Catch-22 Holds Up Emergency Rent Help

Veronica Cassis turned to the city for emergency pandemic help paying bills — and so far has been turned down because … she hasn’t been able to pay her bills.

Recovering from surgery, out of work, and afraid of being evicted during a pandemic, Cassis turned to the city for help with rent through an emergency Covid-19 fund.

The city has hundreds of thousands of dollars left in its pandemic-era rent relief fund. But aid for Cassis and her landlord has been held up because Cassis still owes back car taxes and interest from a half decade ago.

Cassis is a 56-year-old New Haven native and live-in personal care assistant. She said a panoply of health issues, including problems with her kidney and liver that led to a recent surgery and stint in the hospital, have prevented her from working for roughly three months.

Living with her son in the ground-floor apartment of a three-family home on Bassett Street in Newhallville, Cassis has fallen further and further behind on rent.

Her stymied attempts to secure rental assistance from the city’s Coronavirus Assistance and Security Tenant Landlord Emergency (CASTLE) program stem from a citywide rule governing who is eligible to receive a check from City Hall. Even during Covid-19.

Her case raises questions about whether tenants most in need of help during the pandemic — those who are sick, out of work, and in difficult enough financial circumstances to be behind on car taxes — are able to access funds designed to help low-income people stay in their homes during the ongoing public health crisis.

“Why will you all not help me with my rent?” Cassis asked through tears during an interview with the Independent. ​“They’ve got the money to do it. … I am so upset. I am so appalled. It’s not right, and it’s not fair.”

The city has a policy against sending direct financial aid, through CASTLE or any other program, to residents if they are delinquent on their taxes.

And Cassis still owes roughly $1,900 to City Hall in back taxes and interest on her car dating to between 2012 and 2015. Much of that bill is accumulated interest, a common challenge for low-income debtors who fall deeper into debt when they hit hard times.

Her current rental arrears while newly out of work, meanwhile, have reached more than $7,000, and are climbing every month.

The city’s CASTLE rental aid program, which now distributes grants as high as $8,000 apiece to help tenants behind on rent and homeowners behind on mortgage payments, has expended roughly $103,000 out of its $800,000 total allotment since launching alongside a city Eviction Resolution Fund last September.

Meaning there’s plenty of more money left to give out.

Advocates for Cassis, including her alder, argue that the point of the CASTLE program is to help people like Cassis who are falling behind on their bills.

City officials, including the head of the agency that oversees CASTLE and the city spokesperson, have repeatedly stressed to the Independent that being behind on taxes does not disqualify anyone from city rent relief. It just means that the city and the applicant have to work a bit harder together to find a solution to those back taxes owed.

“There is an Ordinance 2 – 485 which prevents City payments to contracts with persons, organizations or businesses owing back taxes, but we do not interpret the CASTLE program to be a ​‘contract’ as defined under that section of Code,” city spokesperson Mary Coursey told the Independent. ​“Again, the five applicants [to CASTLE who are behind on taxes] were not denied” money through that program.

From Cassis’s perspective, however, the tax delinquency-roadblock she has run up against when trying to access this program has served as a frustrating and perplexing de facto denial of help.

Cassis: ​“Afraid I’m Going To Get Evicted”

For Cassis, the psychic toll of needing rental help from the city, having such a rental help program exist, and not being able to successfully tap into it has been tough.

“I’ve worked all my life, and unfortunately I have problems, health problems,” Cassis said during a phone interview with the Independent this week.

“I’m 56 years old. For me to reach out and ask for help from City Hall” and to be rebuffed, ​“I’m in so much pain. I don’t know where I’m going to get my next rent paid. I’m afraid I’m going to get evicted.”

Cassis grew up in the ​“Foote Street projects,” aka Elm Haven. She said she initially worked at a dry cleaner, then transitioned into nursing when she had her kids and needed more reliable work and better pay.

Cassis takes great pride in her work as a live-in personal care assistant — tending to homebound, elderly, and frail clients all over the state, even during the pandemic. ​“I used to work at five or six jobs at a time,” she said. Then work slowed down during Covid, and stopped altogether when she needed to tend to worsening health issues.

She said she called 211 — the state’s emergency social service support line — a few weeks ago to find some way to get public assistance to help with rent. She said that call operator directed her to the city’s CASTLE program. And when she called LCI for help apply, she said, she was told that she wouldn’t get a rental assistance payment so long as she’s behind on her car taxes.

Cassis’s landlord, David Brewster, called Cassis ​“conscientious” and a ​“hard worker” who has fallen upon very tough times. He stressed that he’s more than happy to sign on to any rent relief program Cassis is eligible for if she brings him the paperwork.

Brewster said that for the past roughly eight months, Cassis has made payments whenever she can — usually $100 one week, $200 the next, chipping away each month towards her total monthly rent of $1,075. Those small, frequent rent payments virtually stopped three months ago when her health problems accelerated and she had to stop working.

“Up until very recently, she was working. She was losing hours because of Covid. She wasn’t working as much. Now she’s disabled and she’s not working. She kind of went downhill really quick.”

Brewster, a retired former realtor who lives in New Haven and owns five rental properties across the city, said that he can withstand Cassis’s lost rent for now because the other two tenants in the three-family Bassett Street building are current on their monthly payments.

“I can afford to keep going” while she figures out how to access a rent relief program, he said.

LCI Chief: Tax Delinquent Are Not Disqualified From CASTLE

For Livable City Initiative (LCI) Acting Executive Director Arlevia Samuel, who helms the agency that oversees the CASTLE program, the answer is not as clear cut — or as despairing — as Cassis believes.

Cassis is still eligible for CASTLE, Samuel said.

She can still apply and LCI will process her paperwork.

The problem is that, if and when Cassis’s CASTLE application is approved, by longstanding city policy, the City Controller must check with the city tax collector before sending out a check.

And if the city tax office reveals that Cassis — or any other applicant to any city financial aid program — is delinquent on her taxes, then that check will not go out until she is all caught up or until she has reached some kind of tax relief agreement with the city.

Samuel stressed that this is not unique to CASTLE. This policy applies to all city financial aid programs.

“Whether or not someone owes taxes has zero to do with whether or not they qualify for CASTLE,” Samuel said.

“The issue comes when someone owes city taxes.” When they apply, even if the application is approved, the city will not release a check to someone behind on taxes.

“Unfortunately, I’m not in a position to make a change” to that citywide rule.

Samuel said her agency regularly refers tax-delinquent applicants to city relief programs to the city’s financial empowerment center on Dixwell Avenue for help with catching up on back taxes, and with more general financial planning and management skills.

While LCI has ​“hit hiccups” with CASTLE — which tenants, landlords, and attorneys have criticized for its mass of paperwork and bureaucratic delays — Samuel said she feels like the program is operating much more smoothly now than when it first launched. (Click here to access the current application, which includes an affidavit for tenants and landlords to disclose tax delinquencies.)

The program has distributed $103,770 to 28 different renters and homeowners in need, she said, with one more approved application pending and 11 applications in process.

“At the end of the day, I understand it’s about Covid relief,” she said about CASTLE. ​“Should there be something in place to allow people who owe back taxes to still obtain Covid relief? Yes.”

Are there already such mechanisms in place?

“Kind of, sort of,” she said. Someone can always apply to the Board of Alders to forgive their taxes. Or they can work with the city’s financial empowerment center.

She repeated that she has no control over a citywide policy that prevents checks from going out to those who owe back taxes.

When asked about what impact tax delinquency plays in determining whether or not an applicant can get money through the CASTLE program, mayoral spokesperson Mary Coursey said that the city does work with such applicants to try to resolve that issue so that they can get paid.

“Five of the ninety-seven applications received for determination of eligibility for the C.A.S.T.L.E program remain under review due to a party, either tenant or landlord, on the application having a tax delinquency not associated with the program itself,” Coursey wrote in an email response to the Independent.

“None of [the] five applications have been denied and it is worth noting that City staff — LCI, Tax Office, and Corporation Counsel — are actively working on these specific applications. To date, the C.A.S.T.L.E program has expended over $100,000 to assist both landlord and tenant, and intent is to help those that have been, and remain to be, impacted by the global pandemic, and to prevent evictions. Our intention here is to keep people in their homes not to disqualify people.”

“This Is Exactly What This Aid Is Supposed To Be For”

To Newhallville Alder Delphine Clyburn and New Haven Legal Assistance Association (NHLAA) staff attorney Yonatan Zamir, this citywide policy that keeps direct aid from flowing to those behind on taxes is exactly the type of rule that needs to be reexamined when it comes to emergency aid during a pandemic.

“This was for emergency Covid money,” Clyburn said in a recent phone interview. ​“They shouldn’t have put a stipulation on this.”

“All of us owe taxes,” she continued. And someone shouldn’t be punished for struggling during Covid just because they’re behind on car taxes and interest.

“If one person is being refused, you know there’s a whole line of people” in a similar situation, she added.

Zamir, who represents low-income local tenants like Cassis in everything from rent relief applications to eviction proceedings, agreed with Clyburn.

While a citywide rule prohibiting public money from being sent to those who owe the city money could make sense in normal times, he said, it is an unnecessary during an emergency like a pandemic.

“This notion that a city resident, particularly one who’s struggling and someone who is the very definition of a frontline worker, would be denied assistance because of an unrelated amount of money” does not seem right.

“This is a working person. This is exactly what this aid is supposed to be for.”

He said the CASTLE money would stabilize the tenant’s life during her current health-induced financial hardship, and would remove the risk that a landlord who is currently tolerating a certain amount of rental arrears might change his mind as that back rent grows.

Zamir noted that, after months of trying to help city residents get rental aid from the city, ​“I don’t even bother with CASTLE.” He said he and his legal aid attorney colleagues have largely ​“given up on CASTLE months ago, because it appeared to be completely dead in the water.”

If a tenant comes to him with a CASTLE application, he helps them through it. But if they come without already in the process for getting CASTLE money, he’ll try instead to get them rental aid through the state’s Unite CT program.

“So many tenants are suffering,” Zamir said. And city officials ​“celebrated when they announced [CASTLE].” Even though the rollout appears to have picked up as of late, with over $103,000 of the $800,000 dispersed, there’s still a lot of money available and a lot of need in the community for it.

For someone who needs help to run up against so many obstacles, he said, ​“I think that undermines people’s faith in what’s supposed to be a forward-thinking and responsible local government.”