Sabin Canvasses Edgewood on Housing Crisis in 92nd District Race

Karen Branch cut Eli Sabin off before he got three words out.

She was walking home on Norton Street in Edgewood when Sabin, who’s running for the 92nd District seat in the state House of Representatives, tried to open a conversation about housing costs. Branch didn’t wait. “PLEASE!” she said, and the word carried everything he needed to know.

That exchange, from a Thursday canvas through the Edgewood neighborhood, isn’t an outlier. It’s the pattern. Sabin’s been knocking doors across a district that covers Amity, Westville, Edgewood, Dwight, West River, and the Hill, and what he hears at nearly every stop is a version of Branch’s desperation: housing isn’t a policy topic here, it’s a monthly emergency.

Branch works as an assistant teacher at a childcare provider. She’s put years into the field, but her schedule was recently cut from five days a week to four. That one day makes a brutal difference when wages in the sector are already thin. “Between that and wages, it’s almost like you gotta work three jobs! I’m almost a senior!” she told Sabin on the sidewalk.

She’s considering a job search. She’s also considering something she’d rather not have to. “I told myself I got one more year here,” she said. “Then I’m gonna move down south.”

She wasn’t finished. Before Sabin could respond, she went after the city’s biggest tax-exempt institution by name. “I have one crazy question,” she said. “How come Yale ain’t paying more taxes? You got too much of New Haven to not be paying.” It’s a frustration that residents of this district voice constantly, and Yale’s voluntary payment program hasn’t come close to satisfying them. The Yale Homebuyer Program helps some employees purchase homes in New Haven, but it doesn’t address the broader resentment over what the university doesn’t pay in property taxes.

Branch told Sabin she’d vote for him in the Aug. 11 Democratic primary before she walked away.

He needs those votes. The primary is crowded. Sabin faces 22-term incumbent Patricia Dillon and former Hamden Council Member Justin Farmer. That’s not an easy field. Dillon’s been in the House for decades and knows every corner of the district. Sabin’s strategy is to out-hustle the field and to connect housing, childcare, and education funding into a single argument about why the district can’t afford more of the same.

Sabin’s background makes the argument credible, at least on paper. He’s finishing his degree at Yale Law School and works as a legislative coordinator with Connecticut Voices for Children, an organization that tracks how state budget decisions land on kids and families. He previously served as a Downtown and East Rock alder. On Thursday, he canvassed alongside campaign treasurer Jennifer Quaye-Hudson and deputy treasurer Ina Silverman, who got involved in the race for the same reasons he’s running: housing affordability and education funding, and the way those two issues grind against each other when wages don’t keep up.

The childcare piece is where Sabin keeps landing. He told the New Haven Independent he wants to expand the state’s newly created Early Child Education Endowment, which is meant to stabilize childcare costs for families while giving providers a more predictable revenue stream. The program’s launch hasn’t gone cleanly. Sabin said “it’s looking like there not as much money as we thought” going into the initiative. That’s a problem that hits workers like Branch directly. Connecticut’s childcare costs rank among the highest in the country. When hours get cut and wages stagnate, families don’t slowly fall behind. They make a decision: stay or leave.

Branch has already made hers, conditionally. One more year. “I could be homeless, and I don’t want to be,” Branch said. That’s the sentence that ought to land hardest for anyone who thinks housing stress in New Haven is overstated. She’s not describing a hypothetical. She’s describing a countdown she’s already running in her head, on a sidewalk in Edgewood, in 2026, talking to a candidate who still has to prove he can win on Aug. 11.