The trail runs 56 miles from New Haven to Massachusetts, and is part of the larger East Coast Greenway, a 3,000-mile trail from Florida to Maine.

Lisa Fernandez, president of the Farmington Canal Rail to Trail Association, said that the trail is the “crown jewel” and the “spine” of the Connecticut trail system.

Fernandez explained that the money for the trail’s expansion was secured in 2010, and the design for it was approved in 2013.

According to Executive Director of the City Planning Department Laura Brown, city planners are meeting this week with Mayor Justin Elicker to finalize a date for a ribbon-cutting ceremony on the new segment of the trail.

“It connects a lot of Connecticut history,”  Brown explained, “going through the center of the state from New Haven, which is certainly the cultural capital of the state and then going north to the statehouse in Hartford and over to Massachusetts.”

Bruce Donald, the East Coast Greenway’s Southern New England manager and the chairman of the Connecticut Greenways Council, cannot wait to cut the ribbon on this trail, especially because this phase of the development of the trail has been delayed.

Donald said the first meeting about this phase of construction was over 20 years ago. Brown clarified that delays to the expansion’s implementation can be attributed to an effort to ensure the trail is fully ready for use when opened to the public. 

“This is the nature of development in a city,” Brown said, adding that “there is a lot of history and existing buildings and infrastructure,” which can be difficult with construction.

According to Donald, New Haveners and Yalies use the trail primarily to commute to class and to work. City planners estimate that commuters account for 50 percent of trail traffic.

These trails aren’t for the “spandex” crowd, Donald joked, or for the cyclists on “six thousand dollar bikes” — “they’re for everyone.” New Haven commuters rely on this trail to get to work and school, he explained, and they will get to enjoy the extension of the trail and improvements to the infrastructure as soon as it’s open.

For Aaron Goode, the founder of the New Haven Friends of the Farmington Canal Greenway, a trail is not “just a place where people can do recreation. It’s also a place where they can … learn about history and can see interesting art, art, murals, potentially public art.”

The city has already installed placards in the Temple Street tunnel displaying historical information about the history of New Haven’s canals and railroads, which have been transformed into a greenway.

“I think it’s going to be something really special when people are going to really treasure it and appreciate it the way they do the Highline in New York,” Goode said. Fernandez said the Greenway, when completed this spring, will be Connecticut’s “Lowline,” a Highline but with tunnels.

A trail should be accessible for recreation and commuting and the “aesthetic experience” is a bonus, but Donald believes safety on the trail is imperative. He explained that having a safe walking space in downtown will help reduce pedestrian and bicycle deaths in New Haven.

“It’s a big deal for the university,” Donald said. The trail will connect the existing Temple Street tunnel and the Canal Dock Boathouse. Orange and State Streets and Union Station will be more accessible via this route.

Fernandez emphasized that the trail is also invaluable for commuters from Hampton and Cheshire, as well as other suburbs outside New Haven.

Brown says the new segment is nearing completion and will be available before the “spring biking season.”

“I’m confident that this will be a lasting piece of infrastructure and added value for residents when it opens up. It’s been worth the wait,” Brown said. 

The Farmington Canal Heritage Trail is currently accessible from the School of Engineering on Hillhouse Avenue and Benjamin Franklin and Pauli Murray colleges.

Correction, April 8: The article has been updated to clarify the location of the new segment.

The post New segment of Farmington Canal Trail to open in New Haven appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Mousou, who immigrated to the United States from Syria in 2012, began working at IRIS as an Arabic and Kurdish interpreter in February 2023, and later became a case manager on the agency’s resettlement and placement team. In the wake of President Donald Trump’s Jan. 24 stop-work order to refugee resettlement programs nationwide, Mousou spent those daily car rides worrying about losing his job at IRIS.

“I drop my kids every morning at school … and one day I told them, ‘guys, I might get laid off,’” Mousou recalled. “After two days, [my son] told me, ‘Dad, I was praying today before I slept that you don’t get laid off, because I know how much you love your clients.’”

At the start of February, Mousou learned that eight members of his 10-person team had been laid off because of funding cuts. Within two weeks, Mousou and his remaining colleague were let go, too.

IRIS boasted 94 staff members prior to Trump’s inauguration. The agency had been set to receive $4 million in federal funding in 2025, all of which was rescinded because of Trump’s stop-work order. 

Over the past two and a half months, these funding cuts have forced IRIS’s Executive Director Maggie Mitchell Salem to winnow the staff down to 34 members. Salem said these layoffs have impacted each of IRIS’s departments, including the senior management team, which shrunk from four to two members.

The agency was also forced to close its Hartford office at the beginning of the month and plans to shut down its New Haven office, from which IRIS has operated since 2006, on April 30. 

“We’re doing this because we want to reduce our overhead in order to continue serving [refugees],” Salem said, describing the impetus behind shutting down the offices. “It’s about making really hard choices, and all nonprofits are having to do this right now.”

IRIS staff will be able to meet with clients from its food pantry at 75 Hamilton St., which distributes food and other household items each Wednesday, according to Salem. The agency is also continuing to offer education programming at United Church on the Green, located at 270 Temple St., and staff will begin to meet with clients and use some office storage space at the church. Otherwise, IRIS staff will work remotely.

Kathy Sheppard, who managed IRIS’s Ukrainian program from August 2022 to November 2023, felt compelled to help IRIS after learning about the federal funding cuts. Over the past few months, Sheppard — along with former IRIS employees Barbara Davis, Cindy Dunn and Kristy Jefferson, who were laid off the day of the stop-work order  — has mobilized IRIS’s volunteer program in hopes of keeping the agency afloat.

Since Feb. 27, IRIS has gained 214 volunteers across nine teams, which assist refugees with financial literacy, finding employment and other needs, according to Sheppard. 154 of the volunteers are members of the flex team, which means that they are willing to do additional volunteer work outside of their designated teams. 

Each time an IRIS staff member has a task they need a volunteer to take on, they add it to a spreadsheet. Then, Sheppard, Davis, Dunn and Jefferson — who have dubbed themselves “admins” of the volunteer program — assign the task to a volunteer from the relevant team or the flex team and keep track of when tasks are completed.

