Home Care In East Haven, CT

The new legislation strengthens New Haven's ability to combat blighted properties and hold negligent property owners accountable: Mayor.

NEW HAVEN, CT — City officials Friday signed into law new legislation to "strengthen" New Haven's "ability to combat blighted properties and hold negligent property owners accountable."

The ordinance increases municipal fines for blight violations from $100 per day to a maximum of $1,000 per day, the highest penalty allowable by state statute.

Initiated by the Elicker Administration earlier this year, the legislation (OR-2025-0014) was unanimously passed by the New Haven Board of Alders earlier this month, and it represents the latest in a series of measures by the city to strengthen its housing code enforcement and help ensure residents are living in affordable, safe, healthy, and well-maintained homes.

According to Mayor Justin Elicker's office, the ordinance allows the city to serve and enforce anti-blight and property maintenance citations via first-class U.S. mail, as opposed to the previous requirement of certified mail. Elicker said the former "made it easier for bad-acting property owners to evade enforcement and virtually impossible to render enforcement to absentee landlords with a P.O. Box mailing address."

Following the bill signing, LCI neighborhood specialists were "deployed to conduct inspections at other troublesome properties across the city," the Mayor said.

A news briefing was held outside 1303 Chapel Avenue, a "long-standing blighted property in the Dwight neighborhood," with Elicker, Livable City Initiative Executive Director Liam Brennan, and other city officials and community leaders in attendance.

Watch the briefing here:

A vampire-themed cocktail party is "coming for blood" on its tour around the United States this fall.

The Vampire Cocktail Club will head to 12 cities on the first leg of its tour, including a stop in East Haven on Sept. 19-20. The tour kicks off on Sept. 4 with a stop in Lexington, Kentucky, according to an Instagram post from Vampire Cocktail Club.

Vampire Cocktail Club is an immersive four-part cocktail journey into vampire history, where attendees are guided by a "vampire historian" through stories about vampire lore and listen to live music, according to its website.

Ian Somerhalder, who starred as Damon Salvatore in "The Vampire Diaries" from 2009 to 2017, serves as a brand ambassador for the Vampire Cocktail Club.

Somerhalder posted on Instagram on Friday that his bourbon brand, Brother's Bond Bourbon, will team up with Vampire Cocktail Club on its limited-time tour. The tour will include an "exclusive Brother's Bond cocktail," according to Somerhalder's Instagram post.

Somerhalder co-founded the bourbon brand with fellow "The Vampire Diaries" star Paul Wesley in 2021. The duo drank bourbon together while filming the show and off set, and they decided to create their own brand after visiting various distilleries, according to Brother's Bond Bourbon's website.

The vampire-themed event has three sessions on Sept. 19 at 6 p.m., 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. The event will be held at noon, 2 p.m., 4 p.m., 6 p.m., 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. on Sept. 20. Tickets start at $65 for Friday's event, and tickets are $55 for Saturday's event. Attendees must be ages 21 or older.

Vampire Cocktail Club's event will be held at Transilvania Restaurant and Bar on 23 Main St. in East Haven, according to its ticket website.

The City of New Haven is cracking down on blighted properties that officials say create eyesores in the community.

Under a new ordinance signed Friday, some properties could be fined $1,000 a day for blight.

New Haven residents in the Dwight neighborhood are saying enough is enough to the blighted building at 1303 Chapel St.

“I don’t think any of those landlords would live there or in a property of the sort,” Dottie Green, of New Haven, said.

The city said it has fined Ocean Management, the company that owns 1303 Chapel St., over $45,000 for this property since May 2024. There could be more fines coming their way.

“To the property owners who have these big, blighted properties…you’re on notice now,” Mayor Justin Elicker (D–New Haven) said.

As of Friday, property owners in violation will receive a $150 fine for an occupied blighted property, $250 for a vacant property blight violation and then $1,000 a day if they receive three or more violations.

This is the maximum penalty under Connecticut law. This daily fine represents a 900% increase from what the fine was previously in New Haven.

“You can imagine that adds up pretty quickly and will put the fire under some of these landlords to get the job done,” Elicker said.

