Citing concern that opening a shelter so close to the city’s “business and entertainment” hub would be bad for business (amongst a host of other crazy reasons), members of the Hartford Business Improvement District (BID) are trying to railroad the city into rethinking its proposal to open a no-freeze shelter. Read the full story

Brian Baker from South Park Inn, a shelter in Hartford, Natalie Matthews and Sara Zucker from the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness discuss CT’s current homeless situation, in a time when the economy is making getting by a lot more difficult.

Click here to download the MP3

(Change.org End Homelessness blog) A knife wielding homeless man was shot and killed by Police in Philadelphia on Friday.

The 20 year veteran Police didn’t elect to use a Taser, they didn’t use a night stick, they didn’t retreat to a safe distance. They did what they were trained to do = use deadly force / shoot to kill with a gun. (more…)

(Middletown Eye) “It’s an opportunity to cooperate with another community group,” Wesleyan student and Food Not Bombs member Abe Bobman said about the group’s decision to accept the help of Middletown’s First Church. “And it’s an opportunity that’s too good to miss.” (more…)

Photo credit: Ed McKeon, Middletown Eye

Audio clips:  

The ongoing conflict between the Middletown Health Department and the Middletown chapter of Food Not Bombs came to a head on April 26. Read the full story

Amidst controversy over a mysterious memo, the Hartford Housing Authority has been seeking developers to demolish, then rebuild, the city’s final, as yet untouched, low income public housing project – Nelton Court.  Located in the North East neighborhood, Nelton Court is in one of Hartford’s most depressed areas.  But, HHA’s plan for development calls for cutting the number of actual housing units basically in half, from 156 to 80.   HHA claims that 76 units there are currently vacant.   Cutting overall units has been the Housing Authority’s trend.  Hartford is a poorer city today than when most of these projects were built, so the justification for decreasing the number of units is unclear.  Read the full story