Laura Glesby Photos
Elizabeth Apartments tenants-turned-organizers Alicia K., Brianna K., Sarah Giovanniello, and Jennifer DePalma (above). Below: Jessica Stamp 's "squishy" bathroom floor.
A circle of neighbors gathered in the courtyard of a four-building, 70-unit apartment complex at the corner of Farnham and Blake Streets Sunday to launch the second tenants’ union to form in New Haven.
The tenants of the Elizabeth Apartments at 311 Blake St. decided to unionize after their rundown building got a new owner — an LLC (limited liability corporation) affiliated with megalandlord Ocean Management — and heard rumors that their rents would spike.
They convened on Sunday afternoon to fight those predicted increases by filing complaints with the city’s Fair Rent Commission and city government’s Livable City Initiative (LCI), highlighting a variety of maintenance concerns.
A representative of Farnam Realty Group, the real estate company that now manages Ocean-owned apartments, stated after the tenants’ meeting that Ocean won’t in fact be increasing rents until after a planned renovation of the complex. She did not have a specific timetable for completion of repairs or for rent increases.
Ocean’s LLC bought the complex in late December from Roger Simon, and immediately announced plans to renovate the complex. For now, Ocean has instructed Farnam not to reissue leases to tenants of the building. Some tenants are finishing up their leases, said another representative of Farnam (who said she would not comment unless her name were left out of the article).
So tenants whose leases have expired are staying in their apartments at the same monthly rate as their previous rent, without a lease.
“I specifically said, ‘We are not kicking you out. We are not offering new leases. Continue paying your current rent — there is no increase,’ ” the representative described.
Binta and Eric Reid in their apartment.
Word had spread among tenants about an impending rent increase when Binta and Eric Reid, who have lived in a two-bedroom in the apartment complex for five years, emailed Farnam employees for a month asking for a new lease.They said the Farnam representative relented and sent the couple a draft of a lease, which the property owners had not signed. The lease proposed increasing the rent from $1,000 a month to $1,450 — a 45 percent rent hike.
Binta and Eric objected to other aspects of the lease, too. The lease they received would have imposed a $500 rent increase if a roommate moves in. It would have held tenants responsible for the cost, labor, and materials of any apartment fix that “falls under the tenant’s responsibilities or may reasonably have been performed by the tenant.” It would have required tenants to give six months’ notice before vacating the apartment. And it included an “As-Is” condition that would have required tenants to accept their apartment in its current condition.
To Eric and Binta, the “As-Is” condition was perhaps the greatest source of alarm. So much air seeps through their living room windows that they keep sheets of plastic taped over the panes, they said. Both of the Reids, who work from home, said the temperature in their apartment is hard to control because of the drafts. Eric keeps a blanket on the couch behind his workspace handy for when the wind is particularly strong.
“We fight to keep it warm in here,” he said. The pair has used putty to seal their storm window shut when it wouldn’t stay closed.
The Reids' windows, covered in plastic sheets.
The couple can afford a rent increase, they said, but the conditions in the apartment aren’t worth the cost.
According to the Farnam representative, the lease that the Reids received was never meant to apply to them. That lease was intended for after the as-yet-unscheduled renovation, and the “as-is” clause would apply to newly revamped units.
After a call Sunday from the Independent, Farnam removed the lease from their tenant website.
Still, after the Reids acquired the prospective lease, copies made their way from tenant to tenant throughout the complex. Tenants feared that 45 percent rent hikes might soon come their way, without the maintenance fixes they’d been requesting; for some tenants, many of whom no longer have long-term leases, such a rent hike would be more than they could afford.
By Sunday, a month after the Reids first received the draft lease, at least 42 residents had signed up to join a new tenant union at Elizabeth Apartments.
Binta Reid files a complaint to Fair Rent.
Mark Firla, a community organizer with the Democratic Socialists of America’s Greater New Haven chapter, which previously helped form a tenants’ union at the Pike-owned Quinnipiac Gardens complex, arrived at the complex on Sunday to guide residents through the process of filing Fair Rent and Livable City Initiative complaints about living conditions at the apartment complex.
About 20 tenants, including the Reids, pulled out smartphones and retrieved laptops to file those complaints.
Jessica Stamp, a high school teacher who has lived at the complex for five years, wrote in about her bathroom floor, where tiles have formed a soft, pothole-like indent that squelches beneath her feet. Her floor has been like that for years; she said it started with a leak in her shower, which the previous landlord didn’t fix in time, until she began to notice water rising through the bathroom floors. Now, she thinks the floor has rotted.
“It’s livable, but squishy,” she said.
Last summer, before Ocean bought the property, cockroaches began appearing in her bathroom; she simply received a bottle of bug repellent when she complained.
Jessica Stamp.
Stamp currently pays $950 a month in rent for the one-bedroom apartment. Since hearing of the rumored rent increase, she has been considering other options, perhaps moving in with a roommate. “Even if all this goes through,” she said, referring to the Fair Rent complaints, “I’d still have to deal with” the landlord.
For Alicia K. and Brianna K. (who declined to provide their last names), a rent hike would probably force them to move out. They currently pay $1,075 per month for their two-bedroom, and can’t afford much more than that.
Brianna and Alicia shared a complaint echoed by several tenants: that their bathroom windows had “completely rotted through,” accumulating mold. And they pointed out a crumbling laundry room with several broken machines. One laundry dryer once set Alicia’s clothes on fire, they said — and the morning of the tenant’s meeting, that same machine set off the fire alarm.
Brianna and Alicia K. snap photographs of the broken dryer.
A hole in the wall behind an out-of-order washing machine.
Stamp, Alicia, Brianna, and Binta all said that they haven’t been pleased with the new owner’s approach to cleaning communal spaces. They said it has taken days for snow to get cleared out of the parking lot and for hallways to be cleaned.
“It’s difficult to get in contact with them,” Brianna said, referring to the new property management.
“If they’re complaining about major maintenance concerns, that’s the reason why we’re renovating the building and we don’t want to offer new leases there,” said the Farnam representative in response to a question about tenant concerns.
Several tenants said they found solace in the union. The creation of a tenants’ union “means hopefully not being homeless,” said Alicia.
“In a group, there is more power,” said Binta. “There is a bigger voice.”
I think this is the way to go with bad landlords. If the tenants contribute, say $20 or $30 to a common fund to get in a piranha attorney on board they should be able to get their repairs done promptly. After all, if they go to city hall, nothing will get done. LCI is just a big beauacracy that does nothing, and Saint Justin won't bother as he's too busy seeking higher office. Power to the people. Hit the bad guys where it hurts, they're wallets.