Study: Towns Hurt By Keeping Out Affordable Housing

Expect upheaval, violence, crime.
The key to survival is housing. Deny this and face the consequences. CT is the Mississippi of New England. You redline, segregate, exclude the poor at your peril. This is The Fire Next Time.
Read Cornel West and James Baldwin.

There's lots of housing out there, but pro-tenant groups have promoted policies and laws that discourage owners from renting. Just look at the mess with the lead paint and the "rambunctious", autistic kids on Whalley. The same building has a family with less "rambunctious" children and no lead issues. Nonetheless, the city wants to jail the landlord, and Legal Aid says every single apartment should be made safe for "rambunctious", autistic, developmentally delayed kids. Moreover, even a simple eviction for non-payment of rent can take months in CT. What owner wants to go through this hell? It's better just to hold inventory off the market. The result of pro-tenant policies is less demand, and higher prices for all as the costs of evicting bad tenants are borne by good tenants.

rental prices - especially in New Haven are driven up as a function of the cost of property taxes and insurance. In our current low interest environment, property taxes and insurance make up 75% of the landlord's expenses. If these costs go up, rents must go up to cover them. It's simple - if we really wanted affordable housing, we would just cut government waste and drop the tax rates.

LOOKOUT is absolutly correct.

If the taxes keep going up as much as they did this past year, rents will continue to be ridiculous.

Stop the insane tax increases. You will continue to see rents rise and rise and rise as long as the greedy, inefficient tax machine continues to demand more and more for less and less services.

1644, lead is a neurotoxin. In kids it contributes to hyperactivity and lower test scores, among other things. If a kid has ADHD (and lots do) exposure to lead is going to make the problem worse. Are you OK with that?

LookOut, the tax rate in New Haven has been flat the last couple of years. But rents have gone up nonetheless.

1644 is right. Eviction for non payment of rent should be expedited. We need more homeless families in CT.

Kevin,

The mill rate is flat.

Assessment values have gone up which raises taxes.

Insurance rates in New Haven have also gone up due to the crime rate and natural disaster damage in the state.

****Rental increases are not a function of greed, but economics. Unless you own rental property and actually pay these costs, you will never understand. I'm sorry if you rent in this City and are not paid a fair wage. Maybe, it's time you move somewhere cheaper with lower taxes.

Kevin: I am okay with landlords being able to tell parents of kids prone to lead poisoning, i.e. with hand to mouth behaviors, or hyperactive, that a pre-1978 dwelling, at least one that has not been gut-renovated, is not for them. To me, its like telling parents they need to buy car seats, rather than requiring that every car come with a child seat, or requiring car dealers selling to parents to provide free seats. Requiring every dwelling to be suitable for kids prone to eating chips and/or creating a lot of dust is a wasteful allocation of resources that drives up costs for everyone. It is also unnecessary since there are many post 1978 dwelling available, albeit often for a bit more money.

HewHaven: So, we should force landlords to house people for free to hold down homelessness?

1644,

No. But, I suspect the current allowance of time after eviction is for the safety of families. That's why I mention it. If you cannot cover this loss of rental income for 90 days, or whatever the law states, then perhaps you cannot afford to be a property owner in the first place!

Hew: So, we expect landlords to provide free housing for 90 days. Large landlords like Mandy spread that cost to their other tenants, but small landlords, like Heo, cannot. On one hand, Harp is saying the city doesn't want absentee landlords. On the other hand, it is actively trying to jail Heo, a small, hands-on landlord. At this point, I would be surprised if he doesn't wish he just razed the historic house behind his nail salon. That would have saved him a lot of headaches and hassle, although at the cost of two units of affordable housing. The fact is Connecticut has thousands of empty dwellings, dwellings that could be housing people if they were rented, but owners hold them off the market because of the fear of dealing with a problem tenant.

