Phaye Tallini trudges through the snow to the underside of a bridge that carries Route 15 over Lily Pond, in the city’s Amity neighborhood. She shows me the former site of a homeless encampment that straddled the pond.
“There was two tents here, and there was three tents over here," she said. "I was over on the other side. This is where I lived for approximately four to five months.”
Department of Transportation officials evicted Phaye and others amid especially cold temperatures. She said workers then covered the area with boulders so people couldn't come back.
“Instead of putting rocks in places so people can't come back and set up," she says, "how about take some of that funding and put it towards helping people more, so people don't have to come and stay under an underpass?”
Phaye said she wasn’t causing problems. In fact, she was helping out other people staying there, picking up trash and taking care of the area.
“If I have to stay somewhere, I'm going to make the best of my situation, and I'm going to try to make neighbors and everybody else feel safe," she said. "You know, not that we're just a bunch of vagrants living under a bridge and don't have families or don't love people or want what's best for our community. A lot of people are just in a really crappy situation and are just trying to do their best to make it out of it.”
The New Haven homeless advocacy group U-ACT decried the sweep, one of several targeted against the city's homeless residents in recent years. Others have been led by the city itself.
“The ideal is to fight so that these encampment clearings don't happen at all," says U-ACT's Ben Stegbauer. "People making homes for themselves have always been the most sustainable.”
Stegbauer said he'd like to see the state enshrine a right to housing — especially amid an affordability crisis that, while nationwide, is especially acute in Connecticut, one of the most expensive states in the nation.
"Housing should not be contingent on job, family, any other conditions," he said. "People should have a right to housing, and the first step of that is a complete ban on encampment sweeps.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Transportation said it’s illegal for people to stay on state property. But he says state agencies work with local groups to connect people with support and resources.
