City Spotted Deadly Dangers; Feds Gave OK

Melissa Guffey and her loved ones huddled at the Omni Hotel after escaping a dangerous living situation at Church Street South that the feds deemed safe — even as city inspectors chased after the landlord to eliminate a deadly carbon monoxide threat.

Guffey, who’s 23, was holed up at the Omni Tuesday afternoon with her son, Jariel, and her boyfriend, Ivan Cortes, 23 (pictured). They were hiding out from the freezing rain falling outside — and from living conditions that twice forced them out of their home at DeDiego Court, a 12-unit wing of the Church Street South housing complex.

They are three of 26 people who remained displaced from the housing complex after a poorly installed furnace leaked dangerous levels of carbon monoxide into the air Saturday evening, sending four adults and one child to the hospital. They returned home but were again displaced on Monday, as the city inspected all the furnaces to make sure the problem doesn’t happen again.

Their dislocation caps several months of communications between the city and the property owners over code violations at the site — violations that were apparently overlooked by federal inspectors, who gave the complex a passing grade in a Sept. 20 inspection.

A few months earlier on July 21, city inspectors did their own review and gave failing grades to 48 apartments for a wide range of problems.

The complex is run by DeMarco Management and owned by Northland Investment Corporation, which bought the 300-unit complex in July 2008 with the hopes of making it a major redevelopment project. Church Street South has an annual contract with the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) as a project-based Section 8 site. That means HUD pays Northland up to $3,693,408 annually to subsidize the cost of rent, based on how many apartments are filled, according to HUD spokesperson Rhonda Siciliano.

The money, paid monthly, was released to Northland after Church Street South was cleared in Real Estate Assessment Center (REAC) inspection last fall, Siciliano said.

Erik Johnson, director of the New Haven’s anti-blight agency, the Livable City Initiative (LCI), noted that that federal inspection ​“did not identify all the issues that the city had identified” in its own inspections.

“We were surprised by the score that Northland received on the REAC inspection,” Johnson said.

In the Sept. 20 REAC inspection, the feds gave Church Street South a grade of 68 out of 100; anything above 60 is a passing grade. That freed up the money to pay for the complex for another year.

Federal inspectors checked out 25 of the 301 units at Church Street South; they took off 4.8 points off the inspection for health and safety problems. Inspectors cited three types of ​“systemic deficiencies”: missing or damaged refrigerators, missing or obstructed routes to the main entrances and common areas, and damaged hardware or locks. There is no mention of mis-installed furnaces or missing CO detectors.

HUD spokesperson Siciliano said she could not answer why inspectors didn’t find the same violations the city found a few months earlier.

“The City does not routinely include HUD on its inspection findings so we have no basis for comparison,” Siciliano replied in an email. ​“I would refer you back to the City or property owner to answer this question.”

Partners?

The conditions at Church Street South complicate the city’s relationship with Northland: As the two work together on the future of the site; they’re fighting over the current conditions.

The city’s economic development team is working with the company on a $1 million federal grant to develop a master plan to redevelop Church Street South.

The planning proceeds as Northland, the Hartford area’s largest commercial landlord, has been suffering from financial hardship: It recently lost a Hartford office tower to repossession by lenders. Its plans to build a new home for the Long Wharf Theatre on the grave of the New Haven Coliseum fizzled in the recession. Mayor John DeStefano also said Tuesday that the negotiations between the city and Northland have encountered some difficulties over questions of financing and tenant relocation plans.

$63K In Fines Sought

While city government’s development arm is working with Northland as a developer, city government’s anti-blight arm is at odds with the company over conditions of the 1969 concrete ​“jungle,” as the housing complex is nicknamed.

Since November, the city has been asking Northland to pay $63,000 in fines for code violations on numerous apartments.

Asked about the code violations, Northland spokeswoman Mary Brennan Coursey issued only this brief statement: ​“The safety and well-being of the Church Street South families has and will continue to be our number one priority. The staff at Church Street South has
been working around the clock in conjunction with the city to make sure our residents are as comfortable as possible.” The company would not respond to specific questions about the violations identified by the city, such as why it hadn’t installed detectors and how it plans to address the emergency.

As of this week, the violations still had not been addressed, according to the city.

