Sinking-Condo Dispute Lands In Court

When Vanessa Brown bought her first home, she was proud to have saved money to make a generational investment in her family. Decades later, she is facing foreclosure — and fears that the walls of her condo may come crumbling down before she finds out her court date.

Brown, a minister and retired clinician, lives in one of 17 units that make up the two-building complex known as the Pine Rock Condos. Most residents of the property — which is positioned at the corner of Arch Street and Pine Rock Avenue — have concerns with the current standard of living at the site.

A recent vote by the condo association to foreclose against Brown for not paying homeowner fees marks the most recent escalation of tensions within the complex, a story that starts with the foundation on which the condos were built back in the 1980s.

In 2015, Brown stopped paying fees to the condo association — because, she said, the board has failed to address the structural issue her home and finances are sitting on.

The homeowners’ association has filed for foreclosure against Brown, citing over $21,000 in arrears. The case is beginning to make its way through the court system.

Brown countered the claim, maintaining: ​“Why would I pay condo fees if nothing is being done? What am I paying for?”

As both parties — Brown and the other homeowners — fight to preserve the respective value of their condos, they agree on one question: The city and state should take some responsibility for what has happened at Pine Rock.

Decades-Long Battle

When Vanessa Brown bought her condo in 1997, she paid $66,000. Many of the surrounding units were at that time estimated to be worth over $100,000, but last year’s property revaluation saw their appraised values shrink to the $50,000 range. Brown’s home is now appraised at $47,200.

That’s because, as studies performed in the 2000s by structural engineer Tom Torrenti found, the original developer of the complex used inadequate fill to level the ground on which the condos were built. 

Torrenti told the Independent that there was evidence of organic matter, like tree stumps and roots, packed into the foundation. Because the material was unsuitable and improperly compacted, the fill began to settle over the years. 

Somehow the shoddy fill slipped the Hamden building inspector’s notice, and the town allowed the development to continue.

Though the original developer had attempted to level out the land on which the Pine Rock community would live, he instead laid the groundwork for disparities between neighbors: The deficient fill was planted deeper underneath the building on the east of the property compared to the second on the western side, meaning one apartment building evaded the internal effects of the breaking foundation while multiple condos to the east have already been condemned over the last ten years.

Those who bought into the condo community early on — like Brown — did not learn of the problematic roots of their investments until they began to observe the impacts. As the foundation split, the condos shifted. In turn, the walls began to crack and leaks sprouted in ceiling corners. 

Torrenti said that it’s unclear how excessive the unsuitable fill is beneath individual units like Brown’s. While the expectation is that the fill would eventually settle, nobody knows how much longer each apartment, including Brown’s, may continue to shift.

Brown, who lives in one of the disproportionately harmed condos, is now surrounded primarily by renters leasing from limited liability corporations (LLCs) that bought up units at low prices as other owners fled their sinking investments.

Inside The Pine Rock Complex

At first glance, the facades of all 17 condos suggest a sense of collective sameness: Everyone lives behind panels of peeling gray paint.

Look a little closer, and you’ll spot a paper of condemnation in the window of a corner condo; large cracks in the foundation behind the eastern property; loose nails lining the porches leading up to those homes whose bases have shifted.

As you walk east, you see certain condos have clearly been hit harder.

Tenants and homeowners alike have expressed dissatisfaction with the standard of living in the complex. They argued that Norman Properties, the management company that the condo association hires to care for the property, doesn’t clean up snow in the winter; skimps on landscaping; and that both buildings are long overdue for a repainting, new roofing, and replaced gutters.

“The condition of the building is deplorable. It’s almost unbearable to live here,” Janice Hart, a longtime resident on the property’s western edge, told the Independent. 

“It used to be all owner-occupied — I used to know everyone. There’s no camaraderie anymore.”

Hart moved into the condos in 1999, around the same time as Brown, but was lucky enough to have selected a western unit.

She has stayed for the past two decades despite some dilemmas with property management. Though her home is appraised for less today than it was 20 years ago, she has not experienced the same issues as Brown and others on the east side. 

