Budget Alarm Sounded For Housing, LCI

A resounding call for more affordable housing and better housing code enforcement filled the Board of Alders’ chambers, as roughly 100 community members gathered for a final round of public testimony on next fiscal year’s proposed city budget.

That was the scene Thursday night during the latest Board of Alders Finance Committee meeting in the Aldermanic Chamber on the second floor of City Hall

The third and final public hearing on Mayor Justin Elicker’s proposed $662.7 million general fund budget garnered far more public participation than past hearings on the city’s spending plan for fiscal year 2023 – 2024 (FY24), which starts on July 1. The Board of Alders is slated to take a final vote on amending and approving that budget in late May or early June. 

Members of the public on Thursday called for a stronger investment in climate change mitigation; for a library system funded at 1 percent of the city’s general fund budget; and for as much funding as possible for New Haven Public Schools, among other requests and demands. They praised new budgeted positions for an active transportation coordinator and Youth and Recreation staffers, and celebrated a proposed increase in funding for the New Haven Works job training program. 

A central focus of the night’s public testimony, however, was on housing: on the need for more affordable places to live, on the need to hold problem landlords accountable, on the need for a more responsive and efficient and effective housing-code inspection program run by the city’s Livable City Initiative (LCI).

Among the testifiers, about 10 members of the local Room For All Coalition — a group of advocates focused on affordable housing and tenants’ rights — called on alders to reallocate $2 million from a Long Wharf development project toward new housing and a bolstered code-enforcement team.

Hours later, as the clock approached midnight and the meeting dragged towards the end of its sixth hour running, LCI leaders responded to questions from alders about the barriers tenants have faced when seeking housing code enforcement, and the budgetary challenges the department has faced while tackling large, well-resourced landlords.

New Haven Legal Assistance Association (NHLAA) lawyer Sinclair Williams explained to alders that the activists had pored over a pool of funding that the city had budgeted for the planned revitalization of Long Wharf Park — a project that would lead to expanded greenspace, healthcare services, a technical education hub, and more commercial activity in the area. 

Williams noted that on page 4 – 41 of the FY24 budget proposal, the city planned to allot $12 million for an initial phase of Long Wharf improvements — anticipating that the state would issue $10 million in bonding for the project, while budgeting an additional $1 million in city bonding and $1 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) dollars on the city’s end. But the state recently allocated $12.1 million in bonding for Long Wharf Park improvements — ​“two million more than expected,” said Williams.

Williams argued that that extra $2 million should be reallocated toward building new affordable housing units and bolstering the LCI’s housing code inspection unit. The city did not immediately respond to this proposal.

“You can’t sleep at the Long Wharf Park,” said Mothers and Others for Justice advocate Myra Smith. ​“You can sleep in deeply affordable housing.”

Smith, who works at the homeless services nonprofit Christian Community Action, noted that ​“all of the shelters are full” in New Haven, leaving those without housing with little to no safe options. ​“Nobody’s home should be a bookbag on their back,” she said.

Claudette Kidd, who serves on the city’s Affordable Housing Commission and works at the homeless services nonprofit Columbus House, described that she found herself on the brink of losing her home when she recently lost her job. She was able to avoid that outcome because of a flexible landlord. Had she been forced to move, she would have had to navigate an extremely low vacancy rate of 1.3 percent (as of last summer) and a spike in rents that has resulted over the past several years while searching for a new affordable place to live. ​“People are having to work two, three jobs to pay their rent,” she said. 

“I think the housing crisis is as bad as it has been in the 36 years I’ve been representing tenants,” said legal aid attorney Amy Eppler-Epstein.

An Unlivable City?

Room For All testifiers proposed reallocating the $2 million not only to the creation of new ​“deeply affordable” housing, but to a strengthened housing code enforcement system to protect tenants currently living in affordable homes. 

Activists argued that LCI’s housing code enforcement unit is insufficiently staffed to handle the volume of complaints that the city receives. They spoke of experiences in which tenants never heard back from the agency after submitting complaints or never received the requisite follow-up inspections after their apartments failed.

