Unhoused Activists Protest Warming Center Closures in New Haven

Around 30 unhoused residents and their allies marched through a cold April rain Wednesday morning to rally on the steps of New Haven City Hall, demanding answers from the city as its network of warming centers shut down for the season.

The demonstration was organized by the Unhoused Activist Community Team, known as U-ACT, and began at Varick Church on Dixwell Avenue, which closed as a warming center earlier that morning. Participants marched downtown to City Hall, then held a supply drive on the Green afterward.

Dominique Daniels, one of the rally’s most visible voices, addressed the crowd with a message that cut through the rain: “There’s nowhere to go.”

Daniels said the question that follows him every day is a simple one. “I’m always worried, where am I going to sleep at night?” He spoke openly about facing cruelty from others because of his sexuality and his housing status. “Do you know how embarrassing, how lonely, how incompetent I feel?” As a queer and Afro-Latino person, he said, “I just want respect.”

The last time Daniels had his name on a lease was roughly a decade ago, on New Haven’s west side. He has spent about a year organizing with U-ACT while remaining unhoused himself, an experience that has shown him what he described as “the lack of funds, the lack of compassion.” He also noted that the temporary closure of the pride center had hit the community hard, as it served as a daytime gathering place. The center is expected to reopen in May.

His ask to city leadership was direct: “Where the bag at? Where is the money?”

Fellow activist Roosevelt Watkins said the mood among those who walked from Varick to City Hall Wednesday morning was unmistakable. “What I didn’t see is people carrying a lot of hope.” He offered a blunt comparison to make the point land. The unhoused, he said, were worse off than “the dog you left at home, since it was raining, you brought the dog inside.” He asked those listening to sit with a basic question: “Imagine if you didn’t know where you would be sleeping.”

U-ACT organizer Strongbow Lone Eagle pushed the city’s thinking beyond cold-weather services. Warming centers address winter, he said, but heat kills too. “What about the heat? People can die from heat exhaustion. Where is some place you get out of the rain?” With summer approaching, he predicted that public libraries, which double as cooling centers, are “going to be bombarded.” He praised the work of Cornell Scott-Hill Health Center and Fellowship Place in filling gaps, but turned a pointed question toward Justin Elicker: “What is Elicker gonna do now? What has he been doing?”

Elicker, for his part, has acknowledged the scale of the challenge. The city’s warming centers opened in November and peaked at six locations serving residents through the winter months. Funding for one remaining site, the 180 Center on East Street, was extended so that it will stay open through April 30. After that, the city’s formal cold-weather shelter infrastructure goes dark for the season, leaving residents and advocates to figure out what comes next.

The gap between the city’s capacity and the community’s need has become the central frustration for U-ACT. The organization has grown over the past year into one of New Haven’s more persistent advocacy voices on homelessness, built largely by people who are themselves without stable housing. That fact shapes the urgency of their demands. They are not speaking on behalf of an abstract population. They are speaking for themselves, in the rain, on the steps of a building that represents a government they are asking to see them differently.

For Daniels, the work of organizing while unhoused has clarified what he needs from New Haven’s leaders: recognition, resources, and a place to go. He is still waiting for all three.