New Haven Independent

Two bidders showed up, but no one ended up buying Miller-Heard’s 175 Butler St. home Saturday.

Miller-Heard’s “terrified” 12 year-old daughter watched from an upstairs window as the Water Pollution Control Authority (WPCA) sought to find someone to take over the house.

Miller-Heard’s troubles began when she lost her job to take care of a sick husband. Bills mounted, including property taxes. The WPCA sued for foreclosure, but doesn’t want to take possession of the house itself. The WPCA’s foreclosure action more than doubled her sewer bill to pay attorney’s fees.

She lost her job at Yale-New Haven after needing to take off too much time to care for a sick husband. Her husband has been just sporadically employed with a moving company; he had gotten sick.

Miller-Heard’s home (pictured) was originally scheduled for auction in March. A last-minute court decision gave her a temporary reprieve until this Saturday’s rescheduled sale.

The unsuccessful auction leaves the house in limbo. The Greater New Haven Water Pollution Control Authority (WPCA), which filed the foreclosure suit, maintains an outstanding lien on Miller’s property for $1,765.34 in original unpaid bills, plus $3,974 in legal fees that have accumulated since then. She now owes the authority more than twice as much money for legal fees as for sewer fees.

The WPCA has emerged as one of the most aggressive foreclosers of properties in town amid the current mortgage crisis. It has been taking people’s homes for debts of $1,000 or more, while comparable agencies, like the Regional Water Authority, have pursued alternative strategies to try to keep people in their homes. The agency filed close to 100 foreclosure suits in New Haven last year. That was close to 10 percent of all suits filed in the city.

Yet a City Hall-organized public-private foreclosure task force has ignored the WPCA, focusing instead on out-of-state foreclosers.

The WPCA did not place a bid at Saturday’s auction. Court-appointed sale attorney Patrick Frazier (pictured) said that decision reflected the high costs of taking possession of a house encumbered by other significant debts, including unpaid property taxes totaling over $18,000 and a Regional Water Authority bill of nearly $2,000.

“A bank will normally bid an amount up to their debt and call it a day,” Frazier said, “but the WPCA doesn’t want the property. If they take this property today, it’s going to incur taxes in July, and then they’re buying a debt of over $20,000 to protect maybe $10,000, so it would take them backwards.”

The large debts also cast a shadow over the auction: “If you bid a dollar,” Frazier said, “you’re into it for $21,000.”

The backyard auction attracted just two potential buyers: experienced real estate investor Suleiman Chater, who runs Mamoun’s Restaurant; and business partners Gary Dilalla and Guy Martin (pictured). The latter pair said they are relatively new to foreclosure auctions, having shown up at several in the past only to see the sales canceled.

Both bidders showed up with the required $15,200 deposit. In the end neither felt confident enough to buy.

After initially bidding $1,000 for the property, Dilalla and Martin backed out, citing uncertainties about the condition of the interior. Miller-Heard declined to allow potential bidders to tour the house. The bidders were also concerned about fire damage to the siding on the back of the house. Frazier theorized the pair were also influenced by Chater’s failure to place a bid.

“These guys are new investors,” he said. “Chater said, ‘I won’t do it, if you want it it’s yours,’ and that has a chilling effect.”

The most recent appraisal put the home’s value at $113,000, leaving what Frazier called “plenty of upside to make the necessary repairs to make it habitable” for new tenants.

Nevetheless, he said he was not overly surprised by the lack of interest in the property.

“It’s a tough time to invest, so you might have to hold it,” he said. “If you wanted to put in a couple of [federally subsidized] Section 8 people, you certainly could make money on the property, but you might have to hold it for a while.”

Meanshile, Frazier said, property values in the neighborhood continue to slide. In 2007, the house was valued at $152,000. By March, it was down to $125,000. This month’s appraisal reflected a further decline.

Struggling Amid Tough Times

Miller-Heard said she was resigned to the auction. She had hoped it might bring enough to pay her debts with money left over. The outcome gave her more time, but with mounting debts still unpaid. A deal to sell the house to a private investor, she said, fell apart a month earlier.

“Nobody’s really buying right now,” she said, “or they want to buy houses for like $10,000 or $12,000. It’s not realistic.”

Miller-Heard lost her job as a patient care assistant at Yale-New Haven Hospital in 2008; she was taking too much time off to care for her husband, who was ill at the time. Now her husband works as an independent contractor with a moving company in Stratford and is only “sporadically employed,” she said. The family was temporarily relying on the Social Security payments received by three of her eight children who have disabilities. The combined total, according to court records, comes to just $1,290 per month. Miller-Heard has since found some work as a substitute teacher.

Although she said she would like to sell the house, pay her debts and move on, for now she said she has nowhere else to go. Her current job substitute teaching in city schools has left her living paycheck to paycheck.

“I was trying to save enough money so I could, if push came to shove, take my family out of here and have money for a security deposit, money to just rent a U-Haul to take our stuff out of here,” she said.

In the meantime, she said the ongoing foreclosure process has put a strain on her family, and especially her kids.

Her 12-year-old daughter Fallon, she said, had not realized the house was coming up for sale so quickly, and was not quite ready to leave.

“She said, ‘Why are those people outside?’” Miller-Heard said. “When I said it’s an auction, her face just fell on the floor. She was terrified.”