“Our case managers would have to have 72 hours in the day in order to respond to everyone’s phone calls and the questions, so we’re hoping our volunteers can fill in and answer some of those more simple questions,” Sheppard said.

Each of the volunteer teams is headed by a team leader, whether a member of a co-sponsorship group who has experience working with refugee families or a former IRIS employee. Mousou has led the crisis response team since mid-March. 

Setting up the volunteer program required a significant time commitment from the four admins, who are also volunteers, according to Dunn, who described it as “almost [a] full time job” for the first few weeks. Dunn estimates that she now spends around three hours a day keeping the volunteer program running.

Dunn and Sheppard expressed confidence that their volunteer model is a sustainable one, noting that the Trump administration halted the admission of refugees on Jan. 20, which will eventually ease up the backlog of tasks for IRIS staff.

As of now, the four admins are laser-focused on keeping the volunteer program running smoothly. Davis and Dunn initially looked for work after getting laid off by IRIS but are concentrated on the volunteer program, and in Davis’s case, continuing to lead a co-sponsorship group in Danbury. Similarly, Mousou is focused on helping his former clients. 

“Volunteering got me out of that funk of, ‘I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do with myself, and I don’t know what to do to help people,” Dunn said. “Not only does it help IRIS, but I think it helps the three of us.”

Both Davis and Mousou noted that their spouses are still employed full-time, which helped them justify devoting themselves to volunteer work from a financial standpoint. 

The three former staff members hope to return to work in refugee resettlement, and specifically to IRIS, in the near future.

“It’s horrific to leave some of the most vulnerable people in the world stranded without services,” Davis said, reflecting on the federal funding cuts. “It’s unimaginable that any administration would think that that was something that was a good way to draw down a program — to leave people so exposed to such risk.”

IRIS assisted 2,055 clients, who spanned 25 home countries, in 2024.

Correction, April 4: A previous version of the article misattributed statements made by Mousou.

The post Laid-off staff at city refugee resettlement agency rekindle volunteer program amid federal funding cuts appeared first on Yale Daily News.

In a Thursday press conference, the city announced the launch of Via NHV, a publicly funded rideshare service that provides car rides across New Haven for a fare of $1.75 per one-way ride. Lower fares are available for low-income riders and seniors. The service offers rides in select regions of the city, including the west side of New Haven and in Fair Haven, where other transit options are less densely available.

The program, which launched as a two-year pilot program on March 11, aims to provide a low-cost alternative to buses, biking and walking, especially for city residents who do not own their own cars. In particular, city leaders hope the service will improve work commutes. There are 50,000 jobs within Via NHV’s service territory, according to Michael Piscatelli, the city’s economic development administrator.

“If you live on the west side of the city, or you live in Fair Haven, for $1.75, Via will pick you up and take you where you need to go,” Piscatelli said. “In the city, you have to get to Key Foods? They are going to take you. You need to get to the hospital, to work, or for other reasons? They will take you.”

New Haven is one of nine cities participating in the Connecticut Department of Transportation’s Microtransit Pilot Program, a $19.5 million effort sponsored by the governor. The other eight programs launched last year and have completed more than 100,000 trips in total, according to Ben Limmer, the bureau chief of public transportation at CT DOT.

Since Via NHV launched in March, popular destinations have included Union Station, Yale New Haven Hospital, office buildings and supermarkets.

To use the service, city residents can download the Via HNV app, select a destination and receive directions to a nearby corner for pickup. The app will identify other riders who are headed in the same direction and group them together.

The initiative is one step in building a more redundant, diverse transit apparatus in New Haven, according to Sandeep Aysola, director of transportation, traffic and parking for the city.

“How do you build a system where you create choices for people?” Aysola said. “Microtransit is one of those pieces to fill that puzzle that’s around having some accessible transportation across the city.”

Via NHV is a partnership with Via Transportation, a company that operates public microtransit systems in more than 750 locations globally. To plan the New Haven implementation, Via staff synthesized census data to identify regions where the service would be most useful. Currently, Via NHV services are not available in much of eastern New Haven.

“We do not want to compete with or cannibalize the already good transit options that are available in New Haven,” Sara-Jessica Dilks, Via’s public relations principal, told the News. “It’s in these selective areas where perhaps the coverage is not quite as good, so that we’re extending the reach of traditional transit versus getting into a situation where everyone wants a minivan and could damage the ecosystem of the bus network.”

Under the pilot program, Via NHV operates six vehicles and employs roughly 15-20 drivers, according to Sophie Cappello ’20, an expansion principal at Via.

Like Uber and Lyft, drivers employed with Via NHV set their own hours. But instead of receiving payment per ride, drivers earn an hourly wage and can take breaks throughout the day without losing money. Drivers make $19.50 per hour for regular car rides and $21 per hour when driving wheelchair-accessible vehicles, according to driver Moriken Sangary, who worked for other rideshare services for more than 10 years.

“Driving for Uber and Lyft, some days I would come out with nothing, because I’m using my own money for gas,” Sangary said. “With this one, I’m driving. That’s all I’m doing.”

Via NHV operates from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. every day.

The post City launches local, low-cost rideshare app appeared first on Yale Daily News.

On a public webinar this Wednesday, Strong Towns — a national nonprofit advocating for safe, livable cities — and several community members took a microscope to this crash to analyze and try to address the intersection’s dangers.

East Rock residents have expressed safety concerns about the Willow-Nicoll intersection for over a decade. Due to speeding cars, faded zebra crossings and low visibility, the crossing has become infamous in the area for its hazards.

In the “Crash Analysis Studio” webinar, Strong Towns’ Community Engagement Coordinator Tony Harris facilitated a discussion among several panelists: Alders Caroline Tanbee Smith and Anna Festa of Wards 9 and 10, respectively, and East Rock residents Rishabh Mittal and Peter Clarke.

Mittal and Clarke had successfully applied for this intersection to be analyzed by Strong Towns. This is the 22nd crash analysis the organization has conducted nationwide, with the aim of promoting grassroots action and providing local leaders with an analysis and recommendations report.

According to Tanbee Smith, over 70 people attended the webinar, including New Haven’s City Engineer Giovanni Zinn.

