Sustainability Star: Kathy Fay of Neighborhood Housing Services
When Kathy Fay discovered that neighborhood children were canoeing in water contaminated with raw sewage, she didn’t only report the problem—she transformed it into a catalyst for community action. This moment exemplifies the remarkable longtime career of an environmental champion who has consistently turned stress into solutions for New Haven’s most vulnerable communities.
Kathy’s relationship with Neighborhood Housing Services of New Haven began in the early 1990s as a work-study student. “There’s old pictures of me from 1990 on the porch here,” she recalls with a smile. This early connection would eventually grow into a permanent position in 2006 and the founding of NHS’s Community Sustainability department in 2018.
What makes Kathy’s career extraordinary are the values that have consistently been reflected in her work. Her approach to environmental justice demonstrates trust built through decades of community presence. When she and her former neighbor Doreen Abubakar discovered sewage contamination in West River Memorial Park, they leveraged these trusted relationships to mobilize a watershed coalition. Their advocacy successfully accelerated sewage infrastructure improvements that would have otherwise taken a decade to implement.
“We came into this coalition really with an agenda,” Kathy explains. “Let’s get the sewer company to speed it up.” This authenticity – addressing real problems affecting real people – characterizes her entire career, from organizing an organic farmers market in one of New Haven’s lowest-wealth neighborhoods to fighting against a proposed peaker power plant in the 1990s.
The versatility of Kathy’s approach stands out in each initiative. One moment, she’s transforming a derelict building into a LEED(R) Platinum-certified community gathering space; the next she’s helping lead the Connecticut Performance-Based Regulation coalition, pioneering renewable electric options in the state. “I was working on these housing rehabs, and I was always trying to push that they be as energy efficient as possible,” she shares, her work consistently crosses traditional boundaries to achieve more comprehensive solutions.
Her commitment to environmental justice is deeply rooted in compassion for community members, which she learned from her career beginnings in New Haven. “What drove a lot of my passion around this is the people in my community,” Kathy says. “They were there for me when my world was falling apart.”
Throughout her career, Kathy has championed inclusivity by advocating for diverse voices to shape environmental decisions. She celebrates the rising leadership of women in sustainability, particularly women of color, while working to develop the next generation of environmental advocates. “I really am trying to foster new generations of younger people working on various energy and environmental justice work,” she explains. “We’re all in it together. So I think my vision is not just mine, and I see it starting to take place just in recent times.”
As Kathy reflects on decades of community-centered environmental work, her story reveals how values-driven leadership can transform buildings, waterways, and entire communities. Through impassioned persistence and unwavering commitment, she has helped create a more sustainable, just New Haven. She proves that the most effective environmental solutions begin with deeply held values and an authentic connection to community needs.
This story celebrates Women’s History Month by highlighting how Kathy Fay’s career embodies the values of trust, authenticity, versatility, compassion, and inclusivity that drive Vote Solar and meaningful environmental change.