Court Case Q: Which ​“Nuisances” Merit Eviction?

A state judge has sided with Hamden’s public housing authority in its bid to evict a tenant for allegedly dangerous and lewd behavior — shining a light on the challenges of providing stable housing for people with apparent mental and behavioral health issues, while also making sure that those people do not threaten the safety of their neighbors.

Those questions hovered over a summary process trial that took place Thursday afternoon in the third-floor housing court at 121 Elm St.

State Superior Court Judge John Cirello heard nearly two hours of legal arguments and witness testimony — including from a Hamden mail carrier, a town police officer, and the director and deputy director and other staffers from Hamden’s public housing authority — in regards to a ​“serious nuisance” eviction case that dates back to December 2021.

(On Friday evening, after an initial version of this article was published, Cirello issued a written order in which he sided with the Hamden Housing Authority and granted the eviction. See more on his decision below.)

In the case, the Hamden Housing Authority is looking to evict a long-time tenant of its 40-unit Worth Avenue apartment complex on the grounds that his conduct presents ​“an immediate and serious danger to the safety of other tenants or the landlord.”

The tenant represented himself in court without the assistance of an attorney. Sitting in an electric wheelchair and wearing a blue-and-white ​“Jackson for Hamden” T‑shirt, he denied all of his landlord’s allegations. He argued that some of the people testifying against him were not the people they claimed to be. He accused all of the witnesses of perjury. And he often stated that the behavior he’s accused of, which he nonetheless denied, did not pose any actual threats to anyone else.

“There is no way in God’s green earth, as a Jehovah’s Witness, that I’d be doing this,” he said in response to his landlord’s accusations of a pattern of dangerously sexually inappropriate behavior.

Asked by Cirello if he had any witnesses to speak up on his behalf during the trial, the man said his witnesses did not show up to court that day. ​“God is my witness to all the lies they’ve conjured up against me,” he added.

Landlord: Pattern Of "Sexually Explicit & Harassing Behavior"

Over the course of the nearly two-hour trial, local attorney Karen Baldwin Kravetz called witness after witness to the evidence table before the judge to make a detailed and often difficult-to-hear case against the tenant. The witnesses included Hamden Housing Authority Executive Director Hazelann Cook, Hamden Police Officer Jeremy Brewer, a Hamden postal carrier, and administrative and property maintenance employees at the housing authority.

The core of the housing authority’s ​“serious nuisance” complaint against this tenant pointed back to two incidents in particular: In May 2019, the tenant allegedly exposed his genitals to a mail carrier. In October 2021, the tenant allegedly held a woman ​“with special needs” against her will in his apartment for four days and told her she couldn’t leave or else she would be a racist.

As Hamden Police Officer Brewer testified during Thursday’s hearing, the exposure incident led to the tenant’s being arrested and criminally charged with public indecency and breach of peace. (State court records show that the tenant pleaded ​“no contest” to the second-degree breach of peace charge and was sentenced to 18 months probation, which was terminated this March. The state’s online court database does not include any records of the public indecency charge.) 

Brewer also said on Thursday that the woman ​“with special needs” who was allegedly held against her will by the tenant decided not to press charges for that incident, and officers never arrested the tenant on that matter.

“We have families and children” who live at and frequently visit the Worth Avenue property, Cook told the judge, since the public housing complex sits right next to a middle school and a public library. 

She said that this tenant’s pattern of behavior — which included not just the alleged indecent exposure and detaining incidents, Cook said, but also alleged posting of a sexually explicit image on the outside of his apartment’s door, alleged distributing of pens that falsely identified himself as a doctor, and alleged positioning of his wheelchair in such a way that passersby had to brush up against him in order to walk by — posed a serious threat to everyone who lives in, works at, and visits the complex. 

“It really was disturbing,” she said about the tenant’s exposure of his genitals to the mailman. ​“We have received many complaints” about this tenant over the years.