The webinar followed several months of activism and community engagement by Smith and Festa, whose wards this intersection straddles. Since last fall, they have been door-knocking in East Rock and discussing potential solutions with the city. Their petition for traffic safety improvements on the Willow and Nicoll Street intersection has garnered about 200 signatures.

“The North American response to crashes focuses primarily on assigning blame, often assigning blame to drivers and sometimes to pedestrians too,” Harris said. “Our objective really is to learn as much as possible about what happened, what took place, identify contributing factors and make some suggestions for improving safety at this crash location.”

Harris began the webinar with a detailed crash analysis. Clicking through slides of diagrams and images, he described how the intersection would have looked from both drivers’ perspectives. He then opened up the floor to the alders and neighbors to discuss the possible crash factors.

Tanbee Smith and Festa both emphasized the intersection’s poor sightlines for drivers and pedestrians.

“You have to inch, inch, inch to try to see around the tree [or] ironically, the pedestrian yield signs. You always feel like you’re taking a little bit of a leap of faith when you take the turn,” Tanbee Smith said.

Due to overgrown trees, the pedestrian yield sign and cars illegally parked on the intersection corner, it’s difficult for cars to see people waiting to cross. When Festa drives through the stop sign, she even honks to warn pedestrians, she said.

Tanbee Smith also pointed out how the intersection’s proximity to highways means that people are likely to be speeding on and off the ramp. Indeed, in a small study conducted by Mittal and volunteers, they found that even on a weekend day, 57.3 percent of 413 cars tracked were going over the speed limit of 25 miles per hour. 

“It’s treacherous. I avoid it at all costs,” Festa said.

Mittal, who brought his transportation planning and consulting experience to the webinar, suggested two main design features that would ameliorate the intersection’s conditions: narrowing the street and bringing the stop sign closer to the road. 

Of the 28 crashes the intersection has seen in the past five years, over 20 happened because the driver on Nicoll Street ran the stop sign, Mittal said. He believes that drivers mistakenly think they are on the main road for several reasons: Nicoll is the wider street, the stop sign is hard to notice and only Willow Street has crosswalks.

Harris echoed Mittal’s concerns, saying that drivers typically follow “the design cues around them.”

Tanbee Smith also expressed hopes that there can be “more imaginative, more demonstrative solutions that really elevate the pedestrian” at the intersection. With sidewalk bump outs and colorful crosswalk repaintings, she said, drivers would be more likely to think of the area as a spot to slow down and not speed up.

Other solutions floated around during the panel discussion included adding traffic safety measures such as four-way stops and a large speed table, pruning the trees, rethinking pedestrian signs and redirecting traffic in the neighborhood. 

“There’s a Willow and Nicoll, if you will, in every single neighborhood,” Tanbee Smith told the News before the webinar. She hopes this event will serve as a model for uniting city and community expertise together to brainstorm solutions for traffic safety problems. 

“We shouldn’t have to tell people to avoid a street. We shouldn’t have to tell them, take a different route,” Festa said. “All our streets should be safe, and I think it’s everyone’s responsibility.”

Strong Towns will hold two more crash analysis sessions in New Haven, one on Ella T. Grasso Boulevard and another on a Whalley Avenue intersection.

The post ‘Treacherous’ East Rock intersection analyzed, solutions floated  appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The metropolitan area has a rental vacancy rate of 3.1 percent, the third lowest in the country, indicating a cutthroat market. Rents have grown 48.19 percent since the pandemic, and the number of people experiencing homelessness in the region more than doubled in the last year, an increase that is directly linked to more expensive rental prices. 

Over 500 on-campus beds are currently unoccupied, according to Ferentz Lafargue, the associate dean of residential college life, and the New Haven housing market is fierce. Nonetheless, more and more Yale College students are choosing to move off campus — twice as many this academic year than in 2019-20. According to Dean of Student Affairs Melanie Boyd, a historic 59 percent of the class of 2026 currently live in off-campus housing. 

Many students move off campus to live with friends from different residential colleges or to guarantee themselves single bedrooms. Others cite concerns about the availability of on-campus housing or the possibility of being forced out of their residential college. 

However, the gradual outpouring of students into adjacent neighborhoods is pushing locals farther away from campus and is one of many factors contributing to increased demand for housing in an ever-hot market, New Haven landlords and residents told the News. With a focus on ensuring residential colleges are a cornerstone of undergraduate life, Yale College administrators are pushing to bring students back to campus. 

An exodus in the wake of COVID-19

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, a steady rate of about 16 percent of undergraduates lived in off-campus housing each year. But during the 2020-21 academic year, an unprecedented 62 percent of students lived off campus due to Yale’s strict pandemic policies. 

This year, about 26 percent of the student body, or 1,757 students, live off campus — a number almost double the 982 students who lived off-campus in the last pre-pandemic year.

Three Yale administrators attributed this recent exodus to off-campus housing directly to the pandemic. 

Because so many students either were required or chose to live off campus during the 2020-21 academic year, a greater number of students were able to pass down their apartments to other students, according to Lafargue. Students often recommend their apartments to younger friends, who in turn take over the lease. This made the transition off campus more straightforward than it was before, Lafargue believes.

During the 2020-21 school year, classes were conducted remotely through a “residential/remote model.” The model meant that first-years got to live on campus during the fall semester and switched with sophomores for the spring semester. The University also adopted strict social distancing policies, including grab-and-go dining hall meals and restrictions on social gatherings of more than 10 people. 

Yale College Dean Pericles Lewis suggested that at least some of the students who moved off campus did so because they were dissatisfied with masking restrictions and dining hall policies. Additionally, the class of 2025 became unusually large after the “COVID bump” — a swelling of the student population because of the large percentage of students that took gap years or deferred enrollment — which increased demand for on-campus housing in the following years, causing more students to move off-campus when residential colleges threatened to reach capacity.  

Lewis largely attributed preferences for off-campus housing to sweeping shifts in undergraduate social habits. In the 1980s, he said, undergraduates could have “keg parties in the [residential] colleges,” and the social scene revolved around the residential colleges. Now, due to legal concerns, the party scene has shifted primarily off campus, with students following, Lewis said. 