The ordinance no longer requires citations to come through certified mail with a signature from the recipient. The city said that historically, some landlords were known to evade the mail.

“They’re essentially gaming the system to avoid consequences,” Liam Brennan, of New Haven’s Livable City Initiative, said.

The city said most landlords do cooperate, but there are 64 blighted properties that haven't complied after being put on notice.

Brennan said the city is re-inspecting properties starting Friday. It is unknown if the city issued the maximum fine to any of the property owners.

“I’m hoping that it won't be all those 64, I’m hoping people will see this and get into compliance right away. But, if need be, we will do it if need be,” Brennan said.

If the landlords don't pay, the city said the ordinance gives them leverage to foreclose on the property.

The City of New Haven said during a press conference that they haven't heard back from Ocean Management, the company whose building they highlighted, in relation to this new ordinance.

NBC Connecticut has left a message and emailed Ocean Management but hasn’t heard back either.

NEW HAVEN — Four years after fleeing Kabul, Afghanistan, New Haven resident Hashima Moradi and her family resettled in Bridgeport, beginning the long process of rebuilding their lives.

“I still remember the airport. Children were crying, afraid, hungry for their mothers. Some were injured, but no one stopped to help. Everyone was focused on one thing — survival,” she said. “We stood in line from 10 at night until six in the morning.”

She said that when the line finally began to move, they entered a room where officers checked their passports and placed wristbands on their arms. Then they waited another six hours to board a massive military aircraft with no seats.

No one smiled — they were exhausted, and happiness was nowhere to be found, Moradi said.

Elena’s Light, a nonprofit that helps refugee women and children build bright futures, held a press conference Friday on the anniversary of the fall of Kabul. The event gave the Afghan community and advocates a chance to voice concerns about ongoing impacts since the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan four years ago and the Taliban taking over the country.

Fershteh Ganjavi, founder and executive director of Elena’s Light, said that when Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, fell four years ago, the world witnessed scenes of desperation, fear and heartbreak.

“But for us, for the Afghan people, it was not just something we saw on the news. It was our families, it was our friends, it was our home,” she said. “Many of us left everything behind in a matter of hours. We came to the United States not only carrying our few possessions, but also our hopes, our dreams and our determination to rebuild our lives in safety.”

Moradi remembers the tears falling from her mother’s face. She said she had to watch her mother cry, her father try to hide his emotions and her younger brother look terrified.

Once they arrived in Bridgeport, they reunited with her siblings who lived in the city and began rebuilding their lives. Now the family lives in New Haven and Moradi is set to finish her senior year at a boarding school in Oregon.

But four years later, on the anniversary of Kabul’s fall, Moradi said she still misses home — visiting her grandparents and cousins, going to school and walking through her neighborhoods.

Ganjavi said more than 800 families, about 4,000 individuals, have resettled in Connecticut since 2021 through programs, including immigration visas, co-sponsorships and refugee resettlement.

Many of them live in New Haven and the surrounding areas, Ganjavi said, but remain in limbo without permanent status, legal protection or security.

“They face the constant fear of deportation every minute," she said. "That fear is not just paperwork, it is the fear of losing your children’s future, the fear of returning to a place where your life is in danger."

The press conference comes not long after an ex-U.S. military interpreter from Afghanistan identified as Zia was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents while filling out paperwork for a green card, said U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. Zia is from the New Haven area.

The Afghan community is calling on federal and state leaders to take urgent action by reinstating temporary protected status, reducing the asylum backlog that leaves families in limbo for years, and providing emergency legal and financial support to organizations working with immigrant families at risk, Ganjavi said.

“The chaos of August 2021 led to one of the largest evacuations efforts in American history,” said Arash Azizzada, co-founder and executive director of Afghans for a Better Tomorrow.

Azizzada said the nation welcomed more than 200,000 newly arrived Afghans seeking that sense of security throughout the country since then.

“Sadly, they have not felt that or seen that comfort and safety since the attacks on our community by this administration,” he said.

While America lost the war, Afghans are the ones who were caused insufferable pain, Azizzada said.

