Opinion: It’s Time To Fund, Revamp LCI

If Mayor Elicker wants to improve public health and safety in New Haven, he must invest in stronger housing code enforcement in this year’s budget and increase tenant oversight of the Livable City Initiative (LCI).

On move-in day into Ocean Management-owned 1476 Chapel St., Amanda Watts learned of a frightening reality in their new building. During a routine visit to the basement to turn on Amanda’s gas cooking, the gas company employee pointed out faulty electrical wiring. He mentioned that ​“one spark” could cause a fire that could easily engulf the building — home to 18 households.

While writing a citation for the landlord, the employee spoke about how he had previously notified the landlord about this high-risk code violation multiple times, only for those notifications to be ignored. Later during an LCI inspection, Amanda drew the inspector’s attention to the problem again. However, to Amanda’s knowledge to date, no action has been taken to fix the wiring or hold Ocean accountable for their life-endangering negligence.

Experiences like this are all too common for renters in New Haven seeking enforcement of their right to safe and decent housing. 

LCI is tasked with housing code enforcement in New Haven, yet it is seriously understaffed. There are only 12 inspectors for approximately 36,000 rental households — 3,000 households per inspector. These same 12 inspectors must also do residential licensing inspections across the city every three years. Every claim requires an initial inspection, a follow-up, and possibly a third inspection. These are impossible ratios, which LCI Director Arlevia Samuel acknowledges. It’s not surprising that members of our tenant union have been repeatedly ignored by LCI, sometimes never receiving an initial inspection. Others have taken time off work and waited for hours, only for the scheduled inspector to never arrive.

When asked about documentation, inspectors tell tenants to ​“call the office and request a copy of the report.” However, none of our tenant union members who requested this received anything. One tenant got a copy only when Wildaliz Bermudez at the Fair Rent Commission intervened. Jessica Stamp got a copy of her report when the New Haven Independent printed it with an article about Ocean Management’s conviction. She otherwise wouldn’t have known her case went to court. Many tenants must rely on personal favors from municipal staff or alders to access any information about their complaints.

LCI only provides documentation to landlords, not tenants. Tenants — while dealing with unsafe conditions, and still paying rent — are viewed as minimal players in the code enforcement process. Tenants have a right to follow the process: to see the inspection report, the landlord’s response, the actions taken by the inspector, and what still needs to be completed. The lack of transparency shields both LCI and landlords from accountability. 

LCI’s inefficiencies put tenants at risk. For example, LCI notifies landlords of a failed inspection through certified mail. Landlords avoid these notices when they don’t update their address or by ignoring their P.O. Box for weeks at a time. Ocean Management owns over 1,000 units of New Haven’s housing stock, yet LCI had the wrong address listed for them in October 2022, after a similar problem in 2021. In Jessica’s case, it took almost four weeks for LCI to get the return receipt for a fire code violation that legally required a fix within 24 hours. LCI didn’t start the clock on the 24 hours until they got the return receipt. Meanwhile, she continued to pay the full amount in rent, and Ocean Management lost no income. 

Unlike individuals in the criminal-legal system, landlords are treated the same whether it’s their first or 50th offense. Ocean Management has over 50 convictions in court for housing code violations. This record of neglect represents harm against the health and wellbeing of hundreds of New Haven renters, especially considering that many violations go unreported for fear of retaliation. 

The City is not ignorant of Ocean Management and similar landlord companies. At a recent public hearing, Mayor Elicker and Michael Piscitelli, the city’s cconomic development administrator, acknowledged that the city considered buying Ocean’s large portfolio of properties for sale, but the properties were ​“too run down to be worth it.” Why won’t LCI proactively target such well-known offenders?

Poor housing conditions in New Haven directly correlate with worse health outcomes. Meanwhile, landlords extract greater rates of profit from renters living in dilapidated conditions in poorer neighborhoods, incentivizing the neglect. These forms of harm often aren’t recognized as ​“crime,” because they are pervasive and systemic, committed by businesses and corporations, and they hurt our redlined neighborhoods the most—not because they are any less damaging to public health and safety.

The Yale Daily News​’s Thomas Birmingham writes, ​“Since 2019, LCI’s general funds budget from the City has increased by only $17,000, while New Haven’s police budget has increased by $7 million in the same period.” This year, the Mayor is proposing yet another $2.8 million increase to the police department’s budget. Yet LCI remains underfunded, inaccessible, and unaccountable while many landlords violate health and safety laws with impunity. 

Dramatically increasing rents in New Haven—25 percent in two years—are forcing renters to pay even more of their income to negligent landlords each month, or face displacement and homelessness. Talk of ​“affordable housing” rings hollow when the City fails to use every tool at its disposal to preserve its remaining affordable housing stock, and then rewards its slumlords with lucrative real estate deals. 

In this year’s budget, the Mayor must allocate more funding for LCI to double the number of inspectors and increase the number of staff who field phone calls. LCI should implement a complaint tracking system for tenants, accessible both online and via paper documentation, so that tenants can participate directly in the code enforcement process and hold both landlords and LCI accountable. LCI should proactively target for inspection the landlords in town with the highest numbers of code complaints and should penalize landlords who fail to respond to violation notices. Slumlording should no longer be tolerated as the highly profitable business model it currently is in New Haven.

If Mayor Elicker and LCI Director Arlevia Samuel want us to take them seriously when they voice concern about ​“affordable housing,” ​“public safety,” and ​“public health,” the City must systematically and proactively enforce its housing code laws — and work with tenants to do so. 

On Thursday at 6 p.m. in the Aldermanic Chamber on the second floor of City Hall, the Board of Alders Finance Committee will be hosting a budget workshop focused on a number of city departments, including LCI. Click here to review the agenda.

Amanda Watts, Jessica Stamp, and Luke Melonakos-Harrison are all members of the Connecticut Tenants Union.