New Haven is “a nicer place to live, a safer place to live than it was a few decades ago,” he added, making off-campus housing more desirable. Meanwhile, financial aid has expanded, so more students are likely to be able to afford to live off campus, Lewis said. Students can request a refund of the share of their financial aid that goes toward housing costs to use for off-campus rent. 

According to the Yale College Council’s 2024 fall survey, the most common reasons to move off campus come down to better amenities, the opportunity to live with friends from different residential colleges, concerns about the on-campus housing lottery and the cost of Yale room and board. Lewis cited similar findings from undergraduate surveys, adding that students also like to control what they eat and have their own kitchens.

“It was more likely than not that I would have gotten a single, but I just wasn’t willing to take the risk of three consecutive years living in a cramped double,” Jake Siesel ’27 told the News. “So having the opportunity to secure [a single] months in advance and not be beholden to the lottery system was definitely worth the pain of the [off-campus housing] process.”

Now, administrators are aiming to reverse the push towards off-campus living. 

Lafargue wrote that the College is “actively looking for ways to retain more students on campus,” which includes its efforts to add additional dormitories, Arnold and McClellan halls, to the undergraduate housing inventory and “to create as much parity across the [residential] colleges as possible.” 

In November, Boyd announced changes to undergraduate housing policy that include eventually giving juniors priority over seniors in on-campus room selection. The point, she wrote in an email sent to rising seniors, is to make it “less likely that [juniors] will feel pressure” to move off campus once they have better odds in the housing lottery. Once students move off campus their junior year, it is very unlikely that they will return as seniors, she added, according to “historical patterns.” 

In an email sent to students before spring break, Lewis shared that “enhancing our residential communities” is a part of Yale College’s strategic plan to create “a community of learning.” Lewis has convened a task force within the Council of the Heads of College “to give focused attention” to undergraduate housing.

“I felt like I wanted to live in a place that really felt like a community or with people that I really feel at home with, and I was not getting that through the college system necessarily,” Adam Bear ’27 said when explaining why he’ll be moving off campus next year. He also keeps kosher and finds it “kind of annoying” that there aren’t always many options for him in his college’s dining hall. 

Lewis said administrators are trying to speed up the annexing process, or when students are given on-campus housing outside of their residential college, so that students know earlier if they’re being annexed. He’d rather students find out about annex status and then choose to move off campus than preemptively find off-campus housing to avoid the possibility of annexation. 

If Siesel were certain he would get an on-campus single, that would have “changed [his] calculus slightly.” Yet, by the time the housing lottery draw happens, there aren’t many housing options left in New Haven, compelling students to make housing choices early, he said, suggesting moving the lottery to earlier in the academic year. 

“In an ideal world, if the system were to be different, I’d still be living on campus, but just the nature of how it works makes it much more difficult,” he said.

Regardless, Boyd assured students in the November email that “Yale College has long had enough space to house all eligible students who want to live on campus.”

Students move out, forming an off-campus “bubble”

Undergraduate students who opt to live off campus tend to move into apartments or houses near central campus, with houses providing an option for larger groups of students to live together. 

According to Carol Horsford, the founder of Farnam Realty Group, which manages thousands of units in the New Haven area, the houses and apartments closest to central campus receive the highest demand from students — and are also the most expensive.

Undergraduate students tend to sign leases much earlier than graduate students, Horsford said, with the earliest groups expressing interest almost a year before the lease would begin. 

31 High St., which was historically occupied by the all-gender social group Edon Club, is usually the first of her properties to be snagged, with students expressing interest as early as September or October of the year before they move in. 

When looking for off-campus housing, Siesel, who will be living in 31 High St. next year, prioritized proximity to Yale’s Cross Campus and a space large enough to live with a large group of friends.

In Horsford’s experience, aside from location, undergraduates’ main priorities are in-unit laundry and air conditioning — amenities that are not available in on-campus housing. Most 21st-century students, she said, are accustomed to living with these features, and are willing to pay higher rents to maintain their living standards.

If Yale wants to encourage students to stay on campus, installing central air conditioning could be a good place to start, Horsford suggested.

According to Horsford, a room in one of the houses she manages averages about $1,500 per month, but prices can range anywhere from $875 to $2,000 per bedroom, depending on factors such as location and size of the individual room.

On-campus housing for Yale undergraduates not receiving financial aid costs $11,300 for the 2024-25 academic year. Divided over 10 months — August to May, a standard academic year — this comes down to $1,130 per month. Off-campus students paying $1,500 per month in rent pay $18,000 per year for a 12-month lease, $6,700 more than students paying for housing on campus. Many students, however, look to sublet their rooms over the summer to offset additional costs.

Farnam also owns The Elm apartment complex at 104 Howe St., which is described as “premier luxury off campus living” and is popular with Yale students. A studio at The Elm starts at $1,800 per month, while two-bedrooms start at $3,250. 

Siesel, who does not receive financial aid from Yale, said the additional cost of living off-campus is worth the assurance of getting to live with friends and having a single.

“I do think that your money goes a little further off campus. You can get a little nicer place,” Cyrus Kenkare ’26, who is moving off campus next year, said. 

Although many off-campus options are more expensive than on-campus housing, some students are able to find places that cost about the same as, or even less than, Yale room fees. 

For Bear, ensuring that his apartment would not cost more than an on-campus dorm room was a priority, and he was even able to find options that were “much less,” he said. Like Siesel, he also prioritized proximity to central campus.  

According to Lewis, a study from the Yale College Dean’s Office found that wealthier students are more likely to live off-campus, although plenty of students on financial aid use their room and board refund to pay off-campus rent. 

In 2024, Horsford created Bull Dog Housing, which lists the properties in her company’s portfolio that are typically rented by undergraduate students. Most properties occupy the downtown, Dwight, Dixwell and East Rock neighborhoods. 

Apartment complexes such as Crown Towers, Cambridge Oxford Apartments, The Elmhurst and The Taft are also popular with undergraduates and are located in those same neighborhoods, although the buildings vary in price and luxe.

From Horsford’s perspective, undergraduates are constrained to a “bubble” within a 15-minute walk of central campus. 

