Electricity Standoff Looms For Tiny Shelters

The Elicker administration has asked United Illuminating to turn off the power at six backyard emergency shelters in the Hill now that a 180-day state permit has expired, rendering the tiny homes ​“illegal dwelling units.”

That’s according to Mayor Justin Elicker, who provided an update Monday afternoon on the latest standoff between the city and the builders and occupants of six tiny homes at 203 Rosette St.

Those prefabricated, single-room shelters have stood in the backyard of the Amistad Catholic Worker House since last fall as part of an effort to provide roofs for people with nowhere else to go. Amistad co-owners Mark and Luz Colville had previously opened their backyard to tenters displaced from a city-cleared homeless encampment on Ella T. Grasso Boulevard last spring.

After much wrangling and negotiating and, eventually, collaboration, the city and the Rosette Street crew worked together to get the heat turned on on Jan. 15 in the under-100-square-foot structures. They did so with the help of a 180-day permit from the state granting the structures temporarily relief from complying with the state building code. (The Rosette crew also won city Board of Zoning Appeals approval for the six structures in March.)

On Monday, Elicker said that the 180-day temporary state permit has expired — and so the city has asked United Illuminating to turn off the power at the Rosette Street backyard shelters that are now ​“illegal dwelling units.”

“We’re not going to storm the property and arrest people on the property,” he said. Instead, the city is treating these shelters as they would any illegal dwelling unit. That means asking the utility company to turn off the power, and then potentially putting a lien on the property for every day its out of compliance with state building code.

“We have all known, including the folks at Rosette Street, for 180 days that that is the case,” he said about the expiration of the state permit, ​“We stand ready to help support people, but we’ve known about these 180 days for quite some time.”

Mark Colville generally declined to comment, saying that he and Rosette Village’s residents are treating Monday as a ​“day of reflection.” On Tuesday, he said, they plan to ​“come out fighting” by holding a press conference at 9:30 a.m. in 203 Rosette’s backyard.

Maya McFadden contributed to this report.