YSPH student supports people power in New Haven

Shreyas Nair spent his summer listening to unhoused people. Sometimes it was part of his job—Nair, MPH ‘26 at Yale School of Public Health, was a Health Equity Fellow with New Haven’s Unhoused Activists Community Team (U-ACT), engaged in a qualitative interview project—but sometimes it wasn’t.

U-ACT holds Friday lunches on the New Haven Green that are open to anyone, and Nair handed out meals during these. But every Thursday, U-ACT holds “accompaniments,” traveling to encampments and other places around the city where unhoused people live to offer them food, supplies, and solidarity. During one of Nair’s first accompaniments, he was approached by a woman who was having a rough day and simply wanted to talk.

“So I was just standing there with a bag of socks talking with her,” Nair said. “She asked me what my name was. I said, ‘I'm Shreyas, but you can call me Shrey.’”

For the rest of the summer at other U-ACT accompaniments, she would shout his name, creating a connection between them. “It was like, wow, so this is what it's like to really engage with the community and truly be part of something bigger than yourself,” Nair said. “It put things in perspective for me.” One thing he learned is that a lot of unhoused people are lonely and they just want people to talk to, Nair said. “Which makes sense because humans are very social creatures, and the struggles [unhoused people] face probably make it difficult to have a lot of interactions.”

The Health Equity Fellowships are a six-year-old collaboration between YSPH’s Office of Community & Practice and community partners in New Haven; 36 YSPH fellows have been involved in the program. Nair’s primary job with U-ACT was to assess the conditions faced by New Haven’s unhoused people and evaluate city policies that lead to “encampment sweeps” or evictions, and the removal of unhoused people’s personal property. He is preparing a report based on the qualitative data he collected to help U-ACT better advocate for and support the city’s unhoused population.

“Growing up in America, you realize what a privilege having a roof over your head is,” Nair said. “But then you follow that thought further and you're like, ‘But this is a basic need; it shouldn't be a privilege.’ That’s what guided me to believe everybody should have housing. I feel like that thought process seamlessly fit in with the U-ACT mission.”

Nair has been interested in housing issues ever since hearing his father’s story about living in a rudimentary stone hut next to a rice field in southern India as a child. “Housing was not something that was stable for him,” Nair said. His father eventually was able to get a PhD in the United States and later an Executive MBA from Yale School of Management, and Nair’s mother is a primary care physician. “Through a combination of luck and their own very hard work, they were able to provide me and my brother with stable housing,” Nair says of his parents.

Nair’s supervisor at U-ACT was Billy Bromage, an assistant clinical professor of social work in psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine and a founding member of the community group. Bromage said Nair impressed him with his capacity for active, compassionate listening. “He brings a very natural humanistic side of things to the job. He connects with people really well,” Bromage said.

“I think a lot of people in this country are closer to homelessness than they are to mass amounts of wealth or whatever that cutoff may be,” Nair said. “And I think when you realize that, then you realize what an issue a lack of public housing—or just some sort of stable housing system—is in this country.”

In August, he sat in a reading room inside the New Haven Free Public Library listening to an unhoused man describe how he lost his belongings during an “encampment sweep” when he said city workers tossed his red wagon and all his belongings into a dump truck.

It could have been worse, the man added; at least he had been carrying his ID and other personal papers. A friend had not been so lucky.

“I’ll talk to him,” Nair said.

Nair contends that the city does not warn unhoused people about the sweeps, which he said, “reinforce the idea that being homeless is a crime.”

Nair said he plans to continue supporting unhoused people in communities wherever his future work takes him.

“People power is underrated,” Nair said. “U-ACT is not a nonprofit funded by donations; it’s an organization of people serving people. To be able to promote change in the New Haven community is a true honor and privilege.”