Graduate students are more likely to venture farther out, especially because many of the graduate and professional schools are farther away from the main campus. East Rock, Prospect Hill and Wooster Square host a number of these students, who can easily travel to and from campus using the Yale Shuttle.

Last summer, Yale demolished Helen Hadley Hall, a dormitory with 177 single rooms for graduate students. After this, the Yale Graduate Housing Office partnered with University Properties — which manages Yale’s commercial properties, including retail stores, office spaces and residential units — to provide alternative accommodations for graduate and professional students.

Chelsea Company manages 12 apartment buildings, including The Elmhurst, and rents to dozens of Yale students — undergraduate, graduate and professional — each year, according to the director of property management, Neil Currie. Year after year, Chelsea’s buildings have a 100 percent occupancy rate. 

The buildings closest to campus are “almost 100 percent undergrads,” according to Currie, while others house more than 90 percent graduate students. 

Off-campus students heat up local housing market

The gradual outpouring of students into local neighborhoods both fuels competition in the already-hot New Haven housing market and broader demographic shifts in the areas closest to campus. 

Currie, the property manager of Chelsea Company, said that he has seen several New Haven natives choose to live a couple of blocks farther from campus as students have trickled into adjacent neighborhoods like Dwight.

“The average income of a Yale student’s parents is greater than the average income of a New Haven resident, so when looking at what a parent can afford to give their child for living off campus, the deeper pockets can drive the costs higher,” Currie said. “Yale students have a certain budget, and that budget is beyond the range of someone who’s just working in a shop or a restaurant in New Haven. That’s going to push those people further out.”

The average annual income in New Haven is $34,482, the U.S. Census Bureau reports. According to a survey of Yale College’s class of 2028 conducted by the News, approximately 76 percent of students come from households making at least $45,000 per year, with 43 percent of students reporting annual household incomes above $150,000.

However, students’ purchasing power is not the only thing driving prices up, Currie suggested. 

According to Currie, if Yale were to reduce its on-campus housing costs, students, who often do not want to pay more to live off-campus, would be more likely to stay on campus. This decline in demand for off-campus housing could cause prices to fall, at least close to campus, Currie suggested, as the market responds to that shift in demand.

David Schleicher, a professor of property and urban law at Yale Law School, explained that New Haven’s housing market suffers from a simple supply and demand problem. 

“The sense that there is a lack of housing or [that] housing has become either too expensive or hard to find in New Haven — it’s a product of an increase in people wanting it and housing takes a little while to be built,” he said. “So when there’s an increase in demand, you see a spike in prices, or ultimately some kind of limitation on the ability of the market to provide housing.” 

As demand for housing increases, as it has among Yale undergraduates for the past five years, prices will continue to rise until the market responds with more units, Schleicher said.

While the city has a goal to create 10,000 new units in New Haven in the next 10 years, it has also become more restrictive about building new housing, Schleicher said, through more stringent zoning legislation. One ordinance, for example, mandates a minimum quota of affordable units in every new building. According to Schleicher, those types of regulations will ultimately reduce the number of new units that get built.

Currie added that he thinks mandating affordable units will drive up the cost of non-affordable units, so that developers can compensate for the losses incurred by affordable units. 

“If the city had policies that encouraged new construction with fewer hurdles to jump through, that would allow for more housing to be available at the lower end of the price spectrum,” Currie said. 

To Lewis, the number of Yale undergraduates seeking off-campus housing is a “relatively small” portion of the total Yale impact on the local real estate market. However, he said that undergraduates are likely to seek apartments or houses with multiple bedrooms that would usually cater to families or even multiple families. In this way, Lewis said, undergraduates may have a notable impact on the housing market in close proximity to Yale, but he doubted that the impact is felt across the entire city.

Kevin McCarthy, an East Rock resident and former state housing policy analyst, agreed that while the citywide impact of undergraduates living off-campus may be trivial, their presence on the market for large apartments or houses is relevant.

“I suspect it’s fairly common for a group of undergrads to rent a large apartment or a house, and that market is particularly tight,” he said. “If you’re an ordinary family with four kids, finding a three-bedroom or four-bedroom in town is really challenging.”

He added that landlords may be incentivized to acquire housing near Yale or make properties more appealing to students because students tend to be reliable rent payers.

More notable, McCarthy suspects, are the thousands of graduate students who have historically lived off-campus and are often in the position to pay above-market rents. The closing of Helen Hadley Hall last summer, without the creation of any new student housing, has “a negative impact” on the local housing market, he said, “because the students who were moved from Hadley Hall to University Properties essentially pushed out other grad students who would be living in University Properties.”

McCarthy said he voiced his concerns to the Graduate Housing Office, although he added that the people he spoke to did not “seem to care that they’re exacerbating a housing shortage.” The office did not respond to the News’ request for comment. 

Ultimately, it would be in the best interest of both the University and New Haven, McCarthy said, for Yale to reduce the number of students living off campus. 

What can Yale do? 

Eli Sabin ’22 LAW ’26, a New Haven native and alder for parts of Downtown and East Rock, echoed McCarthy’s call for Yale to provide more housing for students, as well as do work to improve the quality of existing units. 

College administrators have been trying to do just that, Lewis said, through recent initiatives such as ensuring that all dormitory common rooms have permanent furniture. 

However, the matter is more complicated than Yale just building more dormitories, Sabin acknowledged. If Yale were to build more student housing, those properties would likely become tax-exempt. Nearly 57 percent of real estate in New Haven — valued at more than $10 billion is tax-exempt already; the University and its hospital system own 43.4 percent of that property for a combined total of more than $4.3 billion tax-exempt realty. 

In contrast, if a new building is built by the private market and occupied by local residents and students alike, then they will all be paying taxes to the city, which would enable New Haven to provide more services to residents.  

According to New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker, part of the creation of Yale’s Center for Inclusive Growth is to help New Haven better coordinate with the University as the school’s population grows. While much of the center’s work has focused on creating and supporting small businesses, he said that members of the organization have expressed interest in ensuring that housing becomes an important component of the center’s goals. 

“It’s important that Yale understands that its financial contribution to the city is hugely important to the city’s success,” Elicker told the News. “I think there certainly could be a good role that Yale could play to help support the development of housing.” 

