Thanks to our partners at the APT Foundation, DESK’s entire staff received or renewed their basic life support certification. Working with countless community members each year across the region, DESK staff are often the first to respond before first responders arrive. In critical, life-threatening situations, when seconds matter, a robust first response can be the difference between life and death. This workshop helped our staff recognize the signs of an emergency and develop skills to respond both individually and as a team, including how to use an Automated External Defibrillator.
This includes connections to shelter, food, vital documents, storage, showers, mail services, enrollment in government benefits, and clothing. We’re proud to have added basic life support skills to our toolkit.
If you’re hanging out in New Haven, you’ve probably felt like there are more people sleeping on the streets than in the past. Your perception reflects reality, and not just for our city, but all across the state, and indeed the country. There are currently 405 individuals and eight families in Greater New Haven who are on the waitlist to get into shelter. Even during the coldest months of the year, we continue to have too few options for people to get in off the streets and find warmth and safety. Faced with federal cuts to the proven practices of reducing homelessness by providing unhoused people with housing, we are anticipating these numbers to nearly double this winter, as DESK’s services for unsheltered people become a matter of life and death. Meanwhile, cities nationwide have seen stepped up aggression toward unhoused people. Despite the evidence that strategies rooted in compassion have greater success of getting people housed, many municipalities have been opting for law enforcement approaches, emboldened by last year’s Supreme Court ruling in Grants Pass v. Johnson.
Public health is getting worse
Connecticut generally and New Haven specifically have a long history of providing proven, best-practice services to people who use drugs. In the 1990s, New Haven piloted one of the first syringe service programs as a highly effective means of reducing rates of infectious disease (particularly HIV) and creating pathways to trust, treatment, and recovery. Now those harm reduction models are under attack by federal authorities who reject science and seek to reinvigorate the “war on drugs” policies that targeted our Black and brown communities and failed all of us. Because of these cooperative, responsible, and well-funded services, New Haven has seen falling rates of fatal overdoses in the last five years. But despite the ample evidence, public funders are now shying away from what we know works for political reasons. As these funding sources disappear, it will be up to community-based organizations like DESK to ensure that people get the services they need to remain safe and healthy.
So what do we do?
For almost 40 years, DESK has been fighting an uphill battle against homelessness and poverty. We do this because we believe that we, as a community, can do better. We haven’t always been on the same page as our political leaders. Some-times, our elected officials have turned away from the compassionate approaches and best practices that we know work. When that happens, we look toward community—our neighbors—to step up.
Your support is critical to ensuring that everyone in New Haven has the opportunity to access basic needs.
Join me today in giving to DESK. Step up to the need that is facing us on our streets. Together, we can ensure that we will someday end hunger and homelessness with compassionate and proven strategies. Donate online at deskct.org/stepup.
And thank you as always!
Yours in service,
P.S. Are you in a position to give through retirement savings, securities, or planned giving? Learn more about how you can be part of DESK’s Legacy Society at deskct.org/legacy.
This past year has been among the busiest, and least boring, ever. As we prepared for the renovations of our Drop-in & Resource Center, we moved our day-program over to the Church of St. Paul & St. James (temporarily) and our administrative offices over to East Street (permanently). We onboarded new outreach staff and expanded our services for people who are unsheltered and use drugs. We created new staff positions explicitly for those with lived expertise, in line with best practices. We deepened our relationships with long-time partners, like Cornell Scott Hill Health Center by signing a multiyear agreement to house their Homeless Healthcare Medical Clinic at 266 State Street.
By all measures, DESK is a stronger and healthier organization than we have ever been in our four-decade history; we are having a greater impact in the lives of New Haven’s most vulnerable residents than was ever imagined. And despite our growth, we have remained true to our grassroots and community-based values by building an even bigger tent of supporters and volunteers, and bridging the divide between those we serve and the broader community. I have never been more proud of this organization, our staff, our volunteers and interns, our Board, and everyone who has felt drawn to our mission of service.
