‘I Just Don’t Know How Much Longer I Can Endure This’: Hamden Residents Speak Out Over Foundation Repairs

By Lisa Reisman, New Haven Independent

HAMDEN, CT — When the rains came last week, Tasha English watched cracks develop in the walls of her Newhall home. Already her doors and windows don’t open and close properly because her foundations are sinking. So is the shed. That’s caused groundhogs to overtake her backyard. There is mildew and black mold in her basement.

“This is a home I used to cherish,” English told a group of 40 neighbors, town officials, and project consultants on Thursday evening. Of her property, which she purchased more than two decades ago, “I just don’t know how much longer I can endure this,” she said.

The meeting, at Hamden’s Breakthrough Church on Shelton Avenue, was hosted by the Hamden Newhall Neighborhood Association, which was formed in 2024 with a mission to fight for funds sufficient to repair the crumbling homes caused by a century of industrial waste disposal and exacerbated by a subsequent environmental cleanup that didn’t get the job done.

Last year, the group rode their unofficial guiding principle—“it ends with us”—to a historic budget of approximately $18 million in federal, state, and local funding to cover the cost of the repairs.

As part of the effort to keep Newhall residents apprised of developments in both the repairs to the foundations and demolition of the former middle school, which also sits on contaminated land, the town agreed to a series of quarterly outreach meetings. Thursday’s was the third, and included representatives from the engineering consulting firm Haley & Aldrich, 7 Summits Construction, and BL Companies.

There were updates for the two projects since the April 23 meeting. Regarding the middle-school demolition, the plans are complete. The documents have been completed and submitted for review. A public bidding will follow. The planned demolition is scheduled to happen before the end of this year. Hamden Mayor Adam Sendroff, who attended the meeting, pledged a “bottom-up as opposed to top-down process” to determine the future of the site.

As for the foundations repair, 7 Summits project manager Tim Barry described a “slow, rolling start” for the first 18 of 75 properties currently in the project, with three or four properties under construction— “not enough to overwhelm the neighborhood, but with all types of construction happening,” he said.

Someone asked when those repairs would start. Barry said that Haley & Aldrich has submitted the construction documents for review for those first 18 properties. After the town reviews the documents, there will be a public bid process for trade contractors.

“So we’re looking at a potential start date of mid-November,” Barry said.

There were audible sighs from the audience.

“I think a lot of us have stories very similar to Tasha’s,” said HNNA President Tina Jennings-Harriott, referring to the travails of homeowner Tasha English. Jennings-Herriott recounted hearing weather warnings while at work earlier that week, and “thinking dear god, is my home gonna be able to withstand another rainstorm.”

Sendroff, the mayor, acknowledged the gathering frustration felt by many homeowners. “We know from surveys and from these meetings that there is a concern about timelines,” he said, referring to community surveys completed by residents.

Someone else spoke up. His house was rebuilt after a fire, including its foundation. What did that mean for the planned repairs? he asked.

“I don’t think we can answer that without seeing it in person,” said Hamden Grants and Capital Projects Coordinator Carol Hazen. Barry emphasized the sheer scale and complexity of the task. “We have to basically educate ourselves about each of the 75 individual properties, each of which is unique to itself,” he said. “And it all has to be synchronized with other trades and with the homeowner.”

There were questions about relocation during the reconstruction (determination on a case-by-case basis); about reimbursement for urgent repairs that bear on habitability (probably not); about triaging the most dire cases, like that of Tasha English’s. Was the sequence of homes to be addressed locked in or would they consider a pivot?

From a construction standpoint, Barry answered, it makes more sense to prioritize those properties with issues that can be resolved most expediently. That said, he added, “if there are homes that are in urgent need of triage now, that will be taken into consideration.”

From the back of the hall, HNNA Vice President Tonya Campbell was shaking her head. “We appreciate all this for sure, we appreciate how far we’ve come, but there’s still waiting and more waiting, and many of us are just trying to hold on,” she said.

“We have to take advantage of the full access that we have to these folks,” Jennings-Herriott told her neighbors in closing. “We’ve not been at the table in 20 to 25 years we’ve all been going through this. Now we are and we need to keep showing up and letting our voices be heard.”

The New Haven Independent is a not-for-profit public-interest daily news site founded in 2005.