First Attempt To Help Tenants Shuts Down

Families stuck at the decrepit Church Street South housing complex came to an intake center for help in finding new homes — until the intake center abruptly closed.

The problem: It was set up in a condemned apartment.

That was the latest strange-but-true turn Tuesday in the ongoing saga of Church Street South, the mold-infested, staircase-crumbling 301-unit federally subsidized complex across from the train station.

Pressed by legal aid lawyers and condemnation-wielding city inspectors, Northland Investment Corp., the complex’s Massachusetts-based owner, has been paying to put some 50 families in hotels and arranging eventually to find new homes for all 288 families there, hopefully within a year.

That process sort of started Monday for the families still stranded in the complex. The Housing Authority of New Haven (HANH), working under contract with Northland, opened an intake center in an empty Church Street South apartment to interview tenants about their needs and where they’d like to move.

The apartment Northland gave HANH, 93A, was empty because the city condemned it as unlivable on Sept. 2 and moved the family struggling to breathe through the mold there to a motel.

New Haven Legal Assistance Attorney Amy Marx, who represents 60-plus Church Street South families, discovered that fact on Tuesday and complained to the housing authority.

Northland had repainted the apartment and patched holes since the condemnation. Marx pointed to spots in a ceiling and window frame where damage was already reemerging and fresh paint was already peeling. She said the patch job is a continuation of Northland’s previous practice, before the recent inspections, of making shoddy temporary repairs without addressing underlying structural problems at the complex. ​“This is what started the whole thing,” she said.

“It is obvious the walls and ceilings are filled with mold. It’s already regrowing,” Marx said. ​“Northland has no right being in this unit.”

Marx visited the apartment Tuesday, pointing out the damage to HANH’s special projects director Shenae Draughn. (See video near the top of the story.) ​“Our concern is for the health and safety of tenants and your employees,” Marx said. ​“It is beyond belief to me that Northland gave the housing authority this condemned unit.”

“We’re going to get that confirmation, and we will get our employees out of here,” Draughn (pictured) responded. She phoned the city’s anti-blight agency, the Livable City Initiative (LCI), and learned that Northland indeed had no legal right to have the intake centered opened there. So Draughn closed the operation.

LCI Deputy Director Rafael Ramos said Northland did not have permission to reenter the condemned apartment. It must first conduct an air-quality study showing the air is safe to breathe, then await until a LCI reinspection ascertains that all violations have been addressed, Ramos said. He said none of that has happened. So people shouldn’t be in the apartment.

“Our job is to make sure people are in a safe environment. That would include employees,” Ramos said.

An estimated 15 – 20 tenants, including Phyllis Gause (pictured), came in to provide information before the intake center closed. Gause said she was pleased with the process. She’s looking forward to moving but for now considers her apartment fine to live in.

Northland Chairman Larry Gottesdiener said intake will resume soon once the company can locate an accessible space at Church Street South.

He accused Marx of ​“having trouble seeing the forest for the trees. While we commend her for shining a spotlight on this issue, It is time for her to stop pointing fingers and start working toward the ultimate goal, getting all of the families into quality housing with as little disruption to their lives as possible.”

“We have made substantial progress in a very short period of time,” Gottesdiener (pictured) argued in an email message. ” We have relocated over 50 families into hotel rooms, and have completed assessments on all of the displaced families. Most of those families are looking at new apartments and our goal is to have all or most of them in replacement housing by thanksgiving. …

“All of this has been accomplished through a lot of hard work and teamwork by LCI, HAHN, HUD [the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development], and Northland, with one goal in mind — the health, safety, and well being of the residents. To achieve that goal, Northland has incurred millions of dollars of expense for hotels, family assessments, storage, relocation, transportation, security, and gap funding to cover the shortfall between the HUD rents and the new market rents.”

Previous coverage of Church Street South:
• Few Details For Left-Behind Tenants
• HUD: Help’s Here. Details To Follow
• Mixed Signals For Church Street South Families
• Church St. South Families Displaced A 2nd Time — For Yale Family Weekend
• Church Street South Getting Cleared Out
• 200 Apartments Identified For Church Street South Families
• Northland Asks Housing Authority For Help
• Welcome Home
• Shoddy Repairs Raise Alarm — & Northland Offer
• Northland Gets Default Order — & A New Offer
• HUD, Pike Step In
• Northland Ordered To Fix Another 17 Roofs
• Church Street South Evacuees Crammed In Hotel
• Church Street South Endgame: Raze, Rebuild
• Harp Blasts Northland, HUD
• Flooding Plagues Once-Condemned Apartment
• Church Street South Hit With 30 New Orders
• Complaints Mount Against Church Street South
• City Cracks Down On Church Street South, Again
• Complex Flunks Fed Inspection, Rakes In Fed $$
• Welcome Home — To Frozen Pipes
• City Spotted Deadly Dangers; Feds Gave OK
• No One Called 911 | ​“Hero” Didn’t Hesitate
• ​“New” Church Street South Goes Nowhere Fast
• Church Street South Tenants Organize