She said that the housing authority offered the tenant a voucher that would have let him ​“live anywhere he pleased,” and gave him over six months to find a new apartment, but that he never even looked.

The tenant denied this accusation, along with every other allegation made in court on Thursday, saying in this instance: ​“I searched all throughout the Town of Hamden. There were no vacancies.”

Kravetz described the tenant’s ​“longstanding and ongoing” examples of ​“sexually explicit and harassing behavior” as legally sufficient reasons for the court to order his eviction. 

Tenant: "I Am A Complete Human Being"

Visibly upset and sitting by himself on the defense side of the evidence table, the tenant denied every allegation made against him on Thursday. He frequently interjected with ​“objections” and ​“motions to strike” during the witness testimonies.

He accused every person who testified of lying — not just about what the tenant allegedly did, but even, sometimes, about who the witness said they were. ​“He is not” who he says he is, the tenant said after the mail carrier testified about the May 2019 alleged indecent exposure. ​“He is a hostile witness!”

The tenant told the judge that his accusers were conspiring to unfairly kick him out of his apartment. 

He said that the woman with special needs whom he allegedly held against her will had actually come by his apartment for an interview to be a personal care assistant, and then allegedly made up the story against him after he turned her down for the job.

He claimed to be a person of significant influence throughout the state, saying at that he is close friends with one of Connecticut’s U.S. senators and that he has a PhD from the Yale School of Medicine. (The Independent was not able to find any evidence of either statement being true.)

“These are only allegations,” he told the judge about what the witnesses had testified against him on Thursday. ​“I am a complete human being.”

Over the past seven months, the tenant has filed a number of written legal motions, letters, and objections in the case, emphasizing just how unjust he finds this eviction case — and offering a window into his apparent unstable condition.

On May 17, he filed a settlement document in which he claimed the state’s affordable housing financing agency had agreed to ​“1 billion dollars USA currency direct deposit into personal checking account” of tenant because of ​“wrongful eviction no grounds for eviction no police reports false alligations defamation of character.” That purported settlement document also calls for the arrest of the housing authority’s executive director and of the woman ​“with special needs” who he allegedly held captive ​“for commiting perjury” against the tenant.

After hearing roughly two hours of oral testimony and argument, Cirello closed out the Thursday’s trial by ​“reserving” his decision and promising to issue a written order after reviewing all of the evidence, filings, and relevant law.

Judge OKs "Serious Nuisance" Eviction

On Friday evening, roughly 24 hours after the in-person summary trial took place in the Elm Street courtroom, Cirello issued a two-page decision in the case — in which he sided with the Hamden Housing Authority and signed off on the tenant’s eviction.

Cirello found that, based on the relevant pleadings, arguments, testimony, and exhibits, the tenant did commit a serious nuisance as defined by state statute 47a-15: that is, ​“conduct which presents an immediate and serious danger to the safety of other tenants or the landlord.”

“In this case the court finds that the defendant … on one occasion exposed his genitals to a post man in the community room,” Cirello continued. ​“Used the common bathroom without closing the door. Displayed suggestive and sexually explicit material on the outside of the door to his apartment. He gave inappropriate gifts to female members of the housing authority staff. Although these acts may not rise to the level of serious nuisance, they provide a backdrop for the court when viewing the following acts of the defendant.

“Specifically, the defendant used his wheelchair to block at least one tenant’s movement on March 25, 2022. On another occasion he obstructed a tenant’s movement by him. She fell and broke her skull. He engaged in the same conduct with employees passage causing them to have to rub their bodies against him or his wheelchair in order to pass.

“Additionally, in October of 2021, a woman with special needs was observed by employee, Mr. Daddio, near the defendant’s residence. The special needs person said she was being held in the defendant’s apartment and she felt she could not leave. She said the defendant was telling her she would be a racist if she left the apartment. There was testimony that this woman was held for four days in his apartment.

“The premises is located near a public library and public middle school. The court finds that defendant[‘s] … conduct represents an immediate and serious danger to the safety of other tenants or the landlord’s agents.

