NEW HAVEN, Conn. — A permit allowing for the temporary placement of small housing units at one Rosette Street home in New Haven will soon expire.
The city says eight tiny homes built in the backyard of the Amistad Catholic Worker house on Rosette Street will violate state and city regulations come July 15.
These tiny homes have sparked some controversy. Amistad Catholic Worker brought the structures in last year for local unhoused individuals to replace tents they had set up in their backyard. At the time, the City of New Haven sent notices that the units violated several city zoning regulations, along with state building code. The state building code would require the tiny homes to have a bathroom and kitchen to remain on-site.
Mark Colville, a resident member of Amistad Catholic Worker, said, “We’re being accused of not respecting zoning laws. The zoning laws did not anticipate homelessness as a permanent condition.”
In response, New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker said, “We really worked hard to work with the individuals at Rosette Street to facilitate them going through the city’s zoning process to get a variance. From the zoning perspective, they legally can have those structures. However, from the state building code perspective, they cannot.”
A temporary 180-day permit was eventually granted by the state to allow the homes to stay, ahead of the winter months. Monday, July 15, however, marks day 180, after which utilities will be shut off.
“We’ve been addressing this deadline for three months now with hardly any response,” said Colville.
He claimed the mayor hasn’t been working with him to find a solution. Elicker said the permit simply cannot be extended.
“We’re asking people to follow the law, and we understand that there’s a lot of people struggling in the city around homelessness and there’s lots of ways to work with people to facilitate them finding long-term housing,” said Elicker.
For people like Suki Godek, the "micro-neighborhood" she now calls home has provided a path to transformation that traditional shelters have not.
Godek said, "Since I’ve been here, I’m in recovery groups that I go to twice a week, I’m in several advocate groups around the city. Before, we were just something that people chose not to look at and they didn’t want as part of their city, now it’s part of being in this community that’s really saved everything in my life.”
Despite the looming deadline, residents aren’t planning on going anywhere. When asked about the permit expiration, Colville said, “it means nothing to us because we are going to continue to do this.”
Elicker said the city shares the same goals as these advocates, reiterating New Haven’s efforts to fight homelessness. He pointed to the millions of dollars that have been spent to build affordable housing, and a hotel for the unhoused. Though utilities within the tiny homes will be shut off if the units are not removed, the mayor said the city would not go in and remove the structures.
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Kaelee Collins is a multimedia journalist for FOX61 News. She can be reached at kcollins@fox61.com. Follow her on X, and Instagram.
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