Tenants Union Formed; Landlord Back In Court

Renters at a West River apartment complex gathered at City Hall to form New Haven’s second officially recognized tenants union — and then rallied outside of Ocean Management’s offices to demand collective bargaining around rents and maintenance — on the very same day that their landlord showed up in court to be prosecuted for six new housing-code-violation cases.

All three chapters of that megalandlord-and-tenants story played out over the course of Tuesday morning and afternoon within blocks of one another downtown.

Together, they represented the latest efforts by city officials, state prosecutors, and tenant activists and organizers to use the levers of government — and the power of public protest — to try to pressure landlords to keep their properties safe, clean, livable, and reasonably affordable.

At around 10:30 a.m. in the third-floor housing court at 121 Elm St., Shmuel Aizenberg stood alongside landlord attorney Ian Gottlieb and Senior Assistant State’s Attorney Donna Parker during a hearing before state Superior Court Judge Walter Spader, Jr. about those six new criminal housing cases.

Aizenberg is the head of Ocean Management, a local megalandlord-property management-real estate investment outfit which, through its affiliates, controls over 1,000 mostly low-income apartments across the city.

He has been a regular on the criminal housing docket in recent years — getting fined again and again and again and again and again for persistently dangerous living conditions, such as ceiling leaks and rodent infestations and holes in walls and chipping paint, found by Livable City Initiative (LCI) inspectors at various local Ocean-controlled rental properties. 

Five of the six new cases Aizenberg appeared in court for on Tuesday stemmed from similar LCI-found housing code violations at Ocean apartments in New Haven.

Those included holes in the roof and trash in the yard at the three-family house at 65 Truman St.; inadequate heating at a 17-unit apartment building at 1455 State St.; damp and bulging ceilings and holes in the floor at the three-family house at 234 Fillmore St.; and still more LCI-found problems at the two-family house at 155 Fillmore St. and the 70-unit complex at 311 Blake St. (LCI did not respond to a Connecticut Freedom of Information Act request by the publication time of this article asking for copies of the inspection reports for 155 Fillmore and 311 Blake.)

The sixth case that landed Aizenberg in criminal housing court Tuesday involved a water-damaged kitchen ceiling and walls in a first-floor apartment at the 12-unit complex at 11 Gorham Ave. in Hamden.

Judge Spader continued all six cases until July 25 to give Aizenberg and his company more time to make all of the necessary fixes.

Before signing off on that continuance, the judge formally accepted Aizenberg’s application to participate in an Accelerated Rehabilitation (AR) diversionary program for the Hamden-based public health code case. If he is accepted into and complete such a program, the charge — a Class C misdemeanor — will be dropped from his criminal record. (The five other New Haven-based housing cases on Tuesday are all just infractions, and do not involve actual criminal charges.)

There’s ​“still work that needs to be done,” Parker said during Tuesday’s hearing about the various housing- and health-code violations at Aizenberg’s various properties involved in these six new cases.

“We’ll see you back here on July 25,” Spader told the landlord.

After the hearing in the hallway outside of the courtroom, Aizenberg, at the insistence of his attorney, declined to comment on any of these six new cases as well as on why he did not send a representative to last week’s Fair Rent Commission hearing about the Ocean property at 234 Fillmore.

2nd Tenants Union Officially Recognized

Just half an hour later, soon after 11 a.m., two tenants from the Ocean-controlled apartment building at 1476 Chapel St. joined two Connecticut Tenants Union organizers, Mayor Justin Elicker, Fair Rent Commission Executive Director Wildaliz Bermúdez, and more than half a dozen reporters for a ceremonial petition-stamping and press conference on the first floor of City Hall at 165 Church St.

The cause for the gathering was the delivery of an eight-signature petition by 1476 Chapel St. tenants Amanda Watts and Annie Hardy seeking official recognition by city government of a tenants union at that property.

Watts, Hardy, and Connecticut Tenants Union organizers Luke Melonakos-Harrison and Hannah Srajer clapped and cheered as Bermúdez reviewed the application and stamped the paperwork twice. 

That stamping meant that the 1476 Chapel Tenants Union is now the second tenants union to win official city recognition since the Board of Alders approved a new law last September that gives tenants unions a seat at the table in New Haven city government. It does that by allowing them to band together and collectively amplify concerns about high rents, poor housing conditions, and other matters that might come up during a city Fair Rent Commission investigation. Last December, the first such tenants union to win Fair Rent Commission recognition was the Blake Street Tenants Union for 311 Blake St., another Ocean-controlled property.

The Fair Rent Commission is a state-empowered local body charged with cracking down on rents deemed​“harsh and unconscionable,” and on hearing rent-related tenant complaints about landlord retaliation and unsafe living conditions. Click here to read a full breakdown of the rules defining what a tenants union is, how they can register with the city, and what role a tenants union representative can play in Fair Rent Commission investigations and hearings.

Watts, who has lived at 1476 Chapel for a little over a year, described ​“a number of fire hazards” at the property, as well as ​“faulty electrical wiring in the basement,” ​“windows in common spaces [that are] nailed shut,” ​“fire detectors [that] don’t work,” a ​“rodent infestation,” and ​“faulty” radiators that occasionally spit out ​“hot and boiling water.” They also said there’s only one entrance and exit to the building.

Hardy, who has lived at the apartment complex for a year and a half, said that the ​“rodent problem” is one of her biggest issues with the property, and causes her to worry about the wellbeing of her young daughter.

“They largely ignore” tenant complaints about property maintenance, Watts said about Ocean. And when they do send someone, Hardy added, ​“they don’t follow up on the problem” and rarely make a lasting fix.

“Our main goal is to have better conditions,” Watts said. ​“For Ocean to take notice of us and fix the things and fix the building” that they own and manage. ​“We just want peace and to be respected.”

Elicker and Bermúdez praised the two tenants, as well as the tenants union organizers, for working together to speak up about their concerns with the property, to press the city to help, and to let other renters know across New Haven that forming a tenants union is possible.

“I really give the advocates credit for pushing the city to think in a different way,” Elicker said. 

“You are the second tenants union members that have come before us,” added Bermúdez. ​“I think it’s really important to let everybody know that this is available to others who want to go down this route.”

Click on the video above to watch Tuesday’s press conference in full.

At Ocean's Office: "We Need Fair Rent"

The tenants union members weren’t done for the day in their advocacy for better conditions, and collective bargaing, at Ocean-controlled rental properties.

At around 4 p.m., roughly two dozen tenant activists — including members of the freshly-officialized 1476 Chapel St. tenants union as well as the Blake Street Tenants Union — rallied outside of Ocean’s offices at 101 Whitney Ave. to demand that their landlord sit down and negotiate apartment contracts, maintenance, and rent.

The 311 Blake St. tenants spoke up at Tuesday’s protest sharp increases in rent they’ve received, to demand that their apartments be maintained to the level that is being paid for, and to propose collective negotiations with the management.

“Each of us has something to fight for,” said Blake Street Tenants Union leader Jessica Stamp. ​“We demand a negotiation: quality and timely repairs, fair rent adjustments, and simply open conversation. We wanna work together, but we’re waiting on Ocean Management. Sit down with us.”

Stamp, as a lead organizer of the union, helped post a list of those demands and alleged Ocean-inflicted wrongs on the front door of 101 Whitney Ave. She alleged that Ocean’s emergency after-hours line doesn’t work, that tenant calls and petitions for help and for fixes to their units are never answered, and that the most vulnerable tenants are the ones being discriminated against most harshly — with a family of four, a disabled person, and a 90-year-old couple receiving the highest rent increases of all tenants.

During the hour that they stood outside chanting, no representatives from Ocean Management came out to the sidewalk to talk with the union members. Instead, upon seeing the protesters, someone in Ocean’s second-floor office sharply closed the office’s blinds after being waved at by tenant and union member John Raccio, who said he’s been asking for help with his apartment’s electrical wiring since he moved in.

“There are multiple code violations in all of the newer units, mainly having to do with electricals,” Raccio alleged. ​“There’s no power outlet in the bathroom, which Connecticut construction codes require, nor are the dishwasher and oven put on separate circuits. This is a real fire hazard.”

Like many of his neighbors, Raccio fears that the problems in his apartment will lead to larger issues, such as fires. Because of this, many of the tenants with urgent problems, such as faulty heating or light switches that produce sparks, have had to call in outside help for repairs, and have not been reimbursed by Ocean Management, the renters said.

ShamelYah Yasharel, a longtime resident of 311 Blake St. and fellow union member, said she’s afraid she’ll have to move out of her apartment if the rent keeps rising so drastically. Ocean Management increased some tenants’ rents by $300, she said, which she struggles with as someone on Social Security.

“If these people think they’re gonna bully us, they’re wrong,” said Yasharel. ​“We need fair rent, and we are gonna keep fighting.”