”One way to change your life is to change someone else’s.” This is the advice of Roosevelt Watkins, who provides peer outreach for people experiencing substance use and homelessness. “You see the need, you meet the need. If you see agencies that are doing good work, don’t just support them with cash. Support them with time.”
Watkins spoke as part of New Haven Voices, a panel discussion spotlighting the perspectives of leaders in the local community. Organizers of the event, now in its third year, decided to focus on the structural challenges that accompany homelessness and substance use disorders, and to invite speakers whose lived experiences have inspired them to become advocates for change.
Fabrizio Darby, a second-year medical student who began planning the event in May, said that he had organized several events in the past, but “this panel has been one of the most meaningful experiences I've had at Yale, and it has fueled my passion for community work.” Darby aimed “to give underserved communities the platform to advocate for themselves. And from a professional standpoint, I plan to use this insight to ensure that I provide care in a way that makes people feel listened to.”
Marietta Vázquez, MD, associate dean for medical student diversity at Yale School of Medicine (YSM), introduced the event as an extraordinary learning opportunity for medical trainees, who “are provided enormous opportunities to protect and support the health of the people around us.” She added, “You don’t just come to New Haven to become Yale students, you come to Yale and become citizens of New Haven.”
Vázquez hopes the event’s 100 attendees felt “energized to become active citizens of New Haven, with a better understanding of some of the challenges faced by our neighbors. I hope these challenges are seen as opportunities to make a difference.”
Housing Crisis
Panelists Suki Godek, Bridgett Williamson, and Roosevelt Watkins have experience with homelessness, either currently or in the past, and all three are working as advocates and providers of community services.
Watkins spoke of his work with U-ACT (Unhoused Activists Community Team): “Any outreach work you do is, you meet people where they are. Unfortunately, we meet people at their lowest point: They’re homeless. There’s only one way to end homelessness and that’s to give someone a home, and we just don’t have the capacity to do that.”
Bridgett Williamson has lived in New Haven for 60 years and described how housing has changed over time. “Thirty years ago, I was able to get emergency housing with three kids, and …then get into a complex where I could pay rent. And today, I cannot even get on a list to get housing. Gentrification displaced all the families and people I grew up with. The majority have passed away from the pain and suffering of that displacement.”
Williamson described a positive transformation in how Yale researchers interact with the community, “to come out from behind the walls and start building relationships … gathering data and then bringing it back to the community.” She works for Yale as a research assistant and says, “I’m a voice for people who are not housed, to keep up hope.”
Suki Godek is an active leader for the unhoused, and a resident leader at Rosette Neighborhood Village, a “micro-neighborhood” of six tiny houses located in the back yard of New Haven’s Amistad Catholic Worker House. Godek has been in the public eye for legally challenging the city’s efforts to dismantle the village. She commented, “a lot of laws were created before homelessness became a crisis and a permanent status.”
Godek got involved because “helping other people in situations like my own has jolted me into a new perspective. I have a husband and a dog, and we’ve really made a home there. It’s not just giving you a place to live, but giving you the perspective of being a neighbor.”