What she has seen is a community fractured and a decline in the property’s standard of maintenance all thanks to a poorly poured foundation. 

Pine Rock’s property manager, who is also being paid by the association to oversee the foreclosure process, declined to comment for this article.

The condos have fallen into poor shape, and not just those on the east side, due to a lack of money for repairs, according to the condo association.

The condo association is responsible for upkeep of the grounds and building structures and exteriors. The rule used to be that individual residents were not supposed to do the maintenance themselves. Instead, they paid their association dues, and the association was charged with making sure the work got done. The association is now considering switching to a self-management system as every individual invested in the complex grasps at strings to save their condos.

Drew Harris, the president of the Pine Rock Homeowners’ Association, said the HOA has long lacked the funds to pay Norman Properties or anyone else to maintain the space properly. 

Harris purchased a condo in 2018. He took on the job of leading the condo association two years ago when ​“it seemed like there was no leadership.”

“Everyone was complaining — but nobody wanted to move forward,” he said.

When he first came on to the board, he said, ​“at least five to six people were not paying their dues. We were well north of $100,000 in terms of what we should’ve been collecting.”

It would take hundreds of thousands of dollars to build a fresh foundation beneath the condos, he said. The board currently has $30,000 in its bank account. Harris estimated that the complex needs $300,000 worth of repairs.

Since Harris has moved in, the roofs on both buildings have gotten weaker. Several units are experiencing leakage.

Harris, like all other owners and tenants, is frustrated with the association’s inability to afford upkeep.

He noted that $20,000, in the form of fees owed from Brown, could assist the association in paying for needed repairs.

Brown is not the only one who owes. 

After the first study discovering the faulty foundation was performed, many homeowners simultaneously stopped paying into the condo association out of apparent protest for the substandard living conditions. After years of no change, some of those owners made the decision to move before the values of their homes plummeted further, while others took losses as their homes were condemned.

Those changes came with a new standard of financial contribution to the condo association, with large LLCs and other newcomers choosing to pitch in. Brown stood her ground — even as the ground beneath her was anything but stable.

Harris expressed sympathy for Brown’s predicament.

“There’s a large range of people with different amounts of money at risk,” Harris said.

“The way I see it,” he continued, ​“there are four types of people here.”

First, there are people like Janice Hart, who purchased condos on the west side years back before the faulty foundation had been identified. ​“They paid a fair market value, and they weren’t too greatly impacted,” he summarized, even though they are dissatisfied with the current state of Pine Rock.

Then, there are the ​“Drew” types — individuals who bought into the complex later in time. ​“I paid $50,000 in cash,” Harris remembered. ​“I didn’t even have a mortgage. We bought at a price that reflects the risk.” 

Next, there are the no-longer residents. ​“Those are the folks who were condemned. They took a beating. They suffered a horrible loss.”

Finally, there is the one and only Vanessa Brown. ​“She was burned badly. But she stayed.” 

Inside Vanessa Brown's condo

Though Brown’s condo has suffered some of the most extreme internal damage, that’s not what you notice first when you enter her home.

Lush, green plants hang in the windows. Afrocentric artworks line the walls.

“It looks beautiful when you come in. But in reality, it’s all worth nothing,” Brown said with a sigh.

Connecting the colorful prints and paintings are cracks in the wall, which extend up to the corners of the ceilings where Brown’s collection of watercolors turn into water damage.

“When it rains or snows, I don’t know what’s gonna happen. I’m afraid the roof will collapse on my head,” she said, pointing to a section of ceiling that had already flaked to the floor. ​“I’m scared that I’m gonna fall on the stairs, if they fall underneath me.”

When Brown bought the place in the 1990s, she was proud to have saved up money by working overtime to afford a place for herself and her then 5‑year-old son.

Things started to get complicated in 2002, when she received her first cancer diagnosis. It was Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Roughly a decade later, after she had gone into remission, Brown first spotted dark lines cutting through her white walls.