“But America can do right by us and by our community by allowing newly arrived Afghans to thrive without fear in New Haven, in Connecticut and throughout this country,” Azizzada said. “Afghans deserve dignity, not bans. Afghans deserve dignity, not deportations. Afghans deserve dignity, not detentions.”

Blumenthal urged his colleagues in the Senate to pass the Afghan Adjustment Act.

If the act is passed, it will help provide support for Afghan nationals who supported the U.S. mission in Afghanistan, help adjust the status of Afghan nationals and provide special immigration status for at-risk Afghan allies and relatives of certain member of the Armed Forces, according to International Catholic Migration Commission.

“We promised they could come after they protected our troops,” Blumenthal said. “They are translators, they were guides, they were interpreters, they were guards and the Taliban will have no mercy if they are sent back there.”

Blumenthal recently visited a detention center in Plymouth, Massachusetts, where they are holding Zia.

“He has five children. He calls them every day, and they cry when he calls," he said. "There is no reason, zero reason for Zia to be in prison."

Blumenthal said that Zia has a hearing on Sept. 8.

“It is immoral, unconscionable and shameful for the greatest country in the history of the world to break its promises and put in prison innocent people who have helped this country and who are here because they regard America as the beacon of hope and opportunity, and yes, freedom and the rule of law,” Blumenthal said.

Connecticut's largest health care system has agreed to settle a federal lawsuit over a data breach that exposed the personal information of about 5.6 million people, according to a recent court filing.

Yale New Haven Health Services Corp. and 19 plaintiffs in the class-action suit filed a joint motion to stay proceedings in U.S District Court this week to allow parties to finalize the settlement over the next month.

Hackers breached the corporation's computer system in early March, exposing personal information of 5,556,702 people, according to Yale New Haven Health. Chief Compliance and Privacy Officer Sherry Coomes detailed the hacking incident in a letter to affected patients.

“On March 8, 2025, we identified unusual activity affecting our information technology (IT) systems,” Coomes wrote. “We immediately took steps to contain the incident and began an investigation.”

The day of the attack, the hackers copied data on patients, including names, birth dates, addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, race or ethnicity and medical record numbers. Coomes wrote that Social Security numbers, financial records and medical information were not involved in the breach.

“The sophistication of the attack leads us to believe that it was executed by an individual or group who has a pattern of these types of incidents. We are working with law enforcement as they investigate further,” Yale New Haven Health spokesperson Dana Marnane said.

The initial federal complaint by lead plaintiff Jon Nathanson said he and other former and current patients entrusted Yale New Haven Health with sensitive, private information that the system retains for many years.

Yale New Haven Health failed to employ industry standards for data security, the suit says, opening plaintiffs to hackers and other criminals and breaking a pledge to patients to guard their private information.

After the breach, Nathanson had to scrutinize his credit reports and financial account statements for signs of attempted identity theft or fraud, valuable time that he would have spent on other activities, the suit says. Because of the breach, he remains at risk for years to come, the complaint said. Also, after hackers got into the system, Nathanson saw a sharp uptick in suspicious spam calls and texts using his private information, the suit says.

The number of patients impacted by the March 8 breach exceeds the annual total of all visits to the health system, which consists of Bridgeport Hospital, Greenwich Hospital, Lawrence + Memorial Hospital, Yale New Haven Hospital, Westerly Hospital in Rhode Island and Northeast Medical Group. For all of fiscal 2023, Yale New Haven Health reported 157,280 inpatient visits and 3,058,598 outpatient visits.

Yale New Haven Health cited a data breach impacting 109,728 patients and hospital employees as one element in its decision last year to pull out of a deal to buy Prospect Medical Holdings’ three Connecticut hospitals. Prospect in turn blamed Yale’s decision to kill the deal for causing the financial strain that led to its bankruptcy filing earlier this year. Earlier this week, Prospect announced it would close two Pennsylvania hospitals as part of efforts to deal with at least $1 billion in debt. Its three Connecticut hospitals, Manchester Memorial, Waterbury and Rockville General, are slated to be sold at auction as soon as June.