NEW HAVEN, Conn. — A recent string of violence in the Greater New Haven area, mostly involving young people, is sparking conversations about dealing with youth in the community.
Leaders in both New Haven and Hamden are making plans to offer more opportunities for their residents.
“We need to have a wider conversation statewide where this small group of young people who, even their own families struggle to keep them on track,” said New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker.
For years, Elicker has put the focus on younger New Haveners… specifically those he said are being let down by the system.
“Frankly, I get calls from some parents saying, ‘I don’t know what to do, I can’t control my’, oftentimes it’s sons, ‘and I need some help,’” Elicker said.
To curb the issue, Elicker and other city leaders have created jobs for kids, before and after school programs and opened new community centers.
However, for the small group of violent repeat offenders contributing to most of the crime in the city, Elicker said there needs to be another option.
“We need another place around mentors with a lot of support so that we can help support our young people where they’re not on the street, but they’re also not just locked up in jail,” Elicker said.
That place, Elicker said, could look like a community residential program where the kids stay there, get an education and have constant access to resources. He said models like that do exist in Connecticut and are run by the state.
“I want to stress that, ultimately, the way to address a lot of the challenges that our disconnected youth are facing is ensuring from early on in their life, they have a lot of the supports that they need,” Elicker said.
In neighboring Hamden, the town is also looking for better ways to support and give opportunities for young people. That includes transforming the old middle school grounds on Newhall Street into an arts and recreation youth center.
“We need to give kids a chance to have really great activities planned for them and a safe place for them to go to after school, during the summer,” said Hamden Mayor Lauren Garrett. “Arts and athletics are really a way to bring kids in and have positive experiences.”
Garrett said the town is planning to demolish the long-vacant academic building and the smaller building next to it. Both have been unoccupied and sitting in disrepair since the school closed in 2006.
The town is starting with the smaller building that used to be the gymnasium and turning it into a space for a new gym, black box theatre and more. Eventually, Garrett said the plan is to utilize the larger building for more services.
“We live in a society right now where, you know, people say it takes a village to raise a child. That kind of thing doesn’t happen anymore. People work so many jobs and don’t have that sense of community all the time, and it’s our job to provide that,” Garrett said.
Garrett said there’s no timeline on the demolition of the buildings yet. It's a meticulous process because of asbestos concerns and soil remediation efforts. The whole process also needs to go through the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.
In the meantime, the plans for the municipally-owned community center are not final just yet. Garrett said she wants to hear from the community about things they’d like to see implemented.
The community will have a chance to get involved at a town-wide meeting at the Keefe Community Center on Sept. 26th from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Also on the agenda, Garrett said, are the topics of traffic calming, foundations in the Newhall neighborhood and drainage issues throughout the town.
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Julia LeBlanc is a reporter at FOX61 News. She can be reached at jleblanc@fox61.com. Follow her on Facebook, X and Instagram.
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