Nonprofit Beats Megalandlords To 3 Lots

Two new two-family houses and a rehabbed single-family home should soon be coming to the Hill and Newhallville, thanks to a local affordable homeownership nonprofit’s recent purchases of three underused lots from the city.

The Board of Alders voted to make those sales official Monday night during its latest full board meeting, which was held in person in the Aldermanic Chamber on the second floor of City Hall.

The alders voted unanimously in support of selling two vacant lots at 15 Winthrop Ave. and 28 – 30 Thompson St. as well as a derelict and empty single-family house at 27 Frank St. to Neighborhood Housing Services of New Haven (NHS) for a combined total of $5,000.

NHS plans to construct new two-family houses on the Winthrop Avenue and Thompson Street lots, and it plans to rehab and bring back to life the vacant single-family house on the Frank Street lot. 

Per the alders’ approval, each new house will have a minimum 10-year homeowner occupancy requirement.

For decades, NHS has worked in New Haven to revitalize neighborhoods, fix up derelict houses, build new homes, and provide affordable homeownership opportunities for residents earning at or below 80 percent of the area median income (AMI), which is currently $89,400 for a family of four. 

“New Haven has a lot of distinct neighborhoods,” NHS Executive Director Jim Paley told the Independent Tuesday. He said that in some neighborhoods, some of the largest investor-landlords, like Mandy Management, have long been buying up properties like the three that NHS just acquired, driving up the rents in neighborhoods that are predominantly ​“people with low to moderate incomes and people of color.”

With the help of state and local subsidies, NHS will renovate these properties and sell them at affordable prices to income-eligible owner-occupants, he said. Paley told the Independent that NHS hopes to break ground on each of these three new housing projects within the month.

Click here and here to read more about the property sales approved by the alders on Monday night.

The 5,228 square-foot Winthrop Avenue lot where NHS plans to build a new two-family house has been empty for at least the last 10 years, according to Chris, who lives nearby and asked to be identified by only his first name.

Chris currently parks cars on the lot. Asked for his response to the city lot sale and planned new housing, he replied: ​“It is what it is.” He told the Independent that he ​“doesn’t really care” what gets built on the lot or whether it is affordable.

The Thompson Street lot is a sliver lot that will be combined with an adjacent empty lot. NHS will build a new two-family house on top of those combined lots. The city’s Property Acquisition and Disposition (PAD) Committee was in favor of selling this property to NHS because it has successfully renovated other properties in the area and the new home will help the neighborhood’s tax base.

The combined lot is slightly smaller than the Winthrop Avenue property, but, Paley said, NHS will build identical two-family homes on each, as well as on other lots that NHS has acquired in the Newhallville neighborhood. Paley said NHS plans to sell each new house to a single income-eligible family, who will live in one of the house’s residential units and then can rent out the second if they so choose. 

At 27 Frank St., the existing vacant house on a 3,485 square-foot lot is ​“land-locked” between two other houses, Paley said. He said he ​“does not expect any challenges” with the rehabilitation, though NHS has not seen the interior yet since the sale was only approved on Monday. 

LCI noted the house’s poor condition as a reason for the sale. The PAD Committee approved this sale for similar reasons as the sale of the Thompson Street lot – NHS’s track record in the area and the benefits of increasing home ownership on the block.

The sale of these three properties to NHS is ultimately a ​“drop in the bucket,” according to Paley. It is difficult for NHS to keep up with the ​“mega-landlords” that Paley says dominate neighborhoods like Newhallville and the Hill because they have access to so much capital from wealthy out-of-town investors.

Still, he said, ​“for the families that will live in these homes, it will mean a world of difference.”

A month ago, Paley said, ​“there was a backlog of qualified homebuyers, but now that interest rates have increased, there are many fewer that qualify.” He still expects that NHS will find families that qualify for mortgages for these rebuilt property, and that the homes will be ready to live in by the end of 2023.