Wet Ceiling Creates Cassius Condo Conflict

Drip. Drip. Drip … is the sound that Youssef Zaimsassi hears in his Cassius Street condo’s bathroom and basement every time his upstairs neighbor takes a shower.

From that leak, he claimed, have come mold, rotted wood, a busted ceiling, a stubbornly empty rental unit — and endless frustration that he can’t get the second-floor property owner, or the city, to do anything about it.

Zaimsassi’s rental-unit-maintenance dilemma at 3 Cassius St. in the Hill — which centers on an apparent persistent leak that he claims is coming from his upstairs neighbors’ bathroom — raises questions about what a property owner should do when negatively affected by another property owner’s actions, or inactions.

It also raises questions about what role if any the city’s housing code enforcement agency, the Livable City Initiative (LCI), should play in helping resolve maintenance-and-repair-related disputes between property owners. Especially between condo owners whose properties sit within the same building.

In an email comment provided to the Independent for this article, city spokesperson Lenny Speiller intimated that, at this point in time, Zaimsassi should not expect any immediate intervention from city housing code inspectors. 

“LCI’s jurisdiction over owner-occupied condominiums is extremely limited,” Speiller said. ​“As a courtesy, LCI visited the property, met with the owner of Unit 1, and saw no immediate signs of a leak at that time. LCI also attempted to contact the owner of Unit 2 multiple times, but was unsuccessful. LCI advised Mr. Zaimsassi to try to resolve the issue with his fellow landlords as it is a matter between fellow property owners.”

At a glance, 3 Cassius St. looks like one of the many vinyl-sided, century-old, multi-family houses that line the streets of the Hill and most other residential neighborhoods in the city. 

The building’s legal ownership structure, however, is quite a bit different than that of its peers.

Instead of existing as one multi-unit residential property with one legal owner, 3 Cassius St. exists in the city land records and assessor’s database as three separate single-unit condos with three different owners.

Zaimsassi, a 51-year-old West River resident and EKG tech at Yale New Haven Hospital, owns the first-floor condo. He bought it in 2001 from the affordable housing nonprofit Habitat for Humanity. He rents it out.

The second-floor condo is owned by Rosa Texidor, who has lived with her family in the unit since the 1980s. 

The third-floor condo is owned by a holding company called 3 Cassius LLC. An affiliate of the current owner bought that property from the city a decade ago, and, according to Zaimsassi, also runs it as a rental apartment. (The Independent could not reach the owner of the third-floor condo for comment for this story.)

Zaimsassi: "It's The Pipes"

On a recent tour of his ground-floor condo, Zaimsassi said that most of his two decades of owning this three-bedroom unit have worked out as well as he could have hoped.

He said he rented it out to the same tenant for roughly 17 years. His tenant loved the place and kept it immaculately clean, he said.

And he said that, because he charged only $950 per month in rent and because his former tenant had a Section 8 rental subsidy, he was able to both provide an affordable place to live for a low-income renter while also earning enough money to cover his mortgage, taxes, and property maintenance — and supplement his hospital-job income to support his wife and two kids. 

Zaimsassi said that he has gotten along well enough over the years with his fellow building condo owners. 

Besides sharing the cost of a common light in the building’s basement as well as the occasional major building-wide capital repair like a fix to the roof, he said, each condo owner the covers the costs of keeping up their own respective unit. (He said that the three 3 Cassius St. condo owners are not a part of any condo association, which typically collects monthly fees used for covering shared maintenance costs.)

And that’s that.

Except, Zaimsassi said, it isn’t. 

Because, he claimed, the property owner who lives right above his condo — Rosa Texidor — has failed to maintain her unit, and her lack of upkeep has directly affected his ability to maintain, and rent out, his own. 

Zaimsassi said the trouble with his bathroom ceiling dates back several years. 

Pointing up to a gaping hole in the water-damaged bathroom ceiling above him, he said that there has long been a leak from Texidor’s bathroom’s pipes.

He had to replace a portion of the bathroom’s ceiling every six or eight months because of the damages caused by that leak. 

“I can’t tell you how many times we changed the ceiling,” he said with exasperation. ​“So many times.” 

But the water keeps dripping, he said, rotting away the wood and wearing down the drywall and plastic he put up to mitigate the harm.

His tenant moved out in April 2021 because she was fed up with the bathroom trouble, he said. He hasn’t tried to rent it out since, knowing that the problem with the ceiling hasn’t gone away.

Zaimsassi said he’s confident he knows the source of the drop.

“It’s the pipes” in Texidor’s second-floor condo’s bathroom right above his own, he said. ​“It’s the drain pipe from upstairs,” probably from the bathtub.

