by Dereen Shirnekhi The New Haven independent
Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison: “The places in your budget are places I would rather stay outside than go inside.”
As Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison looked at the Livable City Initiative’s proposed budget breakdown for the next fiscal year, she had a question for the agency’s director: Why not ask for more money to relocate families who have to leave their homes, so that they can stay in nicer places?
Morrison was one of the alders on the city legislature’s Finance Committee in attendance at a Tuesday night budget workshop at City Hall, where alders heard from department heads about their portions of Mayor Justin Elicker’s proposed $733.3 million general fund budget for Fiscal Year 2026-27.
The Livable City Initiative (LCI) is the city department that focuses on housing code enforcement, anti-blight initiatives, and the residential landlord licensing program. LCI Executive Director Liam Brennan presented to alders what he described as a budget that is “essentially flat” from last year’s budget.
Elicker’s proposed budget includes a $4,153 bump in salaries across the department, bringing the total amount of general-fund dollars allocated to LCI to $1,342,007. (Only 13 of LCI’s 43 employee positions are funded by the general fund; the others are paid for by special funds.)
Apart from salaries, the proposed budget is in line with the budget approved by alders for the current fiscal year, with the cost of overtime, mileage, professional meetings, and contractual services remaining flat.
As part of that $1.3 million-plus general fund request, LCI is also looking for $400,000 to fund family relocation costs, the same amount that alders had approved for the current budget. With the number of fires seen just since the start of 2026, and the resulting necessary relocations, Brennan asked that the $400,000 be fully funded. “We have seen that money being used,” he said.
“Is there a reason why there isn’t more money put into family relocation?” Morrison asked Brennan and city Budget Director Shannon McCue.
LCI relocates families when their home catches fire or when they’re living in illegal dwelling units. So far in FY2025-26, Brennan said that LCI has relocated tenants due to fires at nine buildings amounting to 34 units, totaling 46 adults and eight children. LCI has so far also relocated six adults and two children living at six illegal dwelling units across two buildings.
Morrison said that as an alder, she has heard from residents who were displaced and sent to hotels that were “nasty.” As a social worker, she is worried about families who were already traumatized by the conditions that displaced them being relocated to another difficult living situation.
“What have you done to try to advocate for more funding or change these locations?” she asked. “I know the reason why there isn’t an increase in the request is because the places that you use don’t require a whole lot of money.”
“We’re largely on the same page, alder,” Brennan said. “There are certain institutions you may be thinking of where we try not to place people there.”
Brennan said that during the last budget season, LCI had requested $500,000 for relocation funds and had only received $400,000 from alders. “We thought you didn’t want to give us more than $400,000,” he said, and he wanted to be cognizant of the city’s budget constraints. “I want to make sure that does not get cut anymore.”
Morrison asked whether he would be able to provide the numbers so alders could know what it would cost to place people in “decent” places. “The places in your budget are places I would rather stay outside than go inside,” she said. “Any one of us could be in that situation, and you are not sending me to the places you are sending residents.”
After the meeting, Morrison specified that she is concerned about the Regal Inn on Whalley Avenue. “They place whole families there, but at the same time someone could be coming there to get a room for an hour,” she said. “I hate to put any business on blast but it is what it is.”
Purshotam Sharma, the front desk operator at Regal Inn, said over the phone that their housekeepers offer room-cleaning services every day. “Sometimes people, they say no. We want them to take service, we say please,” he said. But if they aren’t allowed to enter someone’s room, they can’t clean it.
Still, he said, “if they think something is dirty inside the room,” like sheets or towels, they just have to let staff know. The staff are on-site 24 hours per day. “We’ll change it.”
Sharma said that roughly 11 people relocated by LCI are at the Regal Inn right now, finishing up long-term stays. “It’s a safe place,” he said. “Don’t worry anything about this.”
He said that there are 85 rooms at the Regal Inn, and that 75-80 are typically full. He thinks that complaints arise when the staff don’t allow “illegal activities,” and people having others stay with them in their rooms and getting into fights. “Sometimes people are fighting inside the rooms, breaking the TV, breaking the lamps,” he said. “We [say] all the time, don’t do this, please, we are not allowed.”
Alder Tyisha Walker-Myers, alongside Alder Anna Festa (left), requests the numbers on relocation costs.
West River Alder and Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker-Myers asked Brennan on Tuesday how much of the relocation budget has been used so far this fiscal year. Brennan said that LCI has not exceeded the $400,000 allocation, but that he didn’t know the exact numbers at the moment. He promised to provide alders with those numbers.
Brennan also said that, because LCI is part of the city’s Economic Development Administration, they have been trying to patronize local businesses. “We are now engaging the suburbs as well in terms of a better roster of where we can place people,” he said.
“Why are we paying and not the property owner?” East Rock Alder Anna Festa asked.
Brennan said that property owners are liable when a displacement can be clearly shown to be the owner’s fault. “Most of our fire investigations don’t have a finding of whose at fault,” he said. Still, many landlords do pay for their tenants’ relocation, he said.
When the displacement can be proven to be the owner’s fault, or tenants are living in illegal dwelling units, then LCI can place a lien on the property and force a foreclosure on that lien if the landlord doesn’t pay. “We have not had the institutional muscle memory to do that,” he said. “That is something we’re hoping to redevelop.”
After the meeting, Morrison said that while she doesn’t have a specific hotel in mind that would be better for tenants, “I want something nice, something that people feel comfortable in, that people have quality towels and washcloths and quality linen.”
“Give people quality, they didn’t ask to be in a fire,” she said, particularly if the city is paying.
Morrison thinks it would be worth looking beyond New Haven hotels. “We always want to patronize New Haven businesses; however, if there are other hotels on the outskirts of New Haven that are better quality, I’d rather go for the quality,” she said. “We might have better ones here in New Haven that are very, very expensive.”
“If you’re already traumatized and you get in a situation that is bad like that — you start to look at self blame,” she continued. “At least if we could put them in a nice, bright, freshly painted” room, that could give families hope. “You want people to have hope because there’s a long road ahead of them to get back to having their own apartment.”