dog coming at you while you’re trying to sleep,” Nieves said. “You don’t even have a name.
They just point at you when you’re out in the street.” After moving to the village in April, and moving into his tiny home in July, Nieves said he finally feels safe and is getting his physical, mental and emotional health back on track. “When I first got here, I would eat crouched over my plate, as if I’m protecting my meal.
Now, I eat like a person again. I sit down, I sit back, I’m able to socialize — these are skills that I lost that I didn’t have until I got here,” Nieves said. “The problem with the shelter system is that you lose these social skills and no one gives you the opportunity to rediscover (them),” Nieves said.
Nieves said that at the village he was “treated as family, not like a number.” “This saved my life,” Nieves said. Now Nieves said he is moving one step closer to reaching his goal of permanent housing after submitting an application to live at an assisted living facility close to the neighborhood.
Colville said the village has successfully transitioned other tiny home residents into permanent housing. Colville said he wishes the city would adopt the same community model to address homelessness in New Haven. “It takes systemic change to cure homelessness, and it takes community to cure homelessness,” Colville said.
“It’s not about warehousing people efficiently. It’s about independent space. It’s about autonomy.
It’s about being able to cook a damn hamburger for yourself and feed your dog and lock your door.” “If you just get out of the way and let people be neighbors to each other, that’s how homelessness gets cured,” Colville said. “This is an actual cure for homelessness, right here.
”.
