Senior Housing OK’d For Middletown Ave.

A local engineer won city permission to build seven apartments in Quinnipiac Meadows for seniors hoping to spend their final years in their own homes.

Mike Puccino, a 62-year-old operating engineer who lives in New Haven, received support from the City Plan Commission last week to continue his mission of constructing low-density senior housing around town, a job he said he took upon himself in 2009 while watching his father face the end of life from a nursing home bed.

“It’s a very personal thing for me,” Puccino told the commission during its latest Zoom meeting Wednesday night as he pitched a plan to turn an empty lot on Middletown Avenue into a small complex of handicap-accessible one-bedrooms. 

On Wednesday, Puccino received unanimous support from the commission for a site plan and coastal site plan that involves building a linear complex of seven one-bedrooms sized at 420 square feet per apartment at 486 Middletown Ave. He said he plans to begin construction this spring and wrap up by October or November.

The simple development features an adjacent lot with four parking spots. Handicap-accessible ramps connect that lot to a covered walkway that will stretch along the frontward faces of the seven apartments.

“I appreciate this application. I appreciate this build. I think it’s a wonderful addition to the City of New Haven for that particular area,” Commission Chair Leslie Radcliffe said following a presentation by Puccino and David Nafis, another engineer and land surveyor working on the project.

“Having senior housing just in general is a need that’s going to be met” by the upcoming development, she said.

One of the few questions commissioners asked Puccino about this project on Wednesday was whether or not four parking spaces would be sufficient for an incoming community of at least seven people.

He said that none of his prior tenants, the majority of whom are disabled or require care from outside aides, have owned cars. And, he said, ​“They rarely have visitors. It is truly a sad thing as they reach that age… They tend to have me and the aides, believe it or not, as sad as that sounds.”

Puccino described the apartments as ​“pretty simple… I try to make it so that it’s just what they need.”

“I’ve done quite a few of these in New Haven already,” he added.

"It's Truly About Helping"

Over the past decade, Puccino told the Independent in a followup interview, he’s been buying up vacant properties and single-family homes to boost the number of safe and affordable units available for elderly New Haveners. The majority of his tenants are enrolled in a federal program known as ​“The Money Follows The Person,” or ​“MTP.” That initiative, launched in 2008, connects individuals transitioning out of institutional care with resources, such as rental subsidies, to help them live independently within their communities.

He said he built up to 18 affordable units on Lexington, Huntington and Woodward Avenues beginning in 2009, though he has since sold most of those apartments to new owners. He said he sold homes he had rehabilitated or constructed on Lexington and Huntington to support a broader housing complex he later built on Woodward, which he has since sold to a close friend to own and manage. The units on Lexington and Huntington have gone to a variety of new owners, including local megalandlords. For example, affiliates of Mandy Management purchased a home in 2018 that Puccino had previously rehabbed and rented out at 131 Lexington Ave. 

Puccino said that he has worked with MTP to ensure that each tenant who lived or lives in the apartments he built and sold is able to maintain their leases for at least another year after his properties changed hands. He also said he’s hoping this year to construct a new six-unit complex on Ferry Street and a four-unit building on Barnes Avenue.

Puccino said that in addition to working as a crane operator on local projects like the bioscience tower erected at 101 College St., he began building and managing senior housing properties while trying to find a pathway for his own father out of a North Haven nursing home.

“Everyone knows how nursing homes are,” he said, recollecting how he saw his dad suffered from bed sores in a rehabilitation center while wheelchair-bound and enduring the onset of dementia in his later years. ​“I couldn’t watch it anymore.”

His father died before Puccino finished construction on his first housing project. From then on, Puccino said, he wanted to keep creating what housing he could to provide other seniors with alternative locations to live out the rest of their lives besides institutionalized care facilities.

He said he works as the property manager for all of his units and tries to check in on his tenants on a regular basis. ​“Sometimes I’m their only person,” he said. ​“I’m their one connection to the outside world.” 

Most receive rent support through MTP, but he tries to step in and help whenever additional financial stressors become apparent. For example, one tenant was left a way to pay full rent after her partner, who was receiving a housing voucher through MTP, passed away.

“It was up to me to let her stay for a $400 a month loss. And she’s still living there!” he said.

Administrators or aides with MTP also know to call Puccino if a tenant misses an appointment so he can stop by their apartment and make sure they’re okay. On occasion, he said, he has been the person to discover a renter’s passing.

“It’s kind of dark and, yes, it does happen,” he said.

In addition to establishing housing opportunities for the elderly, he said, he also wants to remain an accessible point of contact for people experiencing the isolation that often comes with growing old.

“I can tell you exactly who has lived in each unit,” he said. ​“And I can tell you every person that’s passed away in those units.” 

However, trying to create housing stock amid New Haven’s affordable housing crisis, he said, is particularly daunting because of the city’s loads of regulations, which add time and expense to even the simplest projects. ​“They have so many regulations,” he said, pointing to required photometric maps to prove no light will pass onto adjacent properties as one particularly cumbersome rule.

“Obviously I’m not rich from it and will never be,” Puccino stated. ​“It’s truly about helping. I don’t know what’s more important than that.”