“Something has to be done with LCI, because even those who have affordable housing are living in deplorable conditions” that are ​“mouse and rat infested” to the point of irritating asthma, said Smith.

Blake Street Tenant Union organizer Jessica Stamp testified that the phones at LCI ​“often go unanswered” and emails often go ​“ignored.” She spoke of a neighbor whose hot water temperature reached 140 degrees, she said, alleging that ​“LCI slept on the job while waiting for a receipt for a certified letter sent to the wrong address.” 

Stamp compared many New Haveners’ living conditions to the health codes applied to restaurants and hotels. ​“People cook in conditions that wouldn’t pass a restaurant inspection. They sleep in conditions that wouldn’t pass a hotel inspection,” she said.

Stamp called on LCI, which currently employs 12 housing code inspectors in charge of tens of thousands of housing units across the city, to double its enforcement staff. She and other Room For All Coalition members — including mayoral candidate Liam Brennan —called on the agency to set up an online portal through which tenants could submit and track the status of complaints, rather than relying on someone at the other end of the phone or email address to follow up about hazardous living conditions.

LCI Responds

Soon after the public hearing closed, city Economic Development Coordinator Mike Piscitelli defended LCI to the Board of Alders. ​“In the middle of the night if we have a no-heat complaint in the Edgewood neighborhood, 40 – 50 units,” he said, for example, LCI staff members might ​“go in the middle of the night, bringing portable heaters to every single unit.”

​“It’s hard that [enforcement is] not happening right away,” he said. But ​“there is extremely good work going on every day by people who care very much about this city.”

Hours later at Thursday’s Finance Committee meeting, at around 11:30 p.m., LCI Director Arlevia Samuel presented on her department’s proposed budget for FY 24. She was joined by LCI deputies Mark Stroud and Mark Wilson, as well as city Budget Director Mike Gormany and economic development deputy Carlos Eyzaguirre. 

Finance Committee Chair and Westville Alder Adam Marchand asked Samuel then if she’d like to respond to any of the criticisms voiced earlier in the night by members of the public calling for a dire need for more housing code inspectors.

“It is a need,” Samuel said. ​“It’d be great if we had more inspectors.” She noted that, starting April 1, her team has increased its frequency of housing code inspections per the terms of the residential licensing program. To fully act on the requirements of that program, she said, ​“we will need more inspectors.”

East Rock Alder Anna Festa asked if there is currently an online portal where residents and tenants can file complaints about unsafe living conditions. That is, something beyond the city’s general maintenance reporting platform, SeeClickFix. Or do residents instead have to call LCI’s office or reach out another away?

“No, there’s not currently” an online tool for filing tenant complaints, Samuel said. ​“They can email or they can call our front desk. But there’s not currently a database.” She said LCI is working on transitioning to a new online system that should improve her department’s ​“customer service” when it comes to tenant complaints about housing conditions.

Festa then asked about the other side of LCI’s responsibilities beyond housing code enforcement — that is, developing and rehabbing and selling new affordable places to live. ​“Are we in the real estate business, too?” Festa asked. ​“How do you see that affecting your department?”

“That division is doing very well, actually,” Sanuel said. ​“We’ve built many houses” and worked with nonprofits to rehab homes and make sure that first-time homebuyers are able to purchase and move into safe, clean places they can afford.

“It may not be the fastest way to improve affordable housing in the city,” she conceded, ​“but it’s making an impact.”

In regards to ​“enforcement of repeat offenders,” Festa continued, some residents have complained about large ​“multi-property owners in the city that violate codes,” they go to court and get fined, ​“but the fines don’t seem to be steep enough” to stop them from getting in housing-code-violation trouble again and again.

“What else can be done on this level to try and rectify that?”

“I push my inspection team to enforce,” Samuel said, and ​“we go out” and do just that. She said LCI has hosted ​“landlord info sessions” about how they can ​“be more responsive, get more staff.” But sometimes they’re ​“just not responsive.”

And this isn’t just a problem with the big landlords, she said. ​“It’s across the board. To me, it doesn’t matter how many units they own,” whether one or 1,000. Every family deserves to live in safe housing conditions, and that means every landlord — no matter their size — has to follow the same rules. 