In 2015, she got cancer for the second time. It came back stronger in the form of large B‑cell lymphoma.

“I went through treatment. I almost died,” she stated. At the same time, her basement began flooding, the sign of a second stage of severity in her condo’s health.

This past year, she discovered she had breast cancer — and that her neighbors had filed for her foreclosure.

Over the years, as she battled three forms of cancer attacking her body Brown was also fighting the collapse of her condo.

She hired a plumber to realign the pipes that kept moving as the house shifted off its base and filled her storage spaces with dirty water. She brought in an electrician to ensure that cracks approaching her circuit breaker wouldn’t affect her ability to turn on a light. She had to seal her windows, from which she said heating and cooling were escaping, hiking up her total utility expenditures each month.

On top of those costs and extra labor, she was calling state and local legislators avidly asking for a way to solve the underlying cause of those inconveniences.

At times, it seemed progress was being made. Click here to read an article from two years back describing some of the past efforts undertaken by the town to resolve the issue.

Instead, Brown has found herself caught in a third dilemma as other homeowners deal with the continued fall-out of continuously crumbling foundation: ​“I’m still paying my mortgage and my credit score is beautiful — until this lawsuit goes out.”

She has not been able to locate a lawyer to represent her pro bono in the case.

But she wants to defend her decision not to pay into the condo association and still has hopes of receiving some form of reparations from the town or state.

The state allotted money for crumbling condo foundations in wealthy towns like Simsbury, she pointed out — but has been less response to a similar phenomenon taking place in southern Hamden.

“I just want to be made whole again,” Brown said.

Harris, like Brown, is unhappy with the town’s failure to successfully support Pine Rock and with the state’s lack of financial support.

“All of our issues stem from inappropriate inspections years ago and then non-response from the city and state. We’re all extraordinarily frustrated that the city has washed their hands of it. At times we thought we had gotten attention from state legislators, but no action was taken.”

Despite their differences, Harris said, ​“we’re ultimately one homeowners’ association.”

“I get why Reverend Brown has taken the stance she has,” he said. ​“She’s been royally screwed.”

“Buyers are supposed to be able to depend on public officials,” Harris added. ​“But their lack of action has instead creational these internal conflicts.”

Town's Role

As the foreclosure proceeds in court, both sides are on the same page about one issue: From where they’re standing, it’s the town who is truly at fault.

Erik Johnson, Hamden’s director of economic development, disagreed. He argued that the original problem occurred so long ago that it is difficult to determine whether the town is really liable — and impossible to hold Hamden legally accountable due to Connecticut’s statute of limitations.

Is Hamden’s building inspector to blame? ​“I’m not sure that’s 100 percent true and accurate,” Johnson said.

Perhaps, Johnson said, the fault was contractor malfeasance. 

In any case, he stated, the condo owners ​“made an informed purchase” at the time — homeownership comes with risk.

Though it’s unlikely the town could be held accountable in court, Johnson pointed out that Hamden has already tried several solutions which have fallen through due to inconsistent responses from other involved parties.

Johnson’s predecessor, Dale Kroop, led those efforts.

One potential idea Kroop had, to give an example, was for the Hamden Economic Development Corporation to intervene. HEDC, a quasi-public nonprofit, technically operates separately from the town. HEDC could have purchased the complex, demolished the bad units, and applied for money from the state to provide additional pay for people like Brown, for who that plan would have meant inequitable and additional monetary losses, he said.

Any such plan, however, would have also depended on consent from condo owners through a voting process. Around the time Kroop floated the proposal, the then-president of the association departed, leaving a leadership gap — and Kroop said the state ​“did not cooperate.”

So ​“it all went into the abyss for a while,” Kroop concluded. ​“It’s not my job to tell the condo owners what to do — it’s a private place essentially.”

But, Kroop told the Independent, he believes that ​“rather than point fingers, there should be an attempt to resolve the problem.”

“The point is how do you move forward and fix the problem?” he asked.

“I still think they can do it.”