Investor Tries Evictions First, Repairs Later

Felicia Howard pointed a spray bottle at yet another cockroach crawling above her kitchen stove — and tried to snuff out a pest that has plagued a dilapidated Newhallville apartment from which an out-of-state landlord is trying to evict her and her daughter for no fault of their own.

Howard, a 63-year-old Walmart employee, and her daughter Faydre Phillips, an ex-Amazon warehouse staffer now out of work because of an on-the-job injury, both rent individual bedrooms in the first-floor apartment of the three-family house at 279 Highland St. 

They’ve each lived in the Newhallville de facto rooming house for nearly half a decade, paying $500 per month apiece for their own single bedrooms and access to a shared living room, bathroom, and kitchen in the four-bedroom unit. 

To hear them tell it, that apartment has not been an easy place to live. Far from it.

The two tenants ticked through a long list of problems with the property during a Tuesday afternoon interview on their front porch. 

They cited persistent bed bug and cockroach infestations, a damp and damaged moldy kitchen ceiling, flood damage in the bathroom, a recent carbon monoxide leak, intermittently broken refrigerator and stove, a steep and rickety front stairwell hard on Howard’s knees and Phillips’s back, a busted hot water pipe and furnace, and a lack of working heat. 

Livable City Initiative (LCI) records corroborate much of those housing-code complaints — and detail more.

On April 28, the city’s housing code enforcement agency sent a code compliance notice to 279 Highland’s New Jersey-based owners. 

That notice stated that LCI inspector Christian Feliciano visited the first-floor apartment on April 27, and found that the landlord needed to rid the apartment of a bedbug and roach infestation; have a licensed contractor service the furnace; and repair a broken or loose front porch right handrail. 

On May 1, LCI sent another code compliance noticed to the landlord, this time based on inspector Warren Murphy’s visit to the second-floor apartment on April 24. That notice ordered the landlord to remove accumulated trash from the front and rear yards and second-floor porch; replace missing or broken rails on the front porch; have a licensed contractor fix a leaking steam boiler; install smoke detectors in common areas and bedrooms throughout the building; repair chipping and flaking paint in the first-floor kitchen; replace a broken first-floor kitchen window; install carbon monoxide detectors throughout the second and third-floor units; fix the second-floor toilet, which is ​“running continuously”; replace the bathroom exhaust fan; correct the condition causing doors to be ill fitting and secure the third-floor vacant unit.

Buy. Flip. Evict

Now Howard, Phillips, and every other tenant at 279 Highland have taken on a new source of housing distress: a pair of eviction lawsuits filed by the New Jersey-based investors who bought the property in late March and promptly moved to kick everyone out. 

Those two eviction lawsuits are targeted at 12 renters — including five named defendants and seven unidentified John, Jane, and Abraham Does — across the first-and second-floor apartments. 

The lawsuits seek to force the tenants out because their oral month-to-month leases have expired and they no longer have the right to occupy the premises. Neither eviction lawsuit claims that any tenant is behind on rent. 

These ​“no-fault” eviction lawsuits were filed on May 11 by 276 Peck St LLC, a holding company controlled by Lakewood, N.J.-based investors Raphael Badouch, Shimon Loriner, and Samuel Sternheim. (Click here to read a previous article about a separate eviction lawsuit and housing code enforcement court case Badouch is currently wrapped up in for a different property he owns in Newhallville.)

According to the city land records database, the current owners bought the property on March 23 for $365,000 from a holding company controlled by local landlord Shneor Edelkopf, which had flipped the Newhallville property at an $81,000 markup four days before formally buying it from Jonathan Elder on March 27 for $281,000.

“I think it’s grimy as hell,” Howard said about getting hit with an eviction lawsuit by a landlord she had never met and at a property with so many longstanding problems. ​“I didn’t skip out on my rent. Even when I was part time, I struggled on my rent” and paid up.

“We didn’t even know he was selling,” Phillips said about the house’s longtime former landlord, Elder, whom Howard and Phillips blamed for 279 Highland’s current disrepair. ​“He just told me he was getting management people in here because he couldn’t handle the property anymore.” (Click here to read through LCI orders from 2018 and 2019 about city-found code violations at the Newhallville property when Elder was the owner.) 

Next thing they knew there was a notice to quit taped to their door, ordering them to leave by April 30 for ​“lapse of time.” Then an unfamiliar man showed up in their driveway. 

“He asked me how many people lived here,” Phillips remembered. ​“I told him. He asked me if me and my mom wanted to stay here, and I said no. And he told me to call 211 so they can help me out with a security deposit. … He verbally told me that he didn’t want to continue the eviction process.”

And yet, at least as of now, the eviction process for Phillips and Howard and their neighbors has moved forward, with the landlord formally filing suit against both apartments’ tenants on May 11. 

One of the current co-owners said they’re willing to drop these evictions if the tenants move out in 30 days — and said they only filed the evictions in the first place to clear out the building so that they can begin repairs and make the place livable for its future tenants. (See more below for a full set of comments from the landlord.)

"I'm Tired Of Living Here"

Where will Howard and Phillips go if evicted?

