Thomas Breen photo
Legal aid Legal Fellow Melissa Marichal, legal aid Attorney Amy Marx, and city attorney Kevin Casini in court Tuesday.
Legal aid and city attorneys said they are close to resolving a second fire-displaced tenant lawsuit now that the landlord has offered to pay for a West Haven motel room until the family’s burnt-out Kensington Square apartment is fully repaired in mid-January.
New Haven Legal Assistance Association (NHLAA) Attorney Amy Marx and city Asst. Corporation Counsel Kevin Casini gave that update Tuesday in the case Nataya Daniels v. City of New Haven during a brief appearance before state Superior Court Judge Claudia Baio in the third-floor housing court of 121 Elm St.
That case is one of two lawsuits that legal aid recently filed against the city in regards to the latter’s allegedly inconsistent policies around providing relocation assistance to tenants who have to leave their homes because of a fire.
Marx said that Daniels and her three children were displaced from their 88 Kensington St. apartment on July 16 due to a fire.
They’ve been effectively homeless since then, she said, couch-surfing at friends’ and family’s apartments for months.
After filing the lawsuit last week, Marx said, Daneils’s landlord, the Boston-based The Community Builders, has offered to pay for the displaced tenant and her kids to stay at the Super 8 motel in West Haven until her old apartment on Kensington Street is finally fixed up.
“We now have a firm, expected date of completion” after Daniels and her family have been out of a home since mid-July, Marx said. That rehabilitation work should be done in about three weeks.
A Community Builders representative declined to comment on a pending legal matter for this article.
Marx and Casini added that Daniels has to move back into that very same apartment because she has a project-based Section 8 federal housing subsidy. That means she cannot bring that federal rent assistance to another unit, but instead can only use it at that one particular Kensington Street place.
The legal aid and city attorneys said that they are both negotiating with the landlord to either pay for a motel room with a kitchen for Daniels and her family, or to provide a daily food subsidy. Marx said the landlord so far has only offered to relocate the family to a motel room without a kitchen.
Casini asked the judge to continue the case until Thursday, and said that, on this matter at least, the city and legal aid did not need the help of any court-appointed mediator to come to a resolution. “We see things the same way here,” he said.
He added that the city has the power to put a lien on the landlord if they don’t follow through on paying for relocation assistance for the displaced tenants. “If that can be avoided,” he said, “that’s the best scenario.”
Marx described Casini as a “breath of fresh air” in comparison to other city attorneys she has butted heads with in court in recent lawsuits.
Baio heard the two sides come to a similar accord last week in the other such lawsuit, Ruth Nelson v. City of New Haven. In that case, the city agreed to continue paying for a displaced tenant’s hotel room until her landlord, Seabury Housing Cooperative, followed through on its promise to provide a replacement unit in the not-too-distant future.
Marx did add Tuesday that, beyond the particulars of these two lawsuits, legal aid still believes that the city’s inconsistent provision of relocation benefits to fire-displaced tenants is in violation of the state Uniform Relocation Assistance Act (URAA).
“This is a larger policy question that has to be addressed,” she said.
But for now, with these two lawsuits at least, the city and legal aid seem to be working in relative harmony to get the respective landlords to step up and provide new, permanent replacement housing.
“Once again, I want to thank you all for working collaboratively,” Baio said at the end of the hearing.
Are the tenants paying any rent for these temporary accommodations? I doubt they had paid any rent for December, and won't pay all of January, so they should have funds available. I don't see why it should be the New Haven taxpayer's responsibility to house them when New Haven was no responsible for the fire. If the law can be interpreted that way, the city should seek legislative clarification.