Eli Sabin (right) with campaign Deputy Treasurer Ina Silverman. Karen Branch was walking home to an Edgewood apartment that’s been increasingly tough to afford. So when state representative candidate Eli Sabin stopped her on Norton Street for a conversation, he didn’t have to finish his s entence about lowering the cost of housing. “PLEASE!” she interjected. Sabin is running to represent the 92nd District in the state House of Representatives, which covers parts of Amity, Westville, Edgewood, Dwight, West River, and the Hill. Sabin is a soon-to-graduate Yale Law student, a legislative coordinator with Connecticut Voices for Children, and a former Downtown and East Rock alder. He is running against fellow Democrats 22-term incumbent Patricia Dillon and former Hamden Council Member Justin Farmer. Read more about the race… Dillon’s fundraiser touting “deep experience” Farmer’s “individual team sport” fundraising pitch Sabin’s canvass with small businesses in the Hill Dateline New Haven interviews with Sabin, Farmer, and Dillon A window into each campaign’s donors On Thursday evening, Sabin canvassed in Edgewood with his campaign treasurer, Jennifer Quaye-Hudson, and deputy treasurer, Ina Silverman. In conversation after conversation, he delved into housing affordability, education funding, and the connections between the two. Along the way, he met Branch on a Norton Street sidewalk, where he described his priority of “working to make housing more affordable.” Branch wholeheartedly agreed. “Between that and wages… it’s almost like you gotta work three jobs! I’m almost a senior!” she said. Branch doesn’t personally work three jobs — at least not at the moment. She’s an assistant teacher at a childcare provider with long experience in that line of work. But her hours were recently cut from five days a week to four, making it even harder to budget. “I could be homeless, and I don’t want to be,” she said. She’s thinking of looking for another job. “I have one crazy question,” Branch said. “How come Yale ain’t paying more taxes? You got too much of New Haven to not be paying.” Branch said she’s thinking of moving out of the city. “I told myself I got one more year here,” she said. “Then I’m gonna move down south.” Sabin said he also believes it’s important to expand the state’s newly created Early Child Education Endowment, with the goal of making childcare more affordable while providing revenue to childcare providers. Currently, “it’s looking like there not as much money as we thought” for the initiative, he said. By the end of their conversation, Branch said she’d make sure to vote for Sabin in the Aug. 11 Democratic primary election. Jennifer Quaye-Hudson, Ina Silverman, and Eli Sabin. Housing and education were the two issues that brought Quaye-Hudson and Silverman to Sabin’s campaign. Quaye-Hudson, the advocacy director at the anti-housing segregation organization Open Communities Alliance, recalled her previous work with Sabin at Connecticut Voices for Children. “He just got stuff done,” she said. The housing crisis is a high priority for her, she said. She also argued for a “regionalization” of school funding, so that any given school district’s funding isn’t as deeply shaped by the town’s property tax base. “The way that we fund our schools keeps the obvious schools underfunded,” she said. Silverman, a former Westville alder who once taught Sabin at Beth El-Keser Israel’s Hebrew School, said her support for Sabin stems from watching his tenure on the Board of Alders. “I know how hard it is to get anything done” in that setting, she said. She pointed to Sabin’s schools advocacy as a primary example; the former chair of the alders’ Education Committee, Sabin pressed for New Haven Public Schools to adopt an evidence-based phonics reading curriculum. A “Sorry I missed you!” note left by an unanswered door. Down the block on Stanley Street, the trio knocked on the door of a Yale PhD student working on their dissertation (who asked not to be named or photographed). Sabin gave the student his pitch: “I grew up here in New Haven,” he said. “I served on the Board of Alders for six years.” He named his priorities: making housing more affordable, securing more school funding, expanding childcare access, and making “our tax code more fair.” “Who is the current representative?” asked the student. “Pat Dillon,” Sabin replied. “Do you know her?” asked Quaye-Hudson. “No,” said the student. “I haven’t met her, but I probably voted for her.” When Sabin asked the student about his largest concerns as a resident, the student replied, “We saw that rents are pretty crazy here… I feel like we have a really good deal here” in Edgewood, compared to “my friends who live in East Rock.” He asked Sabin: “Why is the rent so high?” “We need more affordable housing. We need more housing of all types,” said Sabin. A shortage of housing units is one reason for high rent, and another is high taxes, he said. He called for the state to contribute more funding to the city’s school system, arguing that the city would then have to foot less of the bill, that it could then ease taxes on property owners, and “mom and pop” landlords would then feel less pressure to hike rents. Sabin noted that another priority of his is landlord accountability. “There’s a bill I’m working on right now that just passed the [state] Senate,” he said. It would require landlords to “give actual identifying contact information” to government agencies, restricting their ability to hide behind Limited Liability Corporations. The student wasn’t ready to commit to voting for Sabin on the spot, noting that they wanted to conduct more research on the candidates. But they told Sabin, “You’re hitting all the points.” Sabin knocks on his 1,000th door… …and Fred and Laura Brantle. Also on Stanley Street, Sabin, Silverman, and Quaye-Hudson rang the doorbell of Laura and Fred Brantle. According to Sabin, it was the 1,000th door he’s knocked so far in the campaign. A member of the Ward 24 Democratic Ward Committee, Laura had spoken with Sabin on the phone before. While they hadn’t yet met in person, Laura guessed as soon as she opened the door: “You’re Eli?” “I’m Eli,” confirmed Sabin. He re-introduced himself to the couple. “I think we need some new energy and new fight right now” in the state legislature, he said. In addition to housing, childcare, and school funding, Sabin brought up another prong of his platform: advocating for state government to “stand up to Donald Trump.” Fred, who wore a T-Shirt with the words “God so loved this world that he gave his only son” in the shape of a cross, agreed with Sabin. “We don’t want any more pictures of him looking like Jesus Christ,” he said. He accepted Sabin’s campaign flyer. “OK, so we’ll look it over!” Sabin revealed to the Brantles that they were his thousandth door. They cheered him on. “Where’s the pizza? Where’s the confetti?” asked Laura. “We’ll have to come back with that,” Sabin said. The campaign trio. The post Sabin Hears Housing Stress On Edgewood Doors appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less