Mayor: New Haven asks for coronavirus housing help; Yale says ‘no’

New Haven, Connecticut - Thursday, March 26, 2020: Dr. Katie Gielissen, who specializes in internal medicine at Yale New Haven Health, left, with Red Cross employee Delores Wright, right, participates in a Red Cross blood drive at Yale New Haven Hospital in New Haven Thursday where hospital employees and Yale University employees turned out to donate much needed blood during the COVID19 pandemic. less New Haven, Connecticut - Thursday, March 26, 2020: Dr. Katie Gielissen, who specializes in internal medicine at Yale New Haven Health, left, with Red Cross employee Delores Wright, right, participates in a Red ... more Photo: Peter Hvizdak / Hearst Connecticut Media Photo: Peter Hvizdak / Hearst Connecticut Media Image 1 of / 15 Caption Close Mayor: New Haven asks for coronavirus housing help; Yale says ‘no’ 1 / 15 Back to Gallery

NEW HAVEN — Yale University said no.

But the University of New Haven said yes.

An angry Mayor Justin Elicker said he asked Yale University President Peter Salovey whether police officers and firefighters who are asymptomatic, but who have a family member exposed to COVID-19, or who are not symptomatic, but have been exposed to the virus, or are waiting for test results, if they could use a dormitory at the university.

The answer was no.

He said he then called UNH President Steve Kaplan, “who in the first 5 minutes of the conversation, said ‘yes. We will make this happen. This is important for the community.’”

The discussion on this started at the virtual press conference Elicker held to update the city on COVID-19, a session where he announced a second resident, this time a man in his late 40s, had died as a result of the coronavirus as the number of persons infected in the city had almost doubled from 30 to 52.

He made another strong appeal for residents to practice social distancing to hold down the number of infections as the city appears to be entering the beginning of a surge of cases, something Yale New Haven Hospital physicians made clear in a separate press conference they had earlier in the day. He also thanked the 235 people voluteering to be part of a city Medical Reserve Corp, one day after the plea was published

On the issue of the dorm rooms, Elicker said “UNH has rolled out the red carpet for us. They have worked to quickly get students’ belongings out of the dorms and they are working with us to address other logistical and liability hurdles. We are quite close to finalizing an agreement with them so that our police officers and firefighters can begin moving into the space in the coming days.”

He said he was very grateful to Kaplan.

Elicker only brought up the arrangement when asked a question on his response to Yale contributing $1 million to a fund being raised in parallel with the Community Foundation of Greater New Haven and the United Way to assist the city in its needs during this pandemic crisis. Yale asked that others join in to bring its total to $5 million, as it matches donations $1 for $1.

Elicker said he had not requested that money, just the dorm space.

“My response is this: if your house is burning down and you asked a neighbor if your kids could stay at your house and your neighbor said ‘no,’ but here is a check so you could stay at the Econo Lodge across town, what would that tell you about your neighbor?

“It is in these times of crisis when people are exposed for their true selves. Everyone needs to do their part at this very difficult time and writing a check does not exempt you from that fact,” Elicker said.

Karen Peart, spokeswoman for Yale, issued a long statement in response to the mayor’s criticism, explaining that the students’ rooms won’t be ready for new occupants for weeks.

“Our student rooms still contain their belongings, but we have teams planning the feasibility of packing and storing all the student belongings so that the rooms could be utilized,” she said.

“We are pursuing schemes that involve professional movers and packers, and using temporary storage. The process will take weeks, as all of the residence hall rooms on campus are filled with student belongings. As soon as we have been able to clear any space, we have informed the mayor that we will let him know,” Peart said.

“We all wish the situation on our campus were different, but because our students had already gone home for spring recess when we implemented our social distancing restrictions, the rooms aren’t ready for others to live in them.” Peart said.

She added that the $5 million fund “is not connected in any way to the fact that we are not able to provide use of the residential colleges at this time.”

Elicker said Salovey called two weeks ago when the COVID-19 crisis was ramping up, and offered whatever support Yale could give. He said he asked Yale late last week about the dorm space.

The mayor said the dormitory request was to provide a place where firefighters and police officers with symptoms could self-isolate so they didn’t have to go home and potentially infect their family or be infected by another family member.

The healthy members could continue to go to work, while those with symptoms would not expose others on the force or in the firehouses, if they had a place to stay.

Elicker said the city faced some of these circumstances in the last few days where there were two firefighters who were exposed to the virus and tested negative, while several others are waiting for test results. They are basically in a holding pattern right now, the mayor said.

He estimated the city needs rooms for between 100 and 150 individuals and UNH “has been very collaborative” on that.

The mayor said he considered asking Yale if the city could use some dorm space to house homeless individuals, as New Haven is trying to reduce the numbers in shelters that are too crowded to allow for social distancing. He said he had not made that request to Yale.

“We are having very productive conversations with other universities in the region,” he said on the issue of housing the homeless.

Peart enumerated the ways Yale University is helping the city in response to the spread of COVID-19.

She said the university took “bold actions to prevent and slow the spread of COVID-19 ... for our campus and the broader communities of which we are a part.”

She said it will start distributing the funds raised in the Yale Community for New Haven Fund as soon as possible and University Properties has suspended March and April base rent payments for more than 100 businesses in university-owned buildings. Peart also said University Properties was also connecting the merchants with the Small Business Association and inform them of government financial relief programs, The university is also promoting a gift card-buying initiative to support downtown shops.

Peart said Yale Hospitality is continuing to donate food to the Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen and is committed to providing food for the organizations that help the homeless, while boosting food purchases from local vendors.

She wrote that Yale is maintaining the salaries of the 6,000 New Haven residents who work at the university and is donating personal protective equipment to local hospitals; also it supports research on COVID-19 and shares that with the city. She said the Yale School of Public Health, faculty and student volunteers are performing contact tracing to help mitigate the spread of the virus, while acting as consultants to the city in addressing food insecurity, seniors housing and homelessness and helps with online tutoring for K-12 students.

She said more than 300 Yale School of Nursing faculty, students, and staff have volunteered to provide support during a possible surge of cases and the school is developing a text-message based survey to track healthcare workers exposed or diagnosed with the virus.

Peart said Yale School of Medicine researchers are studying how the novel coronavirus infects cells, how the immune system responds, and ways of disrupting that process, while its Clinical Virology Laboratory developed testing for COVID-19 in-house.

The university also established a field hospital in Payne Whitney Gymnasium’s Lanman Center as an extension of the Yale Health Center to treat members of the university community who might become ill, reducing the number who would need to use the hospital.

“We recognize that the pandemic is evolving rapidly, and we will continue to consult with public health and medical experts and local and federal officials as we adapt our response plans and strategies. Our priorities will remain centered on the well-being of our campus and home communities,” Peart said.

Elicker said they are looking for more sites for homeless individuals who may contract COVID-19 in addition to the isolation shelter they are establishing at Hill Regional Career High School. He said there are conversations on that with other entities, whom he would not name.

The city has already decompressed the shelters, to an extent, by sending 84 individuals to hotel rooms, some paid for by the state, some by the city. The state is looking to do more of that.

The second tier of homeless is individuals who may be symptomatic of COVID-19 but have not yet been tested. Elicker said it was important for the city to self-isolate those individuals as they should not be interacting with other people.

He said there were a few examples of this already, where one or two in a group shelter, tested positive for COVID-19. He said the remaining people should be tested and separated from those who were already infected. Elicker said the city needs places where the homeless can self-isolate, while their tests are processed.

Yale College Undergraduate Admissions announced Thursday it offered admission to 2,304 students.

mary.oleary@hearstmediact.com; 203-641-2577.