Fed Up With Slumlord, Dwight Neighbors Quash $2M Grant Quest

Dwight neighbors said thanks but no thanks, for now, to seeking federal millions for a comprehensive revitalization plan — because the plan included a notorious slumlord.

The Housing Authority of New Haven (HANH) along with national real estate developers and property management company The Community Builders were seeking to be co-applicants for a two-year, up to $2 million U.S. Housing and Urban Development grant to create the plan, in collaboration with neighbors, to deal with distressed properties in the neighborhood and sustain affordable housing. Pursuing the grant and receiving it could have positioned the neighborhood to receive millions more to implement whatever plan they developed.

But TCB’s reputation in the neighborhood managing the Kensington Square Apartments, a complex of 216 federally subsidized apartments, proved insurmountable during a Tuesday night management team meeting held in the Amistad Academy gym behind the Edgewood Avenue police substaiton.

HANH needed to have the neighborhood gorup sign off on the application by Feb. 9 in order to demonstrate neighborhood involved.

Shenae Draughn, director of HANH special projects, sought during the nearly two-hour meeting to convince neighbors to vote for that sign off. She stressed that other than applying for the competitive federal grant, HANH had no plan in place on what direction a comprehensive planning process would take. She also tried to reassure neighbors that the planning process would be driven by the community.

Draughn stressed that TCB was chosen as a partner because it manages distressed properties in the community that are in proximity to housing authority property, namely Crawford Manor on Park Street, that also is ripe for redevelopment. TCB also is in position to receive about $3 million in bonding money and could receive a $10.6 million loan from the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority to rehab the Kensington Square.

But neighbors said they distrusted the process because TCB — whose track record they blasted — had already been selected as a co-applicant for the grant without the community’s input. They also complained that a preliminary draft of the application failed to include details about the community that even Draughn said would make the application stronger, particularly the success of a community group in creating the (now titled) Stop & Shop Plaza and a park at Edgewood and Orchard.

Kate Walton has owned her home on University Place for 36 years and created the Fellowship Place on Elm Street. She said it’s not that neighbors don’t want the grant, or even object to the housing authority renovating Crawford Manor. ​“It was a combination of them choosing a partner that we have been concerned about for a long time” and dissing the neighborhood group that made her recommend to her neighbors to reject the grant Tuesday and possibly try again next year.

“They have been very unresponsive,” Walton said of Kensington Square. ​“It’s literally been the focal point of the crime in the neighborhood for the time that they’ve been here, with the exception of when they first came in, they had a an excellent manager. But since then it’s a concern that they have been a crime magnet.”

Walton said that two years ago, neighbors demanded a meeting with TCB over the crime that plagues Kensington Square. She said top managers came down and said all the right things, admitting to the problems. They even vowed to address the issues of putting in security cameras and using better tenant screening methods. But then things didn’t get better.

“Thy never came back again,” Walton said. ​“They are a multibillion dollar corporation, and simple things like landscaping, picking up the trash, having attractive fencing and other things that make the appearance of the place look more suitable are basic things that should have been handled all along, so this is an ongoing issue and it has greatly depressed our property values. It just kind of came as a surprise that they would play a leading role in obtaining a planning grant that doesn’t reflect either their performance or the accomplishments of the neighborhood despite their presence.”

Back in 2012, TCB officials made similar promises of improved safety around the time a 16-month-old boy was shot on his front porch.

Neighbors Tuesday night pointed out that despite the lack of engagement from TCB, the community has a track record of improving the neighborhood including developing a daycare center and bringing in the supermarket.

Linda Townsend Maier, Greater Dwight Development Corp. executive director, said that that TCB should have a role in a redevelopment plan, but that role should mean a real commitment to working with the community.

“We’ve been trying to work with them for years, but they don’t manage their properties well. And they’ve had 20 years,” she said. ​“We’ve had 20 years and we’ve accomplished a lot. I just feel that they needed to attempt to work with us within the framework that we’ve already established. We have a track record and they don’t. “

Townsend called the grant application an attempt to minimize the accomplishments of the neighborhood in order to clear a path for TCB to receive planning money to bolster their own projects.

“TCB has just gotten a $3 million bond allocation. They are applying for up to $10 million from CHFA [the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority], all of this for some of their Kennsington Square projects. So do they need an additional $2 million to plan the neighborhood? They don’t need the money in my opinion,” she said.

West River neighborhood organizer Stacy Spell called the grant a nice idea, but with a Feb. 9 deadline for grant application, it was too late in the process to have what the community has demanded time and again — early collaboration.

“When you come to Dwight,” Spell said, ​“come early.”

Draughn said the neighbors’ decision to reject support for the application is the end of the line for pursing the grant this year.

“This was just specifically to bring resources to Dwight,” she said. ​“We can always redevelop Crawford Manor, and not do anything in Dwight, but we thought it would be more responsible to try to bring resources here.”

Draughn said as the housing authority pursues its plans for redeveloping Crawford Manor, there might be an opportunity to revisit applying for the planning grant next year.

“Hopefully there can be a future partnership around a comprehensive plan, because at the end of the day we look at the preservation of affordable housing and how best we can do that,” Draughn said.

Michael Lozano, TCB’s Northeast region development project manager, said that the company’s plans for the redevelopment of part of Kensington Square have always been separate from the planning grant and not contingent upon trying to secure it.

“That’s completely independent of this outcome,” he said. ​“This was an opportunity and there will continue to be opportunities moving forward to work with the community.