Paul Bass Photo
Harp in WNHH studio Monday.
The owners of the crumbling Church Street South will have a hard sell when they seek a deal to rebuild it, based on Mayor Toni Harp’s latest remarks about the controversial complex.
The chairman of Northland Investment, which owns the 301-unit subsidized apartment complex across from the train station, told the Independent that he would like a second chance to work out a deal with the city tear the place down and build a new 800-unit, mixed-use, mixed-income developoment. (Read about there.)
“They do own it,” Harp said when asked Monday if she’ll entertain a proposal from Northland. “So we have to deal with them. But they have not been good partners. Let’s face it. They haven’t been.
“So I don’t know what would make us think they would change and become good partners. They have put people’s lives at risk by not maintaining their property. To me, why would we want to trust them again?”
Harp made her most expansive comments to date about the Church Street South controversy, sparked by a question from a caller to her weekly WNHH radio “Mayor Monday” segment on the “Dateline New Haven” show.
Harp’s administration has for weeks been inspecting and condemning (four and half units so far) Northland’s moldy, flooding apartments at Church Street South, issuing over 40 repair orders and threatening fines. Harp said inspections will continue. Her neighborhoods agency, the Livable City Initiative (LCI), has ordered Northland to put four families and a single adult up in hotels while their apartments get repaired; those repairs are proceeding more slowly than originally promised. (Fox 61’s Tony Terzi reported Monday night on two condemned leaking, moldy apartments where repair crews haven’t been spotted since Aug. 13.) Northland officials told the Independent they’ve spent $4.6 million repairing apartments since they bought the complex in 2008. The chairman, Lawrence Gottesdiener (pictured), promised the company will continue making repairs, though he called the repairs ultimately a “losing battle” in an “obsolete” development.
Harp Monday called Northland’s comments to date “an unacceptable explanation.”
“They obviously didn’t do a good job,” she said. “I know that people have complained that they just painted over the mold. If they put millions in, it wasn’t well spent. They didn’t oversee the contractors who did the work.”
She called Church Street South“one of the best exmaples of how a company can come in, land bank, and destroy a community. And continue to take the money out through the federal subsidies.
“It’s outrageous. And it’s cynical.”
Markeshia Ricks Photo
A sample condemend Church Street South apartment.
Harp also revealed that back in January she “brought photos” of conditions at Church Street South to a visit ini Washington with officials from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). HUD gives Northland about $3 million a year in rental subsidies for its tenants.
Harp’s inspectors have been consistently failing Church Street South apartments that subsequently get higher ratings from HUD, which continues paying the subsidies.
“I told them that there were conditions that they should send people out [to reinspect]. They did absolutely nothing,” Harp reported.
Since then, New Haven Legal Assistance Association has begun representing tenants at the complex and gone to court to demand repairs. NHLAA lawyers wrote to HUD also demanding a reinspecting. On Friday, HUD spokeswoman Rhonda Siciliano said HUD does plan to reinspect the complex soon. It also plans to work with the city to determine whether it should move the subsidies for the condemned apartments to other landlords elsewhere in town. (Siciliano said Monday afternoon that she has no update on the inspections or the subsidy decision.)
Harp said Monday that “we wouldn’t have gotten any reaction [from HUD] at all if it were not for legal aid. They would have totally ignored it. And they did ignore it untilt his happened. I’m happy to ehar they are working with Livable Citiy Intinative to move this down the road. But it is unfortunate that people had to live these conditions all these years.”
Harp said the city does want to see a mixed-income “transit-oriented development” built at the site, with at least 30 percent of new apartments reserved for subsidized tenants and all Church Street South tenants’ housing taken care of, either on site or elsewhere in town.
She pointed to the rebuilt Elm Haven (now Monterey), Quinnipiac Terrace and Brookside housing developments as neighborhoods as examples of how public housing can work well as part of a mixed community, including market-rate apartments and homeowner units. She noted that since the removal last year of the notorious long-standing fence separating the Brookside apartments form Hamden, she hasn’t heard any complaints, that people’s fears haven’t materialized.
“One of the things that we learned probably int he early ‘80s is that having low-income neighborhoods is really not good for the neighborhood. That you really have to have mixed-income neighborhoods. It’s good for everybody. It makes it more resilient, vibrant,” Harp said.
The full discussion with Harp about Church Street South appears at around 35:00 and then again at 46:00 in the above sound file of the program. During the show she also fielded questions about, among other topics, newly disclosed plans to rebuild a stretch of the Hill neighborhood and the demolition last week of a crumbling historic building at Orange and Chapel streets. Click on the sound file from the start to hear the whole program.
Previous coverage of Church Street South:
• Church Street South Endgame: Raze, Rebuild
• 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
• “New” Church Street South Goes Nowhere Fast
• Church Street South Tenants Organize
Good for Mayor Harp. HUD has been terrible on this, how can they possibly have "inspected" these mold-filled apartments and found them to be OK?? I think they just don't want the trouble of dealing with the actual situation.
These are "project-based" Section 8 vouchers, which can only be used in this project. The tenants should be freed up from the horrible conditions there and each of them should be offered "tenant-based" vouchers that they can take anywhere, including out to the suburbs (if someone will rent to them.) The city should offer assistance in finding new places, including suing suburban landlords if necessary (maybe working with Yale and Quinnipiac Law students.)
The New York Times recently highlighted research showing how much poor families with young children benefit by moving to areas without concentrated poverty. (Older teen boys have a more difficult transition to suburban living, though, it seems, so that should be taken into account.)