nothin 2 Crime Magnets, 2 Strategies | New Haven Independent

2 Crime Magnets, 2 Strategies

Paul Bass Photo

The hallway of Winthrop Terrace, where cops made 15 calls last month.

Two days after a drug raid across the street, Lt. Ray Hassett took a look at the shiny new paint, new pipes and electrical systems, and scrubbed porcelain bathtubs in a building on the same corner.

It looks lovely,” Hassett told the landlord, Shmully Hecht. The big challenge now is the people. The human real estate.”

Hassett, Edgewood and West River’s top cop (pictured above with developer Hecht and operations manager Yochi Levitanksy), was inside a once-trashed four-story circa-1900 brick apartment building Wednesday at the corner of Chapel Street and Winthrop Avenue. One of Hassett’s longtime headaches.

Hecht took over the building, at 1533 Chapel, in 2010. He cleared the building of tenants and squatters — most of them engaged in drugs or prostitution, he and Hassett said. Hecht’s contractors are busily completing a gut-rehab of the building in hopes of having working families start moving back in next month. Hecht said his Pike International real-estate empire—which has bought over 1,000 apartments in town in a $20 million-plus spree — is pouring an estimated $1.2 million of investors’ money into 1533 Chapel in hopes of starting fresh.

Two nights before that visit, Hassett was at 1523 Chapel, a five-story apartment building across the street on the same corner. The police department’s narc squad was there, too. They were conducting a drug raid on the third floor.

Hassett and his cops end up at that building three or four times a week, he said. In December alone, cops recorded 15 official incidents right at the building and numerous more out on the corner.

The building’s landlord, another local real-estate empire called Netz/Mandy, has since evicted the woman arrested in that raid. It has evicted three other tenants in recent weeks and replaced the on-site superintendent, according to the manager, who goes by the name Mendy Edelkopf.

I take pride in what I do. I try to do a good job,” Edelkopf said Wednesday. I think things have quieted down. Things are going back to normal.”

Etched above the entrance to 1523 are the words Winthrop Terrace.” A reminder that the building has a name.

The two buildings anchor the crime-plagued intersection like monuments to a sturdier, statelier archictectural past. They represent an enduring though faded urban glory — and, the landlords hope, a revived stability.

As district manager responsible for crime-plagued West River, Lt. Hassett works with both landlords. How they manage large apartment buildings like the facing properties at Chapel and Winthrop has a lot to do with how much drug-dealing, shooting, prostitution, and robbery takes place on his turf. The two landlords are both seeking to work with the cops, while trying two somewhat different approaches.

Hassett gave Netz/Mandy some credit for effort. But its building on the corner has already started to crash and burn. We’re battling daily.”

He’s hoping Pike’s start-from-scratch, high-investment approach prevents the other building from ever returning to its previous lost” condition. That will take more than paint and scrubbed hex tiles, he told Hecht during Wednesday’s visit. It will take vigilance. And a face.”

Long-Term Plan

The building at 1533 Chapel had no local face” when a Pike-affiliated partnership purchased it in August of 2010. The previous owner lived out of state. The premises were a wreck. People came and went at all hours, sold drugs, turned tricks, inside apartments and right outside. Chase Bank, which had inherited the mortgage from Washington Mutual, sold Hecht’s partnership the debt. Then the partnership foreclosed on the out-of-state owners.

Next it determined which of the 23 apartment’s occupants weren’t involved in criminal behavior. That turned out to be a handful,” Hecht said. Pike found those tenants apartments at its other properties in town. Then it evicted squatters and other tenants, preparing for the gut-rehab.

Carlos Morillo paints a stairwell at 1533 Chapel.

First it removed lead with a $127,000 grant administered by the city. Next came the rehab: All new windows. new plumbing; PVC pipes that Hecht predicts can last 60 years replaced 75-year-old cast-iron pipes. All new electrical systems, with ground-fault interrupters (so people don’t get electrocuted if they use the hair dryer in the bathroom) the number of circuits increased from one to six per apartment. Ventilators in the bathrooms. The crews—under the direction of P&H Construction—have been preserving some of the older features, scrubbing the hex-tile flowers, reglazing the old tubs.

Hecht raises money from investors for properties he takes on, usually through limited-liability corporations created for each one; Pike overseees the renovations and manages the properties. He raised the money for 1533 Chapel from investors in Tel Aviv and New Jersey, he said. The approximately $1.2 million they’re putting in covered the acquisition, legal work, and renovations.

That’s more than investors usually put into rundown apartment buildings in transitional neighborhoods, Hecht said. It means they’re earn in the “high single or low double” digits in annual returns rather than the “high double digits.” The thinking is that a longer-lasting job—combined with a fresh slate of closely screened tenants—will keep those returns coming for a longer time and help raise the values in the surrounding area. Pike has been buying up much of the neighborhood, as has Netz/Mandy.

Pike’s target tenants for the building: “working families.” Rents will run from $750 a month for one-bedrooms to $995 for two-bedrooms with new kitchens and bathrooms, and living and dining rooms. Asked about whether these rehabs bring about gentrification, pricing out lower-income renters, Hecht insisted Pike’s experience has proved otherwise.

“If you look at the rents today in my buildings—1375 Chapel, 1401 Chapel, 103 Chapel, 1447,  soon 1533, already 1609—a lot of tenants make between $25,000 and $44,000. They are paying $600 to $800 a month for a one-bedroom, $800 to $1,000 for twos and threes. Working-class tenants. From 1375 Chapel , 1367, 1371, 1375, 1401, 1403, 1405, 1447,  and 1609, and now 1533 … Any working-class person in New Haven can live in those buildings and pay the rent. They’re not super luxury. They’re nice, safe affordable living.  They’re racially diverse. They’re ethnically diverse. We have doctors at St. Raphael’s and nurses and Section 8 and people who work in Walmart in the same building.

