Nora Grace-Flood reports on government accountability, public policy and neighborhoods in Hamden, Connecticut for the New Haven Independent, a nonprofit, public-interest news organization based in New Haven, Connecticut. Before becoming a Report for America corps team member, Grace-Flood interned with the New Haven Independent and its partner publication, the Valley Independent Sentinel, reporting on a variety of stories. She graduated from Bard College with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and public health in 2021, and studied journalism and interned as an editorial assistant at PEN America, a nonprofit that works to protect free expression in the U.S. and worldwide, as part of the Bard Globalization and International Affairs Program in New York City. Nora lives in New Haven, CT.
Beat: Zoning/Housing in New Haven
The community coverage gap is regular, daily, breaking-news and issues-focused coverage of planning and zoning and housing issues, including homelessness and affordable housing policy. She has already done three deep dives in three weeks about homelessness, hanging out in tent cities. Critical need -- evictions exploding because of the end of a moratorium, homelessness increasing, federal dollars available to think creatively about solutions, all amid a building boom in town coinciding with a rethinking of zoning to increase density. She goes to planning and zoning meetings, everyone of them, and follows the decisions within the limits of one city - New Haven.