Complaints Mount At Church Street South

Natalie Gonzalez noticed something wrong when the lights in her kitchen of her apartment stopped working. She checked the electrical outlets, then the stove. No electricity flowed.

She started calling the maintenance staff for help. No one came.

“My neighbor fed my kids and allowed us to take a hot shower,” Gonzalez recalled. ​“She wasn’t home on Saturday so we had to take cold showers.”

That happened this past weekend at Church Street South, the crumbling, crime-plagued 301-unit publicly subsidized apartment complex across from the train station.

Gonzalez described her woes in a tour of her apartment this week, as she joined a growing chorus of neighbors to challenge Northland Investment Corp., the Newtown, Mass.-based slumlord that owns Church Street South and reaps some $3 million in Section 8 rental subsidies from the federal government.

Gonzalez and other tenants have enlisted the help of both legal-aid lawyers and New Haven government’s Livable City Initiative (LCI) in their fight.

Three other tenants have filed housing code enforcement complaints in court, and more may be coming. Attorneys with New Haven Legal Assistance Inc., along with Hill Alder Dolores Colon, met with tenants Tuesday night at the Wilson branch library on Washington avenue to talk about conditions, recent actions the city has taken to condemn an apartment, and ongoing inspections by LCI.

“The conditions are terrible,” Colon said of the apartments. ​“A judge in New York City sentenced a slum lord in the 80s to live in his apartments. A judge should sentence these owners to live in Church Street South.”

Colon said nearly three years ago, Northland owners came to the city with promising ideas about tearing down Church Street South and redeveloping it into studio and 1 to 2‑bedroom apartments. (Many of the current apartments are larger.) She said officials told the owners they would have to offer current residents first dibs on the new apartments if they planned to continue to seek HUD subsidies; she said she’s not heard another word out of them.

New Haven Legal Assistance attorney Amy Marx said she has contacted residents in nearly every building of the 301-unit complex, and found consistent problems.

“It only takes a few visits to a few units in different buildings to see that there are very serious and widespread problems —cracks in ceiling, leaking windows, rotted floors, persistent black mold, reports of asthma,” she said. ​“We have seen these problems throughout the complex, in buildings on Cinque Green, Jose Marti, Malcolm Court, Columbus, Station Court, and Great Green.”

She said instead of owning up to the structural problems and hiring licensed professionals to make repairs, Northland continues to flout LCI orders on repairs.

​“In addition, our efforts to work with tenants and report concerns have been met with hostility,” she said. ​“Our office has been accused of riling up tenants and threatened with arrest for trespassing.”

Marx pointed out that Church Street South is not one of the Connecticut properties touted on the developer’s website about its national portfolio.

“The development is a cash cow for Northland,” she said. ​“The families are all low-income and have their rent paid for by the federal government. The money comes from the government in full and on time each month. The less Northland spends on the facility, the more money it makes.”

Northland Senior Vice-President Peter Standish did not respond to a request for comment for this story. For a story published last week about the city condemnation of an apartment at Church Street South, Standish emailed this comment to the Independent: ​“We are working directly with the city and the resident to rectify the situation as quickly as possible. The safety and security of our residents is our primary concern. We have temporarily secured accommodations for the family and are taking steps to complete the repairs needed and get the family back home.”

Gonzalez said in addition to her being unable to cook or bathe at home, her fiancé uses an oxygen machine. If it had not been for an extension cord run to an upstairs room that still had electricity, she’s not sure what they would have done.

When a maintenance staffer arrived, he didn’t have good news.

“I talked to the maintenance guy because he speaks Spanish,” she said. ​“He said, ​‘Something real bad is happening in here.’”

Gonzalez has been battling black mold, which she paints over, cracks in the walls around windows and near the ceiling. Her apartment also was inspected by LCI in May and July and received failing marks: The porch was not swept. There was mold found on the bathroom ceiling and a hole in the wall. Gonzalez said maintenance staff put the hole in the wall when it fixed a clog in her bathtub. To cover the hole workers placed a piece of wood over it. She nailed it shut because her children kept trying to look inside it.