“The idea that you can’t spend money and keep rents in the market is just not true. You have to buy your real estate right and not overpay, which a lot of people did.”

And you have to screen carefully, he said. Pike staff visits prospective tenants in their current homes to see how they live, for instance.

Hecht said landlords play as crucial a role as the cops in maintaining order on transitional blocks like Chapel and Winthrop.

“As much as people are upset today with the city and the police department for the increase of crime, landlords need to remember that criminals live in their building,” he argued. “We have as much responsibility to be proactive to stop people from committing crimes in our buildings. The first level of prevention is drawing a line in the sand and saying if you’re going to commit crimes, if you’re going to be a nuisance, if you’re going to be a negative influence on society, your not going to live with us. We’re not going to support the life.

“We are now challenging everyone in this neighborhood. We’re only going to move in good people who want a safe community.”

Such remarks are music to Lt. Hassett’s ears.

He pressed the point with Hecht Wednesday, saying the job doesn’t end with screening.

“You get good people who screen well. Then they bring in” friends who crash in their apartments and cause trouble, Hassett said.

A “weak link” in the past at neighborhood buildings has been management that doesn’t hire an on-premises superintendent, or hires a “cheap” one who does a bad job, Hassett said. “Every building needs a face. [Is there] a new pair of shoes in the apartment? A new car [outside]? We need to know about it. If you let it go for a month, you could lose the building.”

“You have the advantage of starting fresh. You’re the beginning of the new New Haven,” Hassett continued, ending with a pep talk.

“I Give Second Chances”

Netz/Mandy had a super across the street at 1523 Chapel, Winthrop Terrace. He was busy — bringing prostitutes into the apartment, according to manager Edelkopf.

You take somebody. You do a background check. He looks good. As soon as you give him the key, he’s high on something,” Edelkopf said. The super had passed the background check. Then Edelkopf noticed women going in and out of his apartment. The super said they were his girlfriends.” A tenant told Edelkopf otherwise.

So last month he booted the super. He hired two new on-site supers, James Booker and James Hampton (pictured). They were on the job Wednesday.

He has also been evicting people involved with drugs or drug-dealing, Edelkopf said. He argued that the recent spate of evictions have calmed down the building, which his partnership bought in 2001. Click here to read about a 2006 murder there; click here for a report on December’s reported crime incidents in the building and on surrounding blocks.

The managers aren’t clearing out the building wholesale or making major renovations. Edelkopf said it is conscientiously keeping up with repairs.

Tenants interviewed on three of the building’s floors Wednesday said they generally find conditions poor in the building. (They didn’t want to give their names or be photographed.) Not all blamed the landlord, though one woman said she hasn’t been able to convince them to fix a mold-produced hole in his bathroom ceiling (pictured). Some noted it’s a tough neighborhood, and Netz/Mandy is doing its best.

Rafael Ramos, deputy director for city government Livable City Initiative (LCI), tells a story that illustrates the challenges landlords like Netz/Mandy face. It concerns an incident on Dec. 19.

The fire department was called to Winthrop Terrace that day. An alarm kept going off. The firefighters traced the problem to a basement apartment where a woman was living.

She became a hoarder. Her entire apartment was full of junk from front to back,” Ramos said. She had stopped paying her electric bill; she’d been stealing electricity from elsewhere in the building.

The firefighters opened the door to the apartment and found the woman’s boyfriend. He said she wasn’t there. The firefighters explored and discovered her under some junk. They were both on drugs.”

Ramos’s LCI was called in. The woman was put up in a hotel; she failed to respond to Ramos’s subsequent attempts to get her into a better situation. Edelkopf had been in the process of trying to evict the tenants.

Ramos doesn’t blame Netz/Mandy for problems in the buildings, he said. The company tends to take in clients from social programs whom other landlords reject, Ramos said. Like Pike but unlike some other poverty landlords, Netz/Mandy is always responsive” to LCI when it discovers code problems. Whenever we call them and want something done, they get it done.”

Edelkopf said his strategy differs from some other landlords in that he doesn’t want to turn away people who have nowhere else to go. He’ll evict them if they break the rules.

I give people second chances. That’s what it’s all about,” he said.

You know how many people come to me who were evicted five years ago? Nobody will give them an apartment. I will give them an apartment. I believe in people.” Edelkopf said he’s able to keep rents as low as $650 a month for some one-bedroom apartments.

Like the Pike building across the street, Winthrop Terrace, built in 1920, evokes a more elegant era in construction. It has the same hex tiles in the lobby, though they’re somewhat ripped up …

… a grand lobby with marble stairs, though the window by the landing is broken …

… graffiti mars an entryway …

… and the hallways are worn. At times anyone off the street can stroll into the building.

Edelkopf said he’s scrambling to keep up with the work at all his properties. Netz/Mandy is based on Whalley Avenue; it works hard at being responsible, according to Edelkopf. If tenants need repairs the company does them—if the tenants call, he said. We can’t help them if they don’t call us.”

I have 16 cameras in the building. We evicted three or four people,” Edelkopf said. The building is back to normal. Most of the problem was that lady” arrested in Monday night’s raid.

There’s no graffiti in the hallway,” he added, besides the seven-year tag etched into the marble in the front hallway pictured above. I’ll try to get it off. The hallway looks nice.”

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