New Haven Independent

City Livable City Initiative (LCI) chief Andrew Rizzo Thursday said he has asked his staff to investigate whether two properties King owns have been operating illegally as rooming houses.

Rizzo’s attention was drawn to the houses after King was arrested three times in recent weeks, and jailed, for allegedly assaulting, then violating a protective order on, one of his tenants at 274 Edgewood Ave., across from Troup School. Reports referred to the property as a rooming house. King was released from jail Thursday morning on $25,000 bond with a Jan. 16 court date to answer charges in that latest incident.

274 Edgewood Ave. has been a magnet for neighborhood problems for years, according to police Lt. Ray Hassett and next-door neighbor Bill Bixby. It has gone through three owners since mid-2004, serving at least at times as a rooming house.

According to LCI, records indicate that the owners never applied for a rooming-house license.

Each new owner has paid progressively more for the 1,944-square-foot two-story single-family house. King paid $265,000 for it last August. According to the Vision Appraisal web site, the appraised value of the house is $137,000, putting its estimated fair-market value at $195,714.

The house has attracted a continual stream of complaints about loitering, gun shots, and drug-dealing, according to Hassett. He said that on repeated visits to the house cops would find shifting casts of characters. “You never know who’s in there — who’s legitimately in there, who has visitors, who’s going to be in there.” The two previous owners, listed in public records as Marvin Miller and Joyce Bellamy, were always “hard to find,” Hassett said.

King, on the other hand, has been easy to find, Hassett said. And King worked with the cops. He joined the “light-the-night” campaign to keep outside lights on, for instance. “He was the first accessible landlord,” Hassett said.

Bill Bixby agreed. Bixby lives next door to 274 Edgewood. The property has been a headache for him, he said, with a constant flow of new tenants, many of them causing trouble for the block. He recalled joining King at 11 o’clock one night to break up a fight involving six to eight people. He has seen ongoing drug-dealing going on at the property, Bixby said, as well as evidence of an illegal rooming house operating there for more than three years.

Without a rooming license, owners may not by law have more than four unrelated adults living in single-family homes. The city’s deputy housing code inspector, Rafael Ramos, did an inspection of 274 Edgewood this week. Ramos said King’s building met minimum standards like having smoke detectors and heat and hot water. “The place was clean.” But Ramos said he learned from a tenant that six different adults live there.

Three of the tenants — DeMetrian Glover, Travis Ogman, and Terry Barri, pictured from center left to right in the photo at the top of the story — also told the Independent Thursday afternoon that six adults live in the house. Glover and Ogman are cousins; otherwise no one is related, they said. Glover, 30, a stocker at Petco in Hamden, said he pays $150 a week for his room. Ogman, 25, a supervisor at Columbus House, said he pays King $250 every two weeks; Bari, 44, who’s on disability, $400 a month.

Tenants share a bathroom and a kitchen on each floor. The house indeed looked clean on the inside.

“Why has the city, either through LCI, zoning or even the police department, taken no action to shut down this property?” asked neighbor Bixby, a 59 year-old real-estate agent.

LCI chief Rizzo said he wants to know the answer to that question. He said Thursday that he hopes to have collected enough information from his staff to do that by early next week.

An LCI housing inspector, Scott Sheeley, who did an inspection of the building prior to Ramos’s, said King kept it in good condition. He asked King to make a few repairs — replacing smoke detectors and cracked ceiling tiles — which King did.

King, reached by phone Thursday morning after his release from jail pending a Jan. 16 court appearance, said he plans to sell the house. He couldn’t be reached to answer further questions. King chairs the Board of Aldermen’s Public Safety Committee. His arrests began with a domestic violence charge against a woman who lives inside 274 Edgewood Ave., then two charges of violating a protective order to avoid contact with her.

Rizzo said he’s also having his staff investigate another possible rooming house King owns at 85 Sherman Ave. Lt. Hassett said that building has attracted no major problems.

Legal and Sober?

King’s hope of avoiding more legal trouble, this time as a landlord, is if he has permission to run 274 as a “sober house” for recovering addicts. Under federal anti-discrimination law, addiction is considered a disability; that allows operators of sober houses to bypass local zoning rules. King himself is a recovering addict; he doesn’t live in either of the two houses, but rather in the Dixwell neighborhood, which he represents on the Board of Aldermen.

Landlords need permission from the city Office of Disability Services to run sober houses. Office Director Michelle Duprey said confidentiality laws prevent her from identifying sober houses to the public. LCI’s Ramos and Rizzo said they were looking into whether 274 Edgewood is a sober house. LCI hadn’t had previous word that it was.

The tenants interviewed Thursday said 274 Edgewood is most definitely not a sober house. Glover and Ogman (left to right in photo) said they first started hearing people using the term after King’s arrests. They’re not recovering addicts, they said. They simply needed a place to live. They said they moved in two months ago.

Glover said he’s familiar with sober houses because his brother once lived in one; King doesn’t run 274 Edgewood the way his brother’s house was operated. “He don’t take no urines. You’re supposed to have chores. This is no clean and sober house.”

An Eyewitness’s Version

Tenant Bari (pictured) said she witnessed the events leading to King’s three arrests. She offered a version of King’s arrests that matched the police version: that King physically attacked another tenant, a 24-year-old woman with whom he was having an affair, in a dispute ostensibly over a “Georgia Hot” dog, then returned to the house at least twice more and harassed her in violation of a protective court order.

The 24-year-old tenant was sitting in her room eating the Georgia Hot when King came in and grabbed a chunk of it, Bari said. “He ate her meat. She said, ‘You you gonna eat my meat and not wash your hands?’” When the tenant refused to surrender the rest of the Georgia Hot, a yelling match ensued, with King insisting “Give me my food!” according to Bari. Next, Bari said, King “grabbed her, choked her, and threw her against a wall. He started beating her with a stick. She said, ‘Drew leave me alone!’”

Bari said she “jumped in the middle of it” to break up the fight. King left, the tenant called the cops, and the tenant went to hospital to be treated for bruises, Bari said.

King returned at least two more times after that, Bari said. She said she was in the hallway at 7 a.m. last Sunday morning when King showed up outside the 24-year-old tenant’s locked door. “He was banging on her door, Sunday morning, after he got out of jail Saturday night. He said, ‘I’ll give you $20’” to open up. Bari said that the woman refused and called the cops instead. Police caught up with King later at his home and jailed him.

Bari said King seemed under the influence of drugs or alcohol on the three occasions. “He was all right” as a landlord, she said, “when he wasn’t on drugs.”