As it stands now, the College is looking to keep more students on campus, through new policies like giving juniors priority over seniors in the housing lottery. It remains to be seen if these moves will help that goal come to fruition. 

“The empty beds speak to Yale’s inability to effectively distribute people to bedrooms and suites across campus, and in an ideal world, there should be no empty beds on campus,” Siesel said. “Yale should take concrete steps to ensure that every single bed on campus is filled.”

Students in their first four semesters of enrollment are required to live on campus unless they are married or are at least 21 years old.

The post A historic number of students live off-campus. The exodus may be straining an already competitive local housing market appeared first on Yale Daily News.

In mid-February, U.S. House Republicans proposed a budget resolution ordering $1.4 trillion in federal expenditure cuts. Narrowly passed a week later, it aims to slash $230 billion in agriculture spending by 2034, including emergency assistance funds for the food insecure.

Ongoing negotiations with the Senate — which has passed a very different budget bill of its own — will determine whether the House’s ordered cuts will come into effect. Regardless, the axing of several key programmes by the U.S. Department of Agriculture has already begun to devastate Connecticut organizations that aim to ease food insecurity, according to their executive leadership. 

These cuts have also arrived as food insecurity mounts across the nation. An increased one million families became unable to acquire sufficient food from 2022 to 2023, resulting in 13.5 percent of American households classed as food insecure according to a USDA report. 

The Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement, or LFPA, for instance, helped local governments purchase nutritious and regionally-specific food from underserved local producers. This produce was then distributed to the surrounding community, bolstering the economic potential of the regional agricultural supply chain while furthering food security. 

The LFPA, along with its sister Local Food for Schools program, were axed on March 10 by the USDA.

“[The LFPA] would have enabled us to provide millions of fresh, Connecticut-grown meals to the one in eight Connecticut residents (including one in six children) experiencing food insecurity,” wrote Connecticut Foodshare, a member of the Feeding America network of food banks, in a written statement to the News. Now, that funding is gone. 

Funding cuts in early March to other federal programs that the food bank relies on, including The Emergency Food Assistance Program, or TEFAP, have resulted in the cancellation of two trucks of food that would have been provided to the organization’s state-wide partners. 

For Connecticut Foodshare, 30 percent of their food inventory relies on federal funding in the form of TEFAP or Commodity Supplemental Food Program, according to the organization’s Chief of Staff Jennie Hirsch. CSFP has not yet been affected by budget cuts. 

Food insecurity in New Haven is especially widespread. According to the New Haven Equity Profile published by DataHaven, 27 percent of Elm City households received Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, funding in 2021. SNAP benefits are available to low-income households earning less than 130 percent of the federal poverty line — or, in other words, those experiencing acute food insecurity. 

This figure was significantly higher for Black and Latino households: 37 percent of Black and 38 percent of Latino households were eligible for support in the New Haven area. 

The House budget would cut SNAP funding over the next decade, leaving even more people reliant on a weakened food aid scheme. Though specific policy directives remain unknown, the resolution currently proposes increased work requirements to qualify for the program while reducing the maximum allotment of funding per household over the next decade.

However, according to Connecticut Foodshare, 50 percent of individuals grappling with food insecurity do not even qualify for federal aid. Their only option is to turn to the charitable network — a network which, under the current trajectory of budget cuts, may quickly begin to disintegrate. 

“We’ll do our best to adapt to the cuts that will come,” said Mayor Justin Elicker in an interview with the News. “There’s a lot of uncertainty as to what areas will be cut, but we’re focused on having a status quo budget to continue to fund the services that are important to our residents.”

Elicker noted the worrying possibility of the White House reducing funding for free and reduced school lunch programs — a policy the city currently relies on to ensure that all public school children in New Haven are fed — or that the administration may deem undocumented children ineligible to access these resources. If federal funding falls through, Elicker pledged to respond and continue to work with non-profit organizations to support the New Haven community. 

The Community Soup Kitchen, which aims to feed the hungry in Elm City, is one such organization. Reliant on food banks like Connecticut Foodshare for its produce, funding cuts have left the prominent soup kitchen similarly destabilized. 

“We feed 500 to 600 a day, Monday through Saturday. We’re mostly funded by private donors, but the cutting of our food bank’s money has us running out of [food] that we would normally receive at a discounted [or subsidized rate]. [Now] we have to spend more money to keep our program running,” said Executive Director Winston Sutherland. 

Hirsh elaborated that funding cuts have caused an overall reduction in the food bank’s inventory. Its partners, including Community Soup Kitchen, have free access to whatever is available — which is proving to no longer be enough.

Yet the state may soon step in. Connecticut lawmakers have proposed HB 7021 — a bill, which if passed in the state legislature, would fund Connecticut’s Nutrition Assistance Program and reinvigorate the state’s food aid network. 

The Connecticut Nutrition Assistance Program comprises the state’s food bank and food stamp expenditures. Currently, Connecticut spends just $1.92 to support each food insecure person. Neighboring states, such as New York and Massachusetts, spend $21.90 and $51.02 respectively. 

“[HB 7021] would provide Connecticut Foodshare with enough funds to distribute 22 million additional meals yearly, with 15 percent sourced from Connecticut farmers,” wrote Hirsch. 

Connecticut Foodshare works with 650 community-based local partners to serve 44 million meals annually.

Elijah Hurewitz-Ravitch contributed reporting.

The post Cuts to federal food assistance promise to destabilize New Haven aid network appeared first on Yale Daily News.

New Haven United Football Club was officially established last month by Jason Price, a local entrepreneur who owns the arts incubator NXTHVN, as an expansion club in the National Premier Soccer League. Although not considered a professional team because the players won’t be paid, the team will compete in the fourth highest tier in American competitive soccer — a minor league, in other words.

“I purchased it for the love of the game, the love of the athlete and the love of the changing regional soccer ecosystem, but bringing it to a community that I’m involved with,” Price told the News. “I do believe that sport has a way to bring community together [as] something that a lot of communities enjoy rallying around … and since soccer is such a multicultural sport, it brings out a diverse group of New Haven citizens.”

