Church St. South Tenants Get A Choice

Hundreds of Church Street South families still living in limbo heard about a sped-up housing-rescue plan — which might land them permanent new homes sooner, but could leave New Haven with less low-income housing in the long term.

That fear surfaced at a mass meeting held at Gateway Community College Thursday night.

Two hundred fifty tenants of Church Street South gathered there to hear about next steps in their journey from dangerous, decrepit federally-subsidized housing to promised safe new apartments.

Officials from Northland Investment Corp. — which owns the crumbling 301-unit complex across from Union Station — and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the federal agency that pays the full $3.7 million annual rent tab under the Section 8 program, announced details of the rescue plan. Northland, whose Church Street South buildings have received dozens of condemnations and unsafe-condition citations, is in the process of gradually clearing out all the tenants and helping them find new homes, before razing the complex to make way for a new planned mixed-use development.

Northland Vice-President Peter Standish (pictured with Spanish-language translator Michelle Rodriguez-Ford from New Haven’s housing authority) said all families will choose between forms of Section 8 subsidies for their next homes:

• They can have Northland transfer their current Church Street South Section 8 subsidy to a new complex owned by someone else, where the rent will continue to be attached to the apartment, not to the tenant (a so-called ​“project-based” subsidy). Sealing a deal with enough owners of new complexes will take months at the earliest. If tenants eventually move out of those new apartments, the subsidy remains in place at the apartments for new tenants to use.

• Or they can obtain vouchers they can take with them to go find a landlord of their own to rent to them. Those ​“portable” vouchers will travel with them from home to home, and remain in effect only as long as the tenants qualify for subsidies. Families can leave the state and still use them.

This two-choice plan is a big development for the families waiting for new homes. Transferring the families’ subsidies to new locations is a slow bureaucratic process. Top HUD officials agreed to make two exceptions to how that process usually works to speed it up. One exception was allowing Northland’s project-based subsidies to be transferred to new complexes owned by other landlords. The other exception was giving tenants the choice to get portable vouchers instead, and to do that before Northland has compiled a list of possible new complexes willing to accept the project-based subsidies.

What About Later?

That’s good in the short run for the Church Street South families, said Amy Marx, a legal aid lawyer whose advocacy for the tenants forced city and federal officials to take action this past year at Church Street South.

Legal aid and the tenants applaud the news about the option of taking portable vouchers, she said. It gives tenants more choices and gets them faster relief from living in substandard conditions.

But Marx said she fears the plan may prove harmful in the long run for other low-income families in general seeking subsidized housing in gentrifying New Haven.

Technically, Northland must promise that when this is all over — and it finds families new homes and razes Church Street South — there will still be 301 homes elsewhere supported by the project-based Section 8 vouchers formerly attached to the complex. That way New Haven theoretically doesn’t lose the amount of subsidized housing it has in town.

But Northland can fulfill that promise by finding locations anywhere in Connecticut, not just in Greater New Haven. And it will no longer have an incentive to make good on the promise at all, Marx noted, unless HUD officials have the capacity and will to force it to.

“We want the vouchers,” Marx said, ​“and we want the promise” fulfilled. She urged HUD to obtain written guarantees from Northland. And she urged city officials to work hard to find owners of other housing complexes to accept project-based subsidies.

“There needs to be new development in the New Haven area,” Marx said, not just of market-rate housing, which is booming, but subsidized housing, too.

Moving Violation

Meanwhile, on Thursday night at Gateway, HUD and Northland officials said they’re asking all 288 Church Street South families (not all 301 units had been occupied when the city started condemning some of them) to make a preliminary choice. They asked the families to fill out forms stating whether they lean toward accepting portable vouchers or moving to a new project-based Section 8 subsidized complex.

Their choices won’t be binding, Rick Daughtery (pictured above), regional director of HUD’s multiple-family housing division, assured the crowd. Officials simply want to get a preliminary feel for how many families will choose each option. He also assured families that HUD or Northland will pay the cost of their moves when they do obtain permanent new places.

That promise elicited a warning from one tenant in the crowd, Ruben Negron.

Negron (pictured with his son Yamil) and his family are among the few who have already moved into a new apartment from Church Street South. (Northland had to move 58 of the families to temporary hotel rooms because of unlivable conditions; 35 of those families so far have been placed in new apartments.) Negron and his family found a new subsidized apartment in East Haven.

The movers provided to help them get there destroyed thousands of dollars wroth of furniture in the move, Negron said. But Northland’s insurance reimbursed him only a total of $500 worth for the lost beds and sofa.

“Make sure your stuff is protected,” Negron urged his former neighbors. ​“They’re not going to give you nothing.”

Northland’s Standish thanked Negron for his remarks and promised to discuss the matter with him privately after the meeting.

Legal aid’s Marx stood up to advise the tenants to think carefully before deciding which of the two options to take for their next apartment subsidy. Portable vouchers do offer tenants more freedom, to pick their own landlords, to find their ideal places to live, to make it all happen sooner. On the other hand, the landlord is freer to evict tenants each year; and project-based subsidies offer homes communities with on-site management.

The meeting ran more than an hour and half, leading families with restless small children to clear out.

Remaining tenants said they were confused.

Adding to the confusion was a list that Northland gave tenants of possible project-based complexes to move to. The tenants are supposed to review that list before deciding between the two subsidy options.

The list, in Marx’s words, is ​“fictional.” It lists landlords, like Carabetta Management, that have lots of apartments — but it doesn’t identify which apartments would be included here. Or it lists apartments that are already subsidized, so they wouldn’t qualify for the project-based transfer. Most of the apartments are far beyond Greater New Haven. Some are currently occupied, so they’re not truly available.

So that makes it harder for tenants to decide which option to pursue.

“I don’t have an idea of nothing” based on that list, tenant Ann Thomas (pictured at the top of this story) told the officials. ​“Do you have any names of places” she can actually go see?

That true list will probably be ready some time in the spring, officials told her.

Meanwhile David Rosen (pictured above at right, with associate Alex Taubes) sat near the back, listening. Rosen didn’t have a role to play in Thursday night’s meeting. His role is yet to come: Church Street South families have hired the prominent New Haven attorney to file a class-action a lawsuit against Northland Investment Corp. over the conditions they have lived under for years. (Read about that here.) So while Northland awaits to salvage a payday out of the Church Street South disaster—selling or else rebuilding the property into a partially luxury development —the tenants trapped in dangerous living conditions will be seeking their financial recompense, as well. ​“We’re putting some of the last pieces in places” and expect to file the complaint soon, Rosen reported.

Previous coverage of Church Street South:
• Home-For-Xmas? Not Happening
• Now It’s Christmas, Not Thanksgiving
• Pols Enlist In Church Street South Fight
• Raze? Preserve? Or Renew?
• Church Street South Has A Suitor
• Northland Faces Class-Action Lawsuit On Church Street South
• First Attempt To Help Tenants Shuts Down
• 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