But let’s be clear: things are not alright. There are more people living on the streets of New Haven—as in many cities across this country—than have been at any time in the last two decades. There are not nearly enough affordable housing units, shelter beds, outreach workers, or drop-in centers for those in need. The very existence of those we serve is under attack, as our cities have been emboldened to criminalize homelessness. Meanwhile, the modest gains we’ve made in combating the opioid crisis through evidence-based harm reduction strategies are threatened by a likely return to the failed enforcement approach of a previous generation. The public funding that supported best practices, compassionate care, and stabilizing lives over the last four years—and enabled DESK’s ability to respond to the need—has dried up.
To sustain what we have built and fulfill our mission, DESK must remain true to our roots as an organization that responds to, relies on, and is led by you: our community. To serve those most in need will require our community to embrace DESK’s compassionate and empathetic approach that prioritizes stability, seeks solutions, and forefronts the voices and needs of those most vulnerable. Thank you for bringing us this far, and I look forward to working with you in the year ahead as we build a better community for everyone.
This is the case of many people in the unhoused population. This outcome is hopeful as this hypothetical guest decided to stay. Institutional spaces and clinical rooms in their traditional configurations tend to isolate, intimidate and even reject some. Vulnerable populations that frequent soup kitchens and other support services are usually left to deal with these scenarios of stark environmental barriers, having to overcome the sterile spaces around them in addition to dealing with the effects of their current trauma, or be left out altogether.
Trauma-informed Design (TID) is an evidence-based practice guiding a set of strategies ideated to design safe, healing and welcoming environments for specific populations and their staff. It goes beyond aesthetics and recognizes that the quality of a space affects users outlook and mood, tying these to physical and mental health. TID was developed by codifying ways to ease or avoid trauma reactions altogether and establishing goals to provide safety, comfort, community, choice and voice. The solutions may range from relatively superficial material and furnishing selections to the programmatic organization of spaces, their security protocols, lines of sight.
For a person like our hypothetical guest to walk in the door and stay, these spaces need to feel inviting so they can relate to the user and gain their trust to continue down the path to recovery from trauma. These needs vary e.g., previously incarcerated people would prefer wide hallways, lots of natural light and biophilia; while an unhoused person would prefer a feeling of hominess, but not as much biophilia.
With construction well underway at Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen’s (DESK) Resource Center, in New Haven, CT, we see these concepts being put into practice. The TID process became critical to this project. It involved interviewing guests and staff whose previous experiences of space established the priorities and values that drove the design forward – and thus began the healing process. On the first floor dining hall we established clear lines of sight to address physical safety. A soft and warm color palette helps soothe, and different seating options allow for choice between a small table or communal gathering. Durable yet home-like finishes with wood patterns, and noise-absorptive fabric panels softening an existing brick wall were among the most desired features for this space so people could relax and feel welcomed.
The second floor features a new commercial kitchen – where choice is also addressed by offering an expanded range of dietary options- and office space for DESK employees and volunteers, and the third floor will house a small clinic with bathing facilities, a consultation and an exam room for guests to access medical, social work and behavioral staff without having to leave the premises. Also, the basement will house basic supplies like clothing and toiletries, laundry facilities, food storage and access to computers, and some quiet spaces for staff to work in.
The main constraints in this major renovation were a narrow, historic building and an unidentified budget -read non-profit. But well beyond the standard soup kitchen, the DESK Resource Center had an ambitious program and strove beyond funding to achieve a lowbarrier, entry-level facility for individuals who don’t (yet) fit in the system, and those who need to warm up to it and find their way forward. The new environment will provide comfort with a dignified space, while also satisfying basic needs (Maslow) of food, support, and healthcare, and ultimately love and belonging, community and connection -all under one roof.
We, the design professionals, have a great deal of influence and decision-making power; we need to approach our work with curiosity and resist the assumption that we experience the world and the built environment in the same way as those for whom we are designing. With that comes the responsibility to carefully consider our impact through the lens of equality and compassion to develop a world in which buildings will help us heal.
Ana Sirota
NCIDQ, WELL AP, Interior Designer
Svigals + Partners
