Paul Bass Photo
(Updated) The porch fell apart. Prostitutes and drug dealers claimed turf. A car exploded. Where was the landlord? In Germany.
Welcome to 868 Elm St., a peeling painted-lady in the Edgewood neighborhood.
The police showed up to the house the night before last to bust people on a drug-related raid. They’d been called there repeatedly over the past year by neighbors frustrated by the decline of a beautiful house one door down from the intersection of Ella Grasso Boulevard.
Neighbors and their neighborhood representative from the government’s Livable City Initiative (LCI) spent months trying to find a human being, any human being, connected to the house’s owner to take responsibility.
The episode illustrates one of the biggest challenges facing city government amid a foreclosure crisis: preventing thousands of properties owned by distant lenders from falling into disrepair and spreading blight through neighborhoods on the precipice of decline. Deutsche Bank is the largest owner of such properties in town.
But it’s not completely a sad story. Thanks to a new law, the city has been able to push the German-based conglomerate to take action at the property. Gradually.
It hasn’t been easy. Just ask Elaine Braffman.
Firebomb
Braffman is the dogged LCI worker assigned to Edgewood.
Neighbors have been complaining to Braffman about 868 Elm pretty much since before Deutsche Bank National Trust Company last March formally took possession of the grand 3,723- square-foot 1916 home, following a foreclosure.
“The bank has no business abandoning the community and the neighborhood. We have been trying repeatedly to get the bank to handle safety concerns for the tenants and the neighborhood,” said Eliezer Greer of the Edgewood Neighborhood Association, which has monitored drug-dealing and prostitution at 868 Elm.
“This is systemic of foreclosures and effects the daily lives of folks in the neighborhoods across this country, while banks have offices in obscure locations halfway across the U.S. and have no connection and involvement in the properties they manage and own.”
Paul Bass Photo
Deutsche promised to be a responsible landlord in New Haven. David Co (pictured), a manager, flew in from California to promise to participate in a new city program requiring banklords to register with the government when they take over foreclosed properties and have a contact person on file to handle complaints.
Yet Deutsche waited from March until October to register.
Armed with a contact name and email address, Elaine Braffman went to work. She started emailing one person, was led to another, then another, in Texas, in California, back here in Connecticut. Those emails are contained in a thick folder on file at City Hall.
She reported at one point that “tenants ... are wreaking havoc on the neighborhood” and dealing drugs. “A car was firebombed at that location,” she reported. “The police are spending a lot of time at your property.”
The front porch is “in very poor shape and there is chipping and peeling paint,” Braffman continued. “Balusters are missing. The yard itself is filling up with litter and in the back of the property is stored garbage and loose garbage.”
She was cc’d as various officials of Deutsche’s related entities and contractors—American Home Mortgage Servicing Inc. of Irving, Texas, and Coppell and Irvine, California; J & A Evictions; Deutsche Bank National Trust of Santa Ana, Cal.—discussed the problem.
Braffman mentioned that under a new city law, she can start fining the bank $250 a day.
That got their attention.
“We need to make sure the property is up to code to avoid being fined by the city,” wrote Jasmine Yee of J&A Onsite representatives on Oct. 8 to Francis Ham, an attorney with the same company working on behalf of Deutsche.
“Tenants are involved in drug activity and various other activities that have become public safety issues,” she wrote. Ham wrote about the house on Oct. 19 to Karen Bucci of Davis Owen Real Estate, a Stratford, Conn., the local firm working with Deutsche on 868 Elm. Ham asked Bucci to file a police report to “document any illegal activity” so the company can “start an eviction against a [federally subsidized] Section 8 tenant.”
“Since this occupant is also represented by counsel, we will need to ‘arm’ ourselves with evidence before filing any complaint,” Ham wrote.
A subsequent memo reported that an eviction proceeding had begun.
But when the police swooped in the house at 7 p.m. Monday on one of three drug raids throughout the city, they found two tenants still living on the first floor whom they suspected of being involved in drug activity. They detained six people, several of whom fled (and one of whom led the cops on a foot chase). They found “drug paraphernalia” on the premises. They arrested the 43-year-old first-floor tenant and two other men found there on charges of interfering with a search warrant; and a fourth woman, 20, who had an outstanding warrant on larceny and risk of injury charges.
Despite the continuation of problems and the difficulty of tracking down responsible parties, Braffman said that the company swung into action as soon as she brought up the potential fines. People responded to her messages promptly, even calling her at night for help in obtaining police records.
“I told them, ‘A car was set on fire. I don’t know if one of your tenants did it or someone outside. But you have serious drug-related business that I told the police. You’re jeopardizing the entire neighborhood. You’ve got to do something. At the very bare minimum, you’ve got to keep it clean. Keep the property clear of garbage. I want sidewalks clear in winter,’” Braffman recalled Tuesday.
“I had to use some leverage,” Braffman said Tuesday. “They became extremely responsive.”
Frank D’Amore, who until this month was LCI’s acting director, said the office didn’t fine Deutsche for the late filing or the problems because the bank was responding and taking action.
On Thursday, a spokeswoman for American Home Mortgage, Christine Sullivan, released a written statement to the Independent:
“As mortgage servicer for the property at 868 Elm St., American Home Mortgage Servicing has been working with our local counsel to resolve the situation as quickly as possible. The tenant turned down our earlier offer of relocation assistance. We then initiated an eviction action. However, the Protecting Tenants at Foreclosure Act prevents the eviction of a Section 8 tenant unless the owner can show cause. For several months, we have attempted to get admissible evidence of criminal activity at the property. As soon as the city releases that to us, we’ll be able to move forward.”
On Tuesday, the property was still shabby. A dusty old Lincoln Town Car with Alabama plates and two flat tires was embedded in the mud out front. Some trash was scattered about.
Overall the place had improved somewhat. There was less loose trash than before. And a new porch had been built. It hadn’t been painted yet.
It always amazes me how New Haven - like many old New England cities - can be so house-rich but job-poor, and how they can embrace such disparity of both income and outcome. That's a gorgeous old mansion, which would sell for half a million or more if it happened to be in East Rock or a select couple of streets in Westville. Instead it's home to people who either feel they have no choice, or feel that "drug activity" is by the best choice they could make under the circs.
The funny thing is that although I and many others yearn for improvement, this city already possesses so much of the infrastructure a "liveable city" needs: great houses, walkable neighbourhoods, functioning public transport, local shopping. If you squint a little, on a sunny day we actually almost look like one of those new urbanist paradises. So how do we get there from here? What are the missing links?
Arguably, one thing that helped lift East Rock back out of its 90s doldrums was the Yale Home Buyers' Program, which gives first-timers a leg up. Is the time (and the economy) right for the city to do something similar? Or is across-the-board home ownership a mirage and a mistake, and do we need to come at this from another angle, and aggressively change the landlord culture of the city?
Sorry, I don't have an answer, just lots of questions, as usual.