Fallon (pictured, left), who watched the auction through an upstairs window, said she would be happy to move to North Carolina, where they have “lots of family,” but “not until next week.”

In the end, Miller-Heard said she was happy that Fallon and her other children would at least be able to finish out the school year before leaving the house for good.

“I didn’t want to take them out of the school system,” she said. “I have one who’s in high school and she’s a senior, about to graduate, so I really don’t want to take her out of high school and then relocate her somewhere where she’d probably have to start over again.”

Though she admitted her options for selling the house seemed slim, she said she continued to hope for the best.

“I’m a fighter,” she said. “I’m not a quitter.”

Previous Independent coverage of New Haven’s foreclosure crisis:

• A New Haven Dream Foreclosed
• This Is The Face Of Deutsche Bank
• Out-of-Town Bankords Respond To Call
• Banks Duck City On Foreclosed Homes
• Rescue Squad Hunts For “Tipping Points”
• John Wins A Loser
• Still A Bargain, Foreclosure Price Zooms
• Flippers Get 2nd Shot At Fixer-Upper
• Suburban Cop Finds A City Steal
• Absentee Banklords Thwart Foreclosure Sales
• City Forecloses On 40 Lots
• Crowd Seeks Cure For “Mortgage Distress”
• Donovan: “Help Is On The Way”
• Judge Forces WPCA To Give Mom A Chance
• WPCA Uproots Tenants, Too
• Home-Rescue Squad Ignores WPCA
• Sewer Agency Unloads House
• Foreclosure Evictions Halted
• Let The Bank Have It, This Time
• Hazel St. Sale Reflects Economic Climate
• Hill Foreclosure Triggers Memories, & Prayers
• Foreclosure Fee-Slashing Judge Leaves Town
• She’ll Be Watching Deutsche Bank
• A Last Pre-Foreclosure Look At A Lifetime Past
• New Yorker Snags Foreclosed-Upon Gem
• Foreclosure Dream Goes Sour
• Judge Slashes Foreclosure Bounty
• Tax Break Saves Woman’s House
• Bank Replaces “Gunshot Alley” Landlord
• Foreclosure Bill OK’d
• Singh Seeks Home For A Song
• Foreclosure’s Neighbor Worries More About Speeding
• Networking Replaces Foreclosure at Christy’s
• Foreclosure Bargain — & Renewal — Jeopardized
• Bank Outbids Akbar; Family May Keep Home
• “So Don’t Worry About Pablo”
• Bankruptcy Postpones Foreclosure
• Next-Door Foreclosures, 53 Years Apart
• They Met On Foreclosure Way
• Little Garage Draws Big Bids
• A 2nd Chance on Lewis Street
• Foreclosure Attracts New Breed of “Specialist”
• In Foreclosures, Judge’s Hands Tied
• Home Saved From Foreclosure. Cycle, Too
• A House For Precious?
• Deutsche Bank Grabs Dixwell Condo
• Reluctant Bidder Snags F. Haven Bargain
• Well, There’s Always Powerball
• Neighbors Retrieve Home From Bank
• Somebody Has Plans For Bassett Street
• Foreclosed, the Khennavongs Leave the Santanas
• Foreclosure Steal May Be Too Good
• 2nd Foreclosure in 3 Months Dims Bright St.
• After Foreclosure, W’ville Owner Still Hopes To Sell
• He’s Not Buying, Yet
• Quiet Foreclosure on Porter Street
• 3 Minutes Too Late
• Historic Gambardella Property Foreclosed
•2 Homes Lost, 1 Gained
• “Everybody’s Got To Eat”
• More Foreclosures, More Signs
• Foreclosure Sale Benefits Archie Moore’s
• Rescue Squad Swings Into Action
• A Bidder Shows Up
• Bank Beats Tanya’s Bid
• Westville Auction Draws A Crowd
• DeStefano: Foreclosure Plan Ready
• Can They Help?
• “We Should Over-Regulate These Bastards”
• Rosa Hears of Rescues
• WPCA Grilled on Foreclosures
• WPCA’s Targets Struggle To Dig Out
• Sue The Subprimers?
• WPCA Hearing Delayed
• Megna’s “Blood Boils” at WPCA Tactics
• Goldfield Wants WPCA Answers
• 2 Days, 8 Foreclosure Suits
• WPCA Goes On Foreclosure Binge
• A Guru Weighs In
• WPCA Targets Church
• Subprime Mess Targeted
• Renters Caught In Foreclosure King’s Fall
• She’s One Of 1,150 In The Foreclosure Mill
• Foreclosures Threaten Perrotti’s Empire
•“I’m Not Going To Lay Down And Let Them Take My House”
• Struggling Couple Sues Over “Scam”

To learn about the ROOF Project, a community-wide effort to help New Haveners navigate the foreclosure crisis, click here.

The following links are to various materials and brochures designed to help homeowners avoid foreclosure.

How to prepare a complaint to the Department of Banking; Department of Banking Online Assistance Form; Connecticut Department of Banking, Avoiding Foreclosure; FDIC Consumer News; Statewide Legal Services of Connecticut, Inc; Connecticut Bar Association Lawyer Referral Service.

For lawyer referral services in New Haven, call 562-5750 or visit this website. For the Department of Social Services (DSS) Eviction Foreclosure Prevention Program (EFPP), call 211 to see which community-based organization in the state serves your town.

Click here for information on foreclosure prevention efforts from Empower New Haven.