Samuel spoke about how she and her colleagues testified to the state legislature in support of increasing the maximum fine for housing code violations from $250 to $1,000 apiece. ​“I think still, to them, it’s a drop in the bucket,” she said about that proposed court-ordered-fine increase.

By The LCI Budget #'s

Gormany made clear during LCI’s budget presentation that a vast majority of LCI’s annual budget is covered by grants, also known as ​“special funds.”

The mayor’s proposed FY24 budget states that only $1,057,372 of LCI’s proposed $20 million-plus budget for next fiscal year would come from the city’s general fund; $4 million of that total would come from the city’s capital budget, and $14,956,701 would be covered by special funds.

On the general fund side, LCI’s budget is looking to increase from around $844,000 to just over $1 million.

A bulk of that proposed bump is due to a $200,000 increase in funds for family relocation services — that is, for people forced to leave their homes and temporarily stay at a motel because of, for example, a fire or other dangerous living conditions.

“When you look at the overall work LCI does,” Gormany repeated, ​“it’s done a lot on a special fund budget, which is where the majority of inspectors and other personnel are.”

Click here to read LCI’s budget presentation from Thursday in full.

The department narrative section of the mayor’s proposed budget book also goes through some of LCI’s highlights from recent years and goals for the fiscal year ahead.

That part of the budget book states that LCI distributed a total of $665,555 in federally funded rental assistance to 116 households through Dec. 31, 2022 through the Coronavirus Assistance and Security Tenant Landlord Emergency (CASTLE) program. Also through the end of last year, LCI distributed a total of $100,646 to 40 different households through a security deposit assistance program.

“The goal is for all residents to thrive in much needed safe and stable housing,” the LCI budget narrative states under the FY24 goals/initiatives section.

To quote directly from that part of the budget book, the department’s top goals and initiatives for the fiscal year that starts July 1 include:

• Landlord Certification Class in training landlords how to be landlords and the health and safety protocols to keep their tenants and property safe.

• Create new homeownership units in a strategic approach to development through new construction on City owned vacant properties for working families. In FY 2023 – 24, the following projects will move from Predevelopment, Financing to Construction:

1. Winchester/Starr Homeownership Project Phase 2: Commence construction on City-owned properties that will be redeveloped for homeownership units in the Newhallville neighborhood.

2. 596 – 598 George Project: Commence construction rehabilitation to preserve an historic building for homeownership with rental units. (2) 3 family brownstone affordable homeownership.

3. Ashmun/Canal: City owned parcel LCI negotiated agreement with selected developer, RJ Development, for mixed use mixed income development with 50 affordable rental units.

4. Grand Avenue Homeownership Project: Commence construction/rehabilitation of 342, 346 and 350 Grand Avenue into affordable owner occupied 2 family structures.

5. MLK/Tyler – 16 Miller Street – Parcel 1: West River Housing Company; 56 Units, Community Room, Playground Commercial Space; Mixed use Mixed Income (44 Affordable/12 Market); Total Development Costs $28M.

6. 306 Dixwell Avenue (CONH Owner/Dev) – Substantial rehabilitation project, converting existing mix use property (2 residential rental units and 1 commercial office) to be sold to homeowner occupant with housing rental and commercial rental. Estimated Costs $700,000.

• Preservation and rehabilitation of existing housing stock serving low, moderate, and middle-income persons and families.

• Acquisition: Seek and secure authorization to expand real estate owned (REO) portfolio through the purchase of properties for rehabilitation as homeownership units and/or acquisition of liens.

• Acquisition, Relocation, Demolition and Disposition activities in support of eligible activities that support the City’s priorities.

• Stabilization of neighborhoods through the enforcement of property maintenance, code enforcement and antiblight efforts.

• Improvements to or development of public facilities which further the City’s overall Consolidated Plan and development efforts regarding the City’s low‑, moderate‑, and middle-income children, the elderly, persons with disabilities and those with special health care needs.

• Planning in support of the City’s overall Consolidated Plan and development efforts.

• Ongoing support for neighborhood commercial districts through technical support, leasehold assistance program and site-specific development.