YHHAP Mutual Aid Circle
In partnership with the New Haven Housing Fund
The intention of this project is to encourage folks, especially within the Yale community, to give back in a way that helps unhoused people in New Haven with their direct needs, such as housing, food, and medical care. While non-profits and government assistance addressed these needs in part, they face restriction and limitations that leave essential needs unaddressed. Additionally, traditional charity models reinforce traditional power imbalances by reinforcing relationships of donor and recipient. The intention of YHHAP’s mutual aid circle is to direct community energy towards creating long-term networks of support, allowing low-income New Haven residents to voice their needs and receive help from their community directly. To get involved, please visit our form.
The Need
In New Haven, 25% of residents live in poverty, 22% are food-insecure, and 40% struggle to afford food and housing. At the same time, Yale, a $42.3 billion institution, receives an annual tax break of $157 million. Wealth hoarding has had disastrous consequences for the city of New Haven. Though Yale has pledged to increase its voluntary contribution, this glaring wealth gap needs to be addressed at the level of the community as well. As members of the Yale community, we have a responsibility to address this glaring inequity. As we press back against structural problems, we can also find individual ways to care for one another and change the material conditions of our neighbors.
Further Reading:
Why mutual aid?
The intention of this project is to encourage folks, especially within the Yale community, to give back in a way that helps unhoused people in New Haven with their direct needs, such as housing, food, and medical care. Though created with good intentions, state & federal assistance programs and nonprofits face regulations and use approaches that often leave the most fundamental needs unaddressed. Mutual aid offers a bottom-up approach, allowing marginalized peoples to voice what they need and their fellow neighbors to address that need directly.
As a city, New Haven has one of the highest numbers of locally-based nonprofit organization per capita, yet basic needs still often go unaddressed. This speaks to the inherent limitations of the charity model, as lack of flexibility and limitations on spending means emergency situations cannot be properly handled.
Most importantly, mutual aid transcends existing systems of power: while traditional charity models enforce power imbalances between donor and recipient and fails to address structural problems, mutual aid creates community relationships, reciprocal aid between neighbors. and long-term networks of support.
Further reading:
On the Limits of Charity (part 1) (part 2): Exploring the fundamental tension between the charity model and the pursuit of true justice
“Solidarity, Not Charity”: Mutual Aid Has Been Around for a Long Time: An accessible breakdown of what mutual aid is and the history of mutual aid in the US.
Mutual Aid Chart: Breaking down differences between mutual aid and charity, noting how the charity model enforces power imbalances.
YHHAP Mutual Aid Circle
If you’re interested in being part of the mutual aid circle, please sign up using our form.
When you sign up, you will receive a monthly report on the how the New Haven Housing Fund has made use of that month’s contributions. During the last week of every month, we will send out Venmo requests, and the total will be distributed among that month's beneficiaries once all donations are in.
If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to Monika Krasniqi (monika.krasniqi@yale.edu).
Our Partner: The New Haven Housing Fund
The New Haven Housing Fund is a mutual aid organization that connects people on the street to supplies & support in the New Haven community. This includes people experiencing homelessness, people connected to encampments & tent cities, those seeking reentry resources, survivors of violence, and any other groups or communities in the area. NHHF is both a monetary fund and a network of people. The network of people works to support people on the street through gathering supplies, giving rides and accompaniment to appointments, working through bureaucratic systems together, and building relationships to transform living conditions.
In their own words:
“New Haven Housing Fund is a strategy to allow for bulk purchasing and wide distribution of supplies to fill in gaps within existing services and have been requested directly by individuals living on the street, as well as those who are unstably or recently housed. We are housed individuals working to gather, purchase, and distribute resources to assist folks with covering enough bases by meeting these requests so that individuals can focus on their own projects and plans. All supplies are based off direct requests and are distributed through regular mobile and site-based outreach at least six days a week.
In the near future, we are hoping to provide the physical space and materials so that folks can organize a truly peer-led homeless union, users’ union, anti-eviction teams, and street papers, as many have been discussing or have been involved with in the past here in New Haven. We are also working to fundraise in order to more consistently meet requests for security deposit/rental assistance for those who aren’t eligible for existing programs; regular cash stipends for folks on the street for frequently uncompensated outreach and organizing work; cover citations related to the overt or covert criminalization of folks of color, poverty, substance use, sex work, queer and/or trans identities, and homelessness; cover relocation and travel costs; cover bail; and ensure adequate funding for emergency transportation and hotel stays during crises. At times, we have been able to fundraise enough to fill these more costly requests, but have severely limited capacity in being able to consistently cover these expenses when needed. Due to the unpredictability of living on the street, we want to be responsible in being able to have access to adequate crisis funding to make sure we can assist in emergency situations. As we’ve learned through almost four years of intentional outreach and supply distribution, there are gaps within service networks that people are forced into, and often these are the same individuals repeatedly over years. Since COVID, we began falling further behind on meeting requests and realized we needed to begin fundraising and gathering donations beyond usual networks as New Haven Housing Fund.
NHHF is both a monetary fund (@NewHavenHousingFund on Venmo & on Patreon) and a network of people. The fund is used to purchase specific supplies that can’t be donated, and meet other emergency needs, which we give updates on Instagram (New Haven Housing Fund) and through email (newhavenhousingfund@gmail.com). The network of people works to support people on the street through gathering supplies, giving rides and accompaniment to appointments, working through bureaucratic systems together, and building relationships to transform living conditions that produce harassment, abuse, and violence. By addressing collective needs through an abolition framework, we commit to building the presence of community in place of carceral systems.”
If you or someone you know is in need and would like to be supported by the fund, please contact yhhap@dwighthall.org.