Nora Grace-Flood Photo
Tenants and organizers at the launch of the Seramonte Tenants Union.
Hamden’s Fair Rent Commission arose from the dead — and heard from tenants facing rent increases of up to 75 percent at a pothole-laden apartment complex.
The newly reconstituted commission held its first meeting in four years Thursday night, over Zoom.
The first order of business was hearing a complaint from tenants at the Seramonte Estates on Mix Avenue, over a dozen of whom have filed complaints against the landlord.
It turned out to be a partial hearing: Three of the tenants got to tell their side of the story to the commissioners, who granted the landlord’s attorney to continue the hearing another two weeks without making a decision to give him a chance to prepare and present his side.
In addition to what they called exorbitant rent increases, the tenants and their called-on witnesses, who included other tenant union members and organizers with the Democratic Socialists of America, accused management of non-responsiveness to complaints, predatory vehicle towing practices, and poor living conditions. (Click here to read a full previous story about conditions at the complex and the formation of a tenant union there.)
Seramonte tenants approaching management back in May.
At least 12 other tenants have been scheduled to go before the commission throughout October.
The three who spoke Thursday (a fourth was scheduled to testify but experienced an emergency during the live meeting) were specifically opposing a rent increase that was set to go into effect Oct. 1.
Sameed Iqbal, 26, who lives with his two parents, older brother, and his brother’s wife and daughter, was among those who testified. Iqbal and his brother are the breadwinners for their family, who reside in a merged, two-unit apartment at Seramonte. When asked to explain the layout, Iqbal said the apartments have different unit numbers but feature just one shared kitchen.
Iqbal’s family was told they would have to start paying $3,500 a month on October first — a $1,500, or 75 percent, increase over his current rent (as detailed in this previous New Haven Register story on the filed complaints).
“It has been a really tough time managing this amount of change,” Iqbal said Thursday night. “This came out of nowhere. I had no idea this would be possible … That you could raise somebody’s rent by this much without even a two month notice.”
Others expressed similar sentiments, saying that they may have never even thought to contest the imposed raises if it weren’t for organizing aid from the Central Connecticut Democratic Socialists of America.
Yeliza Crespo, a single mom to a 13-year-old daughter who has lived at Seramonte since 2016, said that when she’s been hit with raises in the past, she figured “either I pay it or I’m left out in the streets.”
She agreed to a $200 raise imposed last year, she said, when management told her “their reasoning was that they were planning to build a gym and my apartment was due to be renovated.”
A year later, “none of that ever happened whatsoever,” she said, but she was still notified of another $400 rent jump.
Through the union, she said, she connected with DSA organizer Luke Melonakos-Harrison, who helped her prepare a complaint.
The second rent raise, she said, “is absurd to me because they’ve done absolutely nothing. If anything, it’s gotten worse.”
In 2021, two fires broke out in her building, one killing a neighbor, she said. “The fire alarm didn’t even go off,” she said. “It was pretty traumatizing.”
In the winter, Crespo said, she has had to miss work due to packed snow and ice, which management failed to attend to. Potholes on the property have damaged her car, she argued, and the estate’s contracted towing company, “MyHoopty,” tows so aggressively that she no longer parks in her own apartment lot.
Melonakos-Harrison spoke up as Crespo’s witness. He decried “unconscionable” rent increases and said she is still owed reimbursement for “lack of air conditioning, damage to her car, being stuck and missing days of work and therefore missing income.”
Melonakos-Harrison also represented tenant Yamil Crevecoeur, another single mother with two children who works at Quinnipiac University as a custodian.
She was told to expect an $800 increase this October.
Melonakos-Harrison said her landlord then “tried to offer a $400 increase over the $800 — $400 is still extreme but demonstrates that the $800 is absolutely arbitrary.”
Kirk Westfall, the attorney representing Northpoint, the complex’s property management group, called some tenant statements “non-factual” hearsay.
In seeking a continuance of the hearing rather than present the landlord’s case, Westfall said that his team had been notified of the hearing date six days earlier. He said he needed more time to “approach the complainants and see if we can negotiate something,” as well as to put together records of expenditures and projected budgeting alongside a long list of documents he claimed key to making his argument.
In exchange for the extra time, he offered to ensure that tenants would not have to pay a rent jump until November in the case the commission upholds the raises.
Town Attorney Tim Lee said that Seramonte had been granted a legally acceptable period of time to prepare. Nevertheless, he advised that it was “reasonable to have the Fair Rent Commission continue these matters for 30 days or so.”
The commission decided that tenants could still testify on Thursday with the understanding that the commission could call them to return for cross examination when Seramonte returns to make its case in late September.
Tenants who said they have been waiting months, in some cases years, for a chance to address their living situations bristled at the idea that the meeting be continued. They said Seramonte had failed to acknowledge their union upon its creation in May and have been ignoring complaints that they reportedly filed with the Fair Rent Commission as far back as February.
The Fair Rent Commission itself has been out of operation since August 2018. The Hamden Legislative Council voted this month to appoint two new members to the volunteer body in order to allow for a forum and ensure that tenants could be heard prior to October, when their rents were supposed to rise.
Commissioner Peter Cunningham suggested the commission reconvene in no more than seven days after Thursday’s meeting. Commissioners agreed on the following Wednesday.
“I can’t do it,” Westfall said.
Tuesday?
“Tuesday is a Jewish holiday” (Rosh Hashanah), he replied. “I can’t do it. I need two weeks.”
Sept. 29, two days before Oct. 1, was decided on as the date for the continued hearing.
Yeliza Crespo on Zoom: Two days to decide housing fate?
If the commission came to a decision about whether or not the rent increases were just on that later date, Yeliza Crespo inquired, “Does that mean I’ll have two days to decide whether I’m staying here, or whether I’m leaving?”
That question led to more confusion over Westfall’s pledge to the commission. He had agreed to lift October rent raises regardless of the commission’s final judgment so long as they continued the hearing — but, halfway through the tenants’ testimonies, Westfall suggested his original offer did not stand because although his commitment was continued, tenants were still allowed to speak in advance of Sept. 29.
“Now you understand what we were offering,” Westfall laughed. “It was better wasn’t it?”
The commission said that the tenants would be free from rent raises so long as their complaints were under review — and that the commission would likely require more time beyond the evening of the final hearing to make a decision.
In the meantime, tenants will have to wait a little longer to find out the town’s and estate’s next steps — as well as their own.
Nora Grace-Flood’s reporting is supported in part by a grant from Report for America.
Luke Melonakos-Harrison
Bottom line.This is a push out of the tenants who live here now.So they can fix the place up and bring in tenants who will pay the New Rents.