“For the foregoing reasons, judgment of possession shall enter in favor of the Plaintiff.”

Reached for comment on Saturday morning, the tenant told this reporter that he plans on appealing Judge Cirello’s decision. 

He stated that the judge’s decision was ​“pre-arranged,” that various parties involved in this case were paid off by the mob, and that ​“there is no basis, no fact, no nothing” to support the housing authority’s allegations against him.

The tenant said he has lived in this Worth Avenue apartment for 35 years. Where will he go if he has to move out?

“I have no other choice but to go into a nursing home,” he said. ​“How can you do this to a disabled individual? As a Jehovah’s Witness, my faith is being put to the test.”

Advocate: "More Opportunities For Safe, Accessible, Decent, Affordable Housing"

What to make of this case, and of its sad and at-times sordid trial in housing court this week?

The Independent posed those questions to Kathy Flaherty, the executive director of the Connecticut Legal Rights Project (CLRP), which is a nonprofit that provides legal services for low-income individuals with mental health conditions.

After briefly reviewing some of the online filings in this court case and hearing this reporter’s description of Thursday’s summary process trial, Flaherty said that this case underscores for her a few key issues with how housing court currently operates in this state — particularly when it comes to tenants with apparent mental health conditions facing eviction.

“When one party is represented by an attorney and the other party isn’t, there’s a huge element of an unfair fight,” Flaherty said. 

She noted that a summary process, or eviction, trial is supposed to be ​“narrowly construed” — in this case by focusing on specific allegations clearly identified in an eviction lawsuit that claim that a tenant’s actions rose to the legally defined level of ​“serious nuisance.”

“Pattern and practice may have a certain role when you’re dealing with a criminal case,” she said. But ​“people don’t get evicted for patterns and practices of behavior. They’re supposed to be evicted for certain things they did or didn’t do in compliance with the law.” 

Because state law specifically defines ​“serious nuisance” as conduct providing an imminent threat to the health and safety of other tenants or the landlord, the landlord in this case should have focused just on those incidents — and not on any broader alleged pattern.

If the tenant in this case had an attorney representing him, she said, that attorney likely would have intervened throughout to make sure that both sides and the judge were hearing only testimony directly related to the ​“serious nuisance” accusations included in the eviction complaint. (“Serious nuisance” complaints make up a small fraction of eviction lawsuits filed in New Haven’s housing court. A vast majority of eviction cases instead are about allegations of nonpayment of rent, which was not the case in this Hamden housing authority matter.)

“Especially now that Connecticut has passed a ​‘Right to Counsel’ law, I think the biggest challenge of fully realizing that right for all tenants in Connecticut is lack of staffing combined with lack of adequate funding,” Flaherty said.

She said her ​“dream world” for how housing court should operate with such a right to counsel established would be that, ​“especially when it comes to something as fundamental as having a roof over someone’s head, that judge could appoint an attorney to ensure that the case focuses on the relevant issues.”

In an ​“adversarial legal system,” she said, ​“when you have lawyers on both sides, I think you have a much more focused presentation to a judge and you focus more on the law and what’s legally required and ensure that the evidence needed comes out on both sides.”

What about the bigger-picture concern of how to balance the need for people like this tenant — for all people, for that matter — to have a safe, affordable, accessible place to live, alongside the need for his neighbors not to feel threatened by his actions and behavior?

First, Flaherty stressed, people with disabilities deserve to and must be allowed to live in safe and accessible housing. ​“There’s a legal obligation on the part of the landlord to reasonably accommodate [a tenant’s] disability, recognizing that we don’t all move through the world in the same way.”

“From my perspective,” she added, ​“as a person who lives with a disability and who has represented clients who are low income and, especially now, who live with psychiatric disabilities in particular, there unfortunately is a long history of people not wanting people who are different living next to them as neighbors.”

“We don’t keep people in institutions anymore, which means they’re going to be living next to us and among us. Some of it is, we have to figure out how to get along with each other.”

Obviