New Haven Independent

Smith, a 52-year-old realtor, is the last man standing, or breathing (when it’s not hot and humid), at Riverview Commons, a nine-unit comlex up a hill on Judith Terrace in Fair Haven Heights.

Now he’s packing up, too, the last refugee from a 12-year disaster that began with a disastrous sale of city tax liens to a company affiliated with a Democratic Party powerbroker.

As Smith abandons his efforts to patch together the stripped, crumbling complex, he is embroiled in a battle with city government, which owns most of the trashed units. At issue: Whose fault is the decline of the 100 Judith Terrace complex? How much, if any, money should the city pay Smith for his condo so it can try to sell a blighted property?

Smith accused the DeStefano administration’s Liveable City Initiative (LCI) of ignoring an absentee slumlord’s neglect for 10 years; allowing a private company to sit on the tax liens rather than foreclose; and then failing to stem the complete destruction of seven of the units once it took control of them. Smith said he did unpaid maintenance for the city in that time and is now being pushed to accept an outrageously low offer for his unit.

LCI’s Frank D’Amore, his nemesis in this case, accused Smith in turn of trying to hold up the city for more money than he deserves for a bad investment that was the victim of hard luck. D’Amore admitted the complex has become “uninhabitable.” It’s not the city’s fault, he said.

“If anything, he’s doing the screwing,” D’Amore said of Smith.

“This is the nightmare,” Smith said as he entered his three-bedroom unit.

At first glance, the apartment looked habitable enough, even with packing boxes strewn on the floors.

Smith bought his condo in 1993 for just $25,000. A condo boom had started and the then gone bust on the two banks of the Quinnipiac River. He purchased the unit as an investment property — as most other buyers there did — with an eye toward moving in evenutally.

By the mid-’90s, Riverview started having its own problems. Some of the owners defaulted on their mortgages; a succession of absentee owners from out of town took possession of units, neglected them, and didn’t pay taxes. The management company didn’t get paid, so it left; Smith became the unpaid property manager.

The city gave up control of the tax liens on the unpaid taxes on several units to the Breen Corporation. In a controversial deal brokered by then-State Democratic Party Chairman Ed Marcus and then city Budget Director Frank Altieri, the city sold the liens to the New Jersey in order to gain quick millions in one-time cash to balance the budget and leverage state dollars for its school rebuilding program. Within a few years, marginal neighborhoods throughout the city found themselves blighted by abandoned properties on which Breen held liens and didn’t consider it worthwhile to foreclose. (Read all about that here.)

Breen eventually sold the tax liens back to the city. The city started foreclosing on most of the units in 1999; it finished in 2005.

By then, units were largely empty, abandoned. Isaac Smith moved into his unit. He tried to keep up with the maintenance problems.

That grew harder and harder as LCI, in his view, ignored problems in units controlled.

One hanging ornament in Isaac Smith’s living room turned out not to be an ornament at all.

“These absorb the moisture. They’re called ‘Damp Rid,”” he explained. “Normally they last 60 days. These last two weeks. I have three of these and three of the canisters.”

Some of the moisture comes from leaks in upstairs units. Other problems migrate from the city-owned horrors next door and downstairs.

Like this gutted basement apartment. The city-hired contractor tore it apart to begin renovating, then stopped.

More problematic is the repeatedly vandalized unit directly across the hall from Smith’s.

Smith has tried, but been unable, to keep up with the damage from the roof leaks and soiled destroyed furniture. “It got overwhelming,” Smith said.

Vandals made off with the pipes. Throughout the complex the plumbing has disappeared.

Smith said LCI rarely if ever responds to police complaints or other reports of break-ins or damage, and rarely keeps the units secure. Nor has it paid him to try to protect the city’s (and his own) investment.) LCI’s D’Amore responded that the city never had a written maintenance contract with Smith, and that the city has been responsible in trying to keep up with problems.

D’Amore claims the city has tired but failed to sell the complex. Smith said he had a buyer from Long Island, a developer named Raphael Lipelis, interested in buying the entire complex and rebuilding it in March 0f 2007. Smith has a written offer from Lipelis to buy his unit for $100,000 — but it was dependent on the whole complex being available. Lipelis confirmed the offer in a phone conversation with the Independent. D’Amore downplayed the offer: “That never materialized. They were supposed to call me. They never called.” Lipelis’s version: “I tried to buy it. I wrote them a proposal. No response.” D’Amore also said the city did a request for proposals from potential developers, but received no interest, because of the complex’s condition.

After the most recent break-ins, the theft of his personal computer, and increased breathing problems from teh toxi mold, Isaac Smith finally decided to pack it in and move. He’s going to double up with a friend for a while. Meanwhile he’s looking for the city to buy him out.

LCI offered him $30,000. He wants $55,000. He noted that the city itself valued his unit at $40,000 in the last revaluation. However, his property, like many in New Haven, has lost value since then.

“He had the audacity to pressure me” to take $30,000, Smith said of LCI’s D’Amore. “‘That’s mold in the unit next door. You ready to sell?’” Smith argued that the city’s responsible for the mold, for the deterioration in value of the complex, for the failure to collect taxes or take possession for so many years, then to renovate or sell the place or stem its further decline.

“I can’t plug a number out of the air,” D’Amore responded. He said the city’s offer is based on a recent appraisal. He argued that Smith “was looking at, ‘Here’s my opprotunity to cash out big time.’ I couldn’t do that. I’m sure he got [hur] in the revaluation like everybody else.

“It probably didn’t work out the way he wanted to,” D’Amore said of Smith’s experience at Riverview. New Haven’s government, he said, isn’t the culprit, and isn’t responsible for making helping him recover losses.

Bob Megna, the neighborhood’s state representative, sympathizes with Smith. He said the city should pay Smith based on a “reasonable value” for his condo — what it would have been worth if the city’s trashed units hadn’t dragged down the entire complex.