This is a problem that can be fixed, he said, and for not that much money. Maybe a couple hundred dollars. 

“But we have to have access upstairs,” he said. ​“We may have to make some holes inside her bathroom,” maybe replace the sheetrock and the tiles in addition to the pipes.

Despite several conversations over the years with his second-floor neighbor, he said, he hasn’t been able to convince her to fix the problem herself or to let him hire a contractor for the job.

Zaimsassi said that he turned off the water for his empty condo months ago. No one has lived in his ground-floor unit since April 2021. 

And, as of earlier this year, he said, the third-floor condo has also been empty, since that unit’s tenant left because of frustrations with the water-damaged laundry room in the basement. 

That means that the only person still living in and using water in this building, he said, is the second-floor property owner, Texidor.

Whenever he hears and sees water dropping from the ceiling into his condo’s bathroom, and trickling down into the basement’s laundry room, Zaimsassi said, he knows that the leak’s culprit has to be the sole remaining occupied unit in the building: that is, Texidor’s second-floor condo. 

“What’s gonna happen” if things keep going the way they are now? he asked. ​“The wood’s rotten. It will create more mold.” 

This is a health and safety hazard, he said, as well as a potential structural problem to his bathroom, the second-floor bathroom, and the basement.

He said he can’t rent out his condo while this problem persists. Nor can he sell it. He has hit an impasse.

“I don’t have money right now to dish on a lawyer and pursue this case,” Zaimsassi said when thinking through whether or not to bring his upstairs property owner to court.

What he really wants to see is LCI crack down on the apparent housing-code-violations stemming from this leaky pipe — and order his upstairs neighbor, or himself, or someone, to make a permanent fix.

But so far he’s had no luck, he said, because LCI has been reluctant to intervene in a property-maintenance-dispute between two different property owners.

“It’s depressing,” Zaimsassi said as he surveyed his otherwise clean, but empty, condo.

Texidor: "I'm Trying To Do My Best"

After Zaimsassi left for the afternoon to head off for a shift at the hospital, the Independent stuck around outside of 3 Cassius St., knocked on the front door, and called up to the second level to see if the upstairs owner-occupant was home.

Twenty minutes later, Rosa Texidor came out onto the second-floor porch. She eventually walked down to the front entrance to tell the Independent her side of the story.

Texidor said she has lived on the second floor of 3 Cassius St. for 36 years. 

Originally from Puerto Rico, she raised her family in this building, though now she lives in the second-floor unit all by herself. (She declined to be photographed for this story.)

Asked about Zaimsassi’s complaints and about the leak that he claims comes from her bathroom, Texidor repeated three rebuttals again and again.

First, she said, she is not a plumber. Nor is she a carpenter. She is not professionally qualified to say where the leak is coming from, if indeed there is a leak.

Second, she said, she did once have a plumber come by her apartment to take a look, at Zaimsassi’s insistence. She said that the plumber told her that whatever problem was causing the water damage in Zaimsassi’s first-floor bathroom was not originating in her bathroom.

Third, she said, that same plumber told her that it would cost a total of $900 to fix whatever that problem was, which, again, she said was not specific to her bathroom.

“I’m trying to do my best,” she said. But, Texidor continued, she’s disabled. She lives alone. She doesn’t have a lot of money, and she can’t — and shouldn’t have to — pay for a $900 fix all by herself, she said. 

During his interview with the Independent, Zaimsassi said he would be happy to pay for part of the fix, if only he and a contractor could have access to the condo. When the Independent raised this point with Texidor, she said that Zaimsassi and a plumber/carpenter did once come up to her condo to take a look, said they could fix what needed to be fixed, but never did.

On Tuesday, the Independent called back Zaimsassi to hear his responses to Texidor’s claims about the plumber inspection and the $900 fix-up bill, as well as to Speiller’s statement that LCI did not find a leak and largely cannot intervene.

“If they didn’t see a leak, they should take a look again,” Zaimsassi said about LCI. ​“I’ll call them tomorrow” and take them to the basement to show the dripping water.

How does he respond to Speiller’s statement that this is a dispute between private property owners, and should be resolved between those private parties?

“Believe me, I’ve tried,” Zaimsassi said. ​“I’m still trying. If anyone wants to intervene to mediate,” he’s eager to have them help.

And is he aware of Texidor’s claims that a plumber has taken a look at her bathroom, and said that the problem is not with her pipes?

No, Zaimsassi said, he’s not aware of a plumber ever going up to the second floor. 

What about the potential $900 repair Texidor mention?

“Believe me, I’ll put the 900 bucks on it myself” if that’s what it will cost to get this fixed and resolved, he said. ​“I’m willing to.”