“Hah!” Phillips laughed with dismay. ​“We don’t got nowhere to go right now.”

“I’m not going to no shelter,” Howard promised, recalling some of the darkest times in her life when she lost her longtime job in student services at Quinnipiac Law School and ended up in homeless shelters in the Hill and Fair Haven. 

Phillips said she and her mom are trying to scrounge up money for a security deposit on a new place. They might have to share a one-bedroom and put most of their belongings in storage. They aaid they’re looking to stay in Connecticut only because of Howard’s job at Walmart.

“We just want to move and have a clean place to live and a landlord that fixes” what needs to be fixed, Howard said. 

Phillips agreed. ​“This whole house is disgusting,” she said. She said she thinks the only way to improve it would be to tear it down entirely. LCI, on the other hand, needs to step up its enforcement on properties like this to make sure they never fall into such disrepair by landlords who aren’t invested in keeping their rentals livable, she argued.

“So much stuff has been happening. It’s got to turn around soon,” Phillips said, describing a recent car crash that left her and her mom without reliable access to a vehicle at a time when they now have to start looking for a new place to live. ​“If we could find somewhere else to go … I want to go. I’m tired of living here.”

Landlord: Needs Vacancies For Repairs

In text message comments provided to the Independent for this article, Raphael Badouch, one of the co-owners of 279 Highland, explained that his company is looking to move out all of the tenants from the Newhallville house because it is in such bad condition, and because the property needs to be empty for before repairs can begin.

“We didn’t start making any repairs yet until everyone is out and the reason we want everyone out is because the place needs major improvements,” he wrote. ​“So we would rather do it when property is fully vacant so we can improve the living conditions of future tenants.”

“When we bought the property,” he continued, ​“I knew major improvements is needed to make it livabe. [F]rom my experience it can only be done when property is vacant as major constructions are going to take place.”

Badouch said that the owners are removing one of the evictions filed against one of the tenants ​“who is willing to leave.” He added that all of the tenants were month-to-month renters ​“without any leases and we’re doing this action to improve the property so the next tenants can live in good living conditions.”

He added that the current owners would be willing to drop the eviction actions against any tenant who agrees to leave within 30 days.

“We also believe that it’s beneficial to rent the house to one family rather than the current situation that’s like a dormitory and that usually brings in problems like bed bugs and other issues” like those that this reporter asked about.

Legal Aid: Real Pain To Real People

Rachel Scotch, a New Haven Legal Assistance Association lawyer representing Howard in her ongoing eviction case, pushed back on Badouch’s explanation of turning to the court to clear out tenants before beginning repairs.

“In the meantime, they have created eviction records for all of the current tenants, which makes it nearly impossible for them to find new housing, even for a no-fault lapse of time eviction,” she said.

“Once the case is filed in court, even if they ​‘remove’ it as he says they will, it stays on the record for that tenant for a year. They have chosen to displace a dozen people, render them essentially homeless, and say they are doing it for future tenants as if that’s a good thing, instead of talking to the current tenants about it first and offering any assistance.”

Scotch also said that taking a multi-family rental building off of the market to flip or put back out on the market ​“at a greatly increased rent does nothing to help the affordable housing crisis in New Haven.”

Not to mention the ​“intense anxiety and strain this process puts on the people whose life situations had led them to live in this property to begin with,” she concluded. ​“These are real people, and doing this causes them real pain. Does that ever come into the equation?”

See below for other recent stories about New Haven evictions:

• Eviction Fallout Follows Ex-Newhallville Family
• Judge Rejects Newhallville Eviction
• Landlord’s Court No-Show Debated In Eviction
• Lenox Landlord Prevents Sheffield Eviction
• Senior Dodges 50-Cent Eviction
• Landlord Prevails After Eviction-Paper Delivery Debate
• Sunset Ridge Becomes Eviction Central
• Eviction OK’d After Restaurant Shutters
• Eviction OK’d After​“Lapse,” Rent Debate
• Mandy Leads Pack In Eviction Filings
• Eviction​“Answers” Reveal Renters’ Struggles
• Eviction Suit Caps Tenant’s Tough Run
• Investor Skips Hello, Starts Evictions
• Eviction Deal Drops $1 Ruling Appeal
• Judge’s $1 Award Tests Eviction Rule
• Court Case Q: Which​“Nuisances” Merit Eviction?
• ​“Or” Evictions OK’d
• Fair Rent: Dog’ll Cost You $150
• Rent Trumps Repairs In Elliot Street Eviction
• Though Sympathetic, Judge Blocks Eviction
• Family Feuds Fill Eviction Court
• Rent Help Winds Down. What’s Next?
• Eviction Withdrawn After Rent Catch-up
• Hill Landlord Prevails In​“Lapse” Eviction
• Landlord Thwarted 2nd Time On Eviction
• Church Evicting Parishioner
• Hard-Luck Tenant Hustles To Stay Put
• Eviction Of Hospitalized Tenant, 74, Upheld
•Judge Pauses Eviction Amid Rent-Relief Qs
• Amid Rise In​“Lapse-of-Time” Evictions, Tenant Wins 3‑Month Stay
• Leaky Ceiling, Rent Dispute Spark Eviction Case