HN,

Sorry but calling BS on your reasonable eviction timeline. I have colleagues who rented an apartment in their home and had to evict a tenant. This was after two years of encouraging the tenant to stop hoarding and the tenant deciding to store gasoline cans on the staircase (of a wood framed house...the landlords family lived in terror of fire for a very long time and the state did little for them). Although this particular tenant had no health problems and plenty of money, once eviction started the housing court stretched that process out 5 months. Completely kneejerk bias towards tenants and unfair for landlords. This is part of why rent expensive and all of why landlords are picky about whom they rent to....and why I've personally taken NH Legal Assistance off of my annual donation list.

robn,

I assume the law was not designed to protect people like that.

1644,

So in your world, poor families are withholding rents, forcing their landlords to endure the eviction process, just so they can score a few months of free rent? What are you smoking??

HN,

Your question to 1644 inadvertently hit the mail on the head. Almost every eviction story I hear is the same and involves deadbeats skipping out on rent.

Robn,

If fraud was that rampant amongst rentals, wouldn't we have heard some objective (rather than your anecdotal) reporting? Let me guess, fake news networks are burying this story to please their liberal audience?

HN,

Its quite likely that the many Snidely Whiplash landlords out there who are terrorizing poor tenants don't advertise their misdeeds (other than our own housing authority and their partners) and that I just don't hear about it. Nevertheless, whats been related to me over and over again by trustworthy peers who own rental units is that the housing court is grossly abused by deadbeats (my spending some time in the Housing Court room tells me the same story). I believe in the mission of the CT Housing Court to prevent the exploitation of the weak, but i see the reality that it is grossly abused.

All: Yes, there is rampant fraud in the system of New Haven rentals. Having owned rentals in many towns, New Haven has by far the most risk in 2 main areas; 1) Tenants who milk the system for a few months of free rent and 2) people who play the system to get a section 8 voucher (imagine where we would be if people put this energy into excelling in a job!)

The counter to this is that the market adjusts for this risk. The costs of the risks are seen in higher rents so the cost of people cheating, in the long term, is not borne by the landlord but by the renters who play by the rules.

Owning rental real estate in New Haven is much more profitable than in other towns for this reason. As long as you can absorb the risk, you can make a profit. That's why we have decided to stay in the New Haven market (for now)

Lookout, robn, 1644, and HewNaven,

If you haven't already, I suggest reading Matthew Desomnd's 2016 Pulitzer Prize winning book "Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City"

Jonathan Hopkins,

Thank you. You're now the second person to recommend this book, so I've ordered a copy.

JH,

I suggest that you stop implying that every landlord is guilty of exploiting tenants and that all tenants are innocent of exploiting the system. There a lot of owner occupied houses in NHV where homeowners rent apartments in their own homes but can't even pay the ridiculous tax bill with that rent.

1644, I've volunteered at a day care center for years. Every two-year old I have ever known (1) gets his or her hands dirty while playing and (2) puts their dirty hands in their mouths.

Most of the housing in New Haven, and much of the housing in the inner suburbs, was built before 1978 (for New Haven, the proportion is 84% according to Census Bureau). The idea that a lower-income household could simply move to a post-78 unit is not realistic.

Kevin - I understand what you're getting at, and I agree it is important we have child-safe housing. I wont comment on recent cases in the news nor specific opinions that I find misinformed.
But what is your feasible, technical solution that can be implemented?

Keeping surfaces free of flaking paint, and keeping surfaces near friction areas clean (windows, doors) protects kids. The former is the responsibility of the landlord (though, the tenant must inform the landlord that repair is needed), and the latter is the responsibility of the tenant. Every lease agreement I've seen places cleanliness of the unit on the tenant. Also, landlords are required to hand out the "Lead in your Home" pamphlet which outlines good practices to keep kids safe.

In 2018, it's reasonable to expect that any lead-painted surface has been painted over. This is easy to verify. What else can we ask? Anyone who says "remove it" has not attempted to do this on real-world, 100+ year old wood with numerous coats of paint. Paint penetrates surfaces, there is no feasible way to remove 100% of all paint from a door, window, or piece of trim installed in a home.

As the owner of a half-owner occ, half-rented historic 1800's house in New Haven, I would love a clear directive as to what's acceptable, and what's not. On one hand, we love our historic buildings and preservation. Guess what? That means we will co-mingle with lead indefinitely - though, there is no reason it shouldn't be buried beneath newer, safer coatings in good condition.