In a July inspection, LCI found new violations, noting that repairs needed to be made to a hole in other walls throughout the house and to loose and broken floor tiles. It also found that the kitchen baseboard heater needs to be replace.

Gonzalez said everyone in her household has asthma. She called LCI Monday, and has subsequently filed her own housing enforcement complaint with the courts.

“If I had somewhere else to go, I would,” she said.

Try 2

So would Laynette Del Hoyo. Gonzalez’s woes last weekend came almost two weeks after Connecticut Superior Court Judge Steven Ecker signed an order directing New Haven’s building inspector, Jim Turcio, to inspect conditions in Del Hoyo’s case. Turcio, Ramos and Deputy Building Official Dan O’Neill visited the complex and ultimately condemned another one of the apartments, while issuing a stop-work order on an improperly conducted repair of an exterior staircase. (Read about that here.)

Del Hoyo (pictured with attorney Marx) painted her baby daughter’s room with shades of bright pink and purple in preparation for her February arrival. Months later, she’s afraid to let her sleep in her room.

No matter how much she cleans, or how often maintenance patches the cracks in her ceiling, water keeps coming in, and black mold keeps reappearing in her Church Street South Apartment.

Her son has asthma. Her daughter has developed a dry cough. Her pediatrician wants her to move.

“I just want to get up and leave,” Del Hoyo (pictured left in the photo above) said.

But with nowhere else to go, she staying and she’s fighting. She has taken Northland Investment Corp. — the Newtown, Mass.-based slumlord that owns the 301-apartment government-subsidized the owner of the 301-unit government-subsidized apartment complex across from the train station — to court. She has called in city inspectors.

In the past week, several of her fellow tenants have joined the fight, with more at a community meeting vowing to sign on with the help of legal-aid lawyers. They told stories that mirrored Del Hoyo’s experience. Meanwhile, the city has renewed a years-long effort to get Northland to fix up the crime-plagued crumbling complex and improve security — or else raze and rebuild it or let someone else rebuild it.

“I’m not going to stop,” Del Hoyo said during a tour of her apartment. ​“I’m going to keep pushing until they turn this into a different part of New Haven. Nobody deserves to live in a place like this.”

In February, Del Hoyo, with advice from her mother and knowledge she picked up during an incomplete turn in paralegal school, filed a complaint with New Haven’ government’s Livable City Initiative (LCI). She also filed a complaint with the state housing court on Elm Street.

In her complaint to the court, Del Hoyo alleged that the owners of Church Street South failed to fix a crack in her living room ceiling that leaked; a leak around the front bedroom window; mold and mildew throughout the apartment; chipping paint throughout the apartment; a broken front bedroom wall outlet; and unfinished repairs throughout the apartment.

Attorneys for Church Street South LLC, which is owned by Northland, had Del Hoyo’s complaint dismissed on a technicality: Del Hoyo, then filing her complaint without the benefit of an attorney, mistakenly entered ​“Church Street South LLC” on a line where ​“Livable City Initiative” should have gone on the complaint form.

She has since retained Marx to represent her case.

“It would have made the most sense if at the time when the tenant had filed her own pro se court enforcement action that the owner of the property would have taken responsibility for the serious conditions and had addressed the water leaking issue,” Marx said. Instead, the company spent money to send ​“two attorneys from two different firms to have the case dismissed,” she said. The complaint was immediately refiled.

Del Hoyo’s complaint to LCI was answered by Housing Code Inspector Tomas B. Reyes, who conducted a Feb. 23 inspection. Reyes found conditions to be just as Del Hoyo had described. Of particular concern was whatever underlying problem was causing Del Hoyo’s ceiling to remain damp. He ordered the owners to correct the condition causing the ceiling to remain damp and to remove loose plaster from the ceiling and to re-plaster and repaint the ceiling.

He returned to Del Hoyo’s apartment April 27 to discover that none of repairs had been made.

In response, Charmaine Chavis, regional manager for DeMarco Management Corporation, which managed Church Street South Apartments, wrote in a May 11 letter that they repairs had been made.