New Haven United will compete in the NPSL’s North Atlantic Conference against at least four other clubs, with the possibility of advancing to a playoff series and even the U.S. Open Cup — a tournament consisting of American teams from four professional leagues and four amateur leagues. The regular season will run from May to July.

According to Price, the roster is made up of aspiring “pre-pro” players from NCAA Division I programs, including a few players from the Yale, Sacred Heart and UConn men’s teams, international players and older players who may have reached the end of their professional careers but can still play at a relatively high level. The NPSL, he said, is “a great pathway” to professional soccer in the United States or abroad.

Conrad Lee ’26, a goalkeeper on Yale’s men’s team, recently signed with the inaugural squad. 

He emphasized how important it is for Division I players like himself to play at a high level over the summer to ensure that they’re prepared for the NCAA’s fall soccer season, though they cannot be paid in a professional capacity in order to maintain NCAA eligibility. During his college summers, Lee has also played for Hartford City FC — another NPSL team — and Ballard FC — a semi-pro USL League Two team based in Seattle.

“I was looking for a place where I can get more minutes and get to play with my [Yale] teammates, as well, because there hasn’t been any kind of amateur setup in New Haven,” Lee said. “I’m lucky enough that they’ve signed me on to their roster for this inaugural season, and I’m super excited.”

Although New Haven hasn’t had a high-level soccer team — or any professional sports team for that matter — in six years, United has an impressive legacy to follow. Elm City Express soccer team won the 2017 NPSL championship in its inaugural season and advanced to the third round of the 2018 U.S. Open Cup. The Express took a hiatus for the 2019 season and was never reestablished.

Considering the legacy of amateur soccer in New Haven and the caliber of the incoming squad, Lee is hoping United will be able to make a run for a championship. 

“Any opportunity that I can get as a player to go and compete for something that means something, not just to the team, but for a place in the community is fantastic,” Lee told the News.

“It’s been very clear from the get-go that this club is going to try to establish that sense of community around the group, and that is awesome to play for when you are a player. When you’re playing for something bigger than yourself, that’s what makes it so much more rewarding.”

Mayor Justin Elicker is looking forward to the club’s first season and its potential impact on the city, and local players, fans and families should be, too, he wrote to the News.

“The arrival of New Haven United is a wonderful opportunity to support and grow the sport of soccer in the Elm City and across the region,” he wrote. “Jason Price has been a strong collaborator with and champion for the city, and we’re confident he’ll build an outstanding soccer program with New Haven United.” 

New Haven United will play its home games in Yale’s Reese Stadium — home to the Bulldogs’ men’s and women’s soccer and lacrosse teams. 

The post New Haven scores new semi-pro soccer team appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Tweed Airport’s placement within the East Shore community means that travellers have to drive through residential communities to get to and from the airport. The entrance of the airport sits at the intersection of Fort Hale Road and Burr Street, home to many New Haven residents. Many of these residents have complaints regarding the increased car traffic, illegal parking and idling vehicles waiting to pick up airport passengers.

“They need to do more traffic enforcement,” Gloria Bellacicco, a local resident with concerns about airport expansion, said. Bellacicco complained about the lack of vehicle tagging and towing along Burr Street, where she claims vehicles are instead marked as parked for the airport and left alone. 

Joe Giordano, an East Haven resident who supports airport expansion, pointed out that “1,200 to 1,400 passengers converge every morning down Fort Hale Road for the early morning flights,” which he said strains the infrastructure at the airport and stresses travelers.

Sergeant Christopher Alvarado of the New Haven Police Department acknowledged these issues, noting that major congestion issues are mainly caused by flight delays, resulting in an influx of passengers that cause an unexpected rush hour. He announced that the NHPD has allocated another officer to work the perimeter of Tweed Airport, which could help alleviate these issues. 

Additionally, Alvarado clarified that while the NHPD “is more proactive, [the Traffic and Parking Department] is more reactive,” stating that residents should call in reports of disruptive vehicles to have them properly dealt with.

Thomas Cavaliere, director of community engagement at Tweed Airport, mentioned that the worst traffic issues were over the past holiday season, when flights were separated by mere 15-minute blocks. 

“Starting on March 3, to spread that out, instead of every 15 minutes, we’re now looking at 25-30 minutes.” 

Cavaliere says that this move should help alleviate congestion.

Cavaliere also announced that the city government and city engineer have developed a new traffic pattern for use at the airport, which they plan to construct by the end of the spring. While the plan has not been finalized, it currently involves the construction of a second exit and a roundabout at the intersection of Dean and Burr Streets. This means that cars for departing flights will still use Fort Hale Road, but cars leaving the airport will drive down Burr Street to the end of the road, and then take a right onto Townsend Avenue. The plan is forecasted to decrease traffic on Fort Hale Road by 30 percent.

City Engineer Giovanni Zinn, in a public meeting regarding the plan, stated that the traffic along Fort Hale Road has prevented residents from leaving their driveways. The narrow two-lane residential road makes it easy for residual traffic to spill out into the surrounding neighborhood. He believes that the reduction in “pinch points” — intersections handling more car traffic than originally designed for — leading to the airport will significantly improve traffic flow. 

Bellacicco expressed concern over this plan of action. 

“I really have an issue with sending all the cars out of the airport past a grammar school, a senior center, a church and a food pantry,” she said. These facilities are along the affected section of Townsend Avenue. Bellacicco highlighted how many students at Nathan Hale School are being picked up by parents, some of whom have to walk across the busy street to pick up their children.

Bellacicco also thinks that the lack of a traffic light at the proposed Townsend Avenue and Burr Street intersection leading out of the airport could lead to issues. With the intersection of Fort Hale Road and Townsend Avenue having a traffic light, she believes that diverting cars onto more roads in the community would worsen the congestion situation overall.

“Having a second exit to the airport is a temporary thing until the bulk of the traffic moves to the east side of the airport,” Zinn responded, referring to the relocation of terminal facilities to a new connecting road off of the nonresidential Proto Drive. 

Andrew King, spokesperson for Avports, the current operator of Tweed Airport, also believes that the airport can help financially support an effort to have a consistent crossing guard stationed outside of the Nathan Hale School.

Carolyn Roskowski, a resident who lives on Fort Hale Road, believes that the traffic flow by the school should be studied more by the city. 

“I’ve seen those lineups every morning and afternoon, and I think that’s something that bears more consideration, especially since we’re talking about kids and their parents,” she said.

A second public meeting is currently in the works. However, it is unclear when it will be arranged. 

The Board of the Tweed Airport Authority is set to convene again on March 21.

The post Tweed Airport traffic congestion faces local scrutiny appeared first on Yale Daily News.

New Haven Police Department Officer Jonathan Lambe began the evening with a police report that described a common trend of stolen cars but noted no violent crime in the past month. He added that the majority of car thefts are committed by youth. 

When Beaver Hills resident and former New Haven school teacher Nan Bartow asked how best to address youth involvement in such crimes, Lambe replied that youth involvement was an issue being considered up to the mayor’s office. “I can only default to the resources I’m given,” Lambe said.

The topic of youth behavior rose again after Neighborhood Specialist Laura Daniels asked the group for general neighborhood concerns.

Residents expressed support for youth programming and worries about low engagement. CMT Chair Rebecca Cramer mentioned hearing police concerns that “there are activities, it’s just that maybe they’re not engaging with them.”         

Lambe said that such activities are often sought out by “model children” but that Police Chief Karl Jacobson was pushing the department to identify other children who could benefit from youth programs.

Bartow expressed interest in the CMT working directly with the Youth and Recreation Department, as they are currently not in direct contact.

Attendees also discussed progress on public works grants, such as ones that fund playground renovations and efforts to calm traffic.

Cramer updated the neighborhood on how it is using its Neighborhood Equity & Opportunity Challenge Program grant, which provides city funding for local projects.

The CMT is currently waiting for quotes on tree trimming along Whalley Avenue, and Cramer says that work on the Beaver Ponds Park play area is “making progress, though not much because it’s cold right now.”

A traffic-calming project on Goffe Street is also planned, and the design is close to being finalized by New Haven and a traffic consultant, according to Cramer. 

Nearly a third of the meeting was dedicated to discussing the opening of the Midwestern Connecticut Council of Alcoholism New Haven Outpatient Clinic on 215 Whalley Ave. 

The clinic — which currently offers services to around 280 individuals — is moving from its location down the street from 419 Whalley Ave. Representatives from the Midwestern Connecticut Council of Alcoholism said that the new building, which is set to open on March 17, will consist of a mix of group therapy rooms and individual counseling offices.

The Whalley-Edgewood-Beaver Hills monthly Community Management Team meets again on March 18.

The post Beaver Hills residents call for youth programming amid car thefts appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Among the New Haveners in attendance were members of the New Haven chapter of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, the University of New Haven football team and representatives from New Haven Public Schools. 

“The stories here are stories of Black history, which is another way of saying that they are stories of Yale history, of New Haven history, of Connecticut history, of American history,” Michael Morand ’87 DIV ’93, the New Haven City Historian and a co-curator of the exhibit, said to commence community day.

Artist Denise Manning Keyes Page gave a presentation, “Ubuntu Storytellers: Sweeps and Scholars,” about her enslaved ancestors’ history. The museum also screened a documentary produced by the Beinecke Library entitled “What Could Have Been,” on the 1831 proposal for America’s first HBCU in New Haven, which was the central focus of the exhibit. The proposal was squashed by a town vote of 700-4. 

Morand’s co-curator Charles Warner Jr. explained that this exhibit has been nearly 25 years in the making. Three graduate students had done the research for the exhibit in 2001, but, according to Warner, they presented their report the day before September 11, 2001. Their research was paused.

In 2020, former Yale President Peter Salovey commissioned the Yale and Slavery Working Group, which Warner is involved in, to investigate the history of slavery in New Haven and at Yale. Warner commended Salovey for launching the initiative.

“You cannot be on the outside of what’s happening,” he remarked, especially not at Yale, “an institution that has so much impact in terms of scholarship.”

Stamped in bold black letters on the floor at the entrance to the exhibit is a directive for museumgoers: “You are here as a participant in the future.”

Morand told the crowd that “no work ever has a single author.” He thanked everyone in attendance and deemed them museum VIPs. This education or re-education of Black history in the city is a collective effort, Morand explained, that requires all to participate. 

“It’s not up to the historians or the curators to tell people or institutions or governments what to do, but rather to give them the ingredients so that they can cook up the policies and programs,” he said. 

New Haven Museum Director of Learning and Engagement Joanna Steinberg is thrilled with how the exhibit has been received. According to her, the museum has had over 11,000 visitors since the exhibit’s opening in February 2024.

Museumgoer April Pruitt, who is a Yale doctoral student in neuroscience and a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, or AKA, said the museum is “a very reflective space that allows us to think about the progress that could have been and what is our current responsibility to the broader New Haven community, to the Black community, for making sure that progress continues.”

Much like Pruitt, Morand believes the exhibit has succeeded in exposing the truth about Yale, New Haven and slavery. In the exhibit, Connecticut is referred to as the Georgia of the North. It was the last state to abolish slavery in New England. Until recently, there were monuments in New Haven to Confederate and Union soldiers.

Morand noted that “the names that matter are the names you haven’t heard before” in the exhibit.

“We need to acknowledge that Yale and New Haven have been doing history for a long time. In previous histories, we ignored the centrality of slavery as an institution and enslaved people as people. And therefore, the history is incomplete,” Morand said.

David Walker ART ’23, a professor of graphic design at Yale, designed the exhibit. According to Walker, education about the history of the caliber the exhibit provides is more important now than ever. 

“Who knew a short twelve months later that this work would be much more urgent as our history–our imperfect America–would be under attack from within,” Walker remarked. 

Warner echoed Walker’s sentiments in his own presentation. 

“Truth is not truth anymore. This is not political. It is not Democrat or Republican. It is not liberal or conservative. It is simply the truth,” he said. Warner’s remarks were met with applause.  

The “Shining Light on Truth: New Haven, Yale, and Slavery” exhibit will close on March 1.

The post “You are here as a participant in the future”: New Haven Museum hosts Community Day appeared first on Yale Daily News.