The city inspected 120 units at the complex and failed at least 48 of them, according to a review of inspection reports. Code violations cited included: mold, broken windows, missing smoke detectors, a leaking roof, mice and rodent infestation, missing screens on windows, bed bugs, exposed wires, broken hallway lights, obstructed fire escape, holes in the walls, broken toilets, a ​“bent entry door,” broken sinks, and an open basement door.

They also included two violations that became especially relevant over the weekend.

The city found at least 74 apartments had ​“mis-installed or ill-installed exhaust systems to their furnaces,” according to Rafael Ramos, deputy director of LCI.

Carbon monoxide detectors were missing from at least 35 apartments, including three at DeDiego Court, a wing of the Church Street South complex, according to a city inspection report.

Those detectors would have come in handy over the weekend, when the noxious gas started leaking through the building.

The Great Escape

Guffey said she and her son and boyfriend were home Saturday evening when a firefighter knocked on the door.

“I heard the lady screaming,” Guffey recalled, sitting on the hotel bed Tuesday afternoon.

After hearing the screams, she looked outside and saw an ambulance. Medics were treating Guffey’s neighbor, whose apartment filled with carbon monoxide fumes due to a malfunctioning furnace.

At the time firefighters entered the building, ​“the CO readings were extremely high,” said Fire Marshal Joe Cappucci.

Readings reached ​“in the area of 1,000 parts per million,” he said. Most CO detectors are set to alert residents when the level rises to only 9 ppm, he said.

Carbon monoxide is an odorless and deadly gas, Cappucci cautioned: ​“You could go to sleep and not wake up from it.”

The leak stemmed from an improperly installed furnace (pictured) that was missing a pipe. While the worst CO contamination occurred in the apartment with that missing pipe, the gas spread to the nearby areas.

All the residents in DeDiego Court were relocated out of the building; the city put them up at the Three Judges Hotel near the New Haven-Woodbridge town line. As in other relocations due to unsafe living conditions, the landlord will have to reimburse the city for the hotel tab.

Guffey, Cortes and Jariel returned to their apartment on Sunday. The gas had been shut off, so there wasn’t any heat.

“Sunday night was freezing,” recalled Cortes. ​“It felt like we were outside.”

That night, Jariel slept in two layers of clothes, Guffey said. On Monday, they were given space heaters to warm up the apartment. Guffey said they spent the day at her dad’s house Monday during the day. When they returned, LCI’s Ramos was there. He told them the apartments were not habitable because there was no heat, and the city still had to inspect them to make sure no one else was having furnace problems.

Guffey’s group of 26 evacuees were supposed to stay at the Day’s Inn, but when there were no vacancies there, the city put them up at the luxurious Omni Hotel. They were set to check out Wednesday morning and return to their homes.

In A Fix

Guffey said in the year she has lived at Church Street South, she has found that it’s difficult to get the management to fix problems around the house.

City inspectors who visited her apartment last July gave it a failing grade. The inspector ordered the landlord to: ​“weather tight the front door,” put a number on the front door, replace the back door, repair window screens, and ​“exterminate for infestation.”

Guffey said as of Tuesday, none of those changes had been made.

“They don’t do nothing,” she said. She said the winter air blows right through drafty windows, and the house is constantly cold.

How did her apartment, and dozens of others, go so long without being fixed? Northland failed to comment beyond its formal written statement.

Siciliano said HUD ​“has been in contact with the Church Street South management agent and the city to ensure the safe relocation” of the displaced families from DeDiego court, ​“and that appropriate measures are taken to ensure the safety of all Church Street South residents.”

Meanwhile, the city continues to levy $63,000 in fines on the landlord. The fines stem from the July 21 inspections. The city faxed Church Street South a letter on Oct. 20 detailing violations identified in July that still had not been fixed.

On Nov. 22, LCI’s Ramos sent a letter to Church Street South informing them of an ​“unabated violation” at the property. The city imposed a civil fine of $100 per day for up to 30 days for each violation cited, as of Oct. 20, 2010. Those fines total $63,000.

As of this week, Northland still had not fixed the problems and still owes that fine, according to city officials.

A new round of inspections will determine what work remains to be done.

Meanwhile at the hotel, Guffey offered her own advice on the situation.

“They should tear them projects down,” she said.