“Please be advised the work was completed, attached find work order #A21194 (open and closed),” Chavis wrote. ​“Additionally, we have enclosed pictures of the bathroom and the bedroom areas.”

According to documents obtained by the Independent, LCI conducted another inspection on May 11. Three days later, Deputy Director of Housing Code Enforcement Rafael Ramos sent a letter by certified mail to Steven P. Rosenthal, president and CEO of Northland Fund II, L.P./Church Street New Haven LLC in Newton, Mass., informing him that the department’s inspection ​“revealed violations [of] the City of New Haven’s Housing Code. As owner (or as a designated agent of the owner) of the premises in question you are responsible for remedying these violations.”

The violations were all related to Del Hoyo’s damp ceiling. This sentence was highlighted in bold and underlined: ​“Failure to comply with this order represents a violation of the City of New Haven’s Housing Code and may subject you to criminal prosecution by the State’s Attorney’s Office.”

Common Problems

Del Hoyo’s apartment wasn’t the only one inspected on May 11. LCI attempted to inspect a total of 60 apartments that day. It found more reasons to give Northland and its management failing marks. The owners were told that LCI would return June 10.

On June 8, another work order for Del Hoyo’s apartment was submitted to the city as evidence that the owners were addressing the issues in her apartment. But when inspectors returned almost two months later, they didn’t find a repaired apartment. While some repairs had been made, they found others still not done — along with new problems.

Del Hoyo’s apartment was inspected again. The owners were found to have failed to remove mildew from furnace room walls; repair lead around a window in the front bedroom; repair a leak around a window in the center bedroom; remove mildew from the close in the center bedroom; the wall outlet in the rear bedroom; and complete work on a wall.

The inspector found new problems including a failure to remove and replace the caulking around the tub; to repair a wall by the bathroom; to install and replace weather stripping; and to replace window screens throughout the apartment.

In July, Inspector Reyes wrote of the repairs in Del Hoyo’s apartment: ​“Repairs not completed correctly. Makeshift repairs continue to be made without addressing the underlying cause.”

HUD Goes Lighter

Part of the impasse over Church Street South lies in different treatment of the landlord by city inspectors and the bureaucracy at the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). HUD gives Northland $3 million in Section 8 rent subsidies for the apartments, which guarantees a revenue stream whether or not the complex is in good condition.

HUD does conduct inspections — but doesn’t end up finding the kind of problems LCI does. Or else it is more satisfied with the response to problems it discovers.

But two women attending Tuesday’s meeting reported that because their apartments are nice, inspectors always visit their apartments.

“I told them to stop coming because my apartment isn’t representative of what’s going on out here,” a woman who declined to be named said. ​“I don’t open the door for them anymore.”

Another woman said that because she’s into arts and crafts, her apartment looks nice. ​“I want them to stop coming,” she said.

On an inspection scale of 1 to 100, a HUD inspector did give Church Street South Apartments a 26 in February 2013. HUD rules require that any property that receives a score below 60 will be contacted by the agency’s Department of Enforcement Center and receive a default notice. In addition to the significantly low score, Northland received a ​“C”, which means that the apartment complex had at least one life threatening health and safety deficiency.

HUD inspectors returned in December 2013 and Northland’s score rose to a passing 62, though the ​“C” remained. The passing, but still relatively low score meant that the property had to be inspected again the following year. In October 2014, a HUD inspector gave the property a 82, with the ​“C” remaining. With that much higher score the property isn’t slated to be expected again until 2016.

One of the apartments inspected was Del Hoyo’s. A month after that inspection, Del Hoyo started to see that leak in the bathroom. That leak would spread along a line that runs across the ceiling of the apartment from her bedroom to the kitchen.

“I had had everyone over for Thanksgiving and had said goodbye to everyone,” she recalled. ​“I was getting ready for bed when I hear psssh in the bathroom.”

She found water all over her bathroom. Maintenance workers responded two days later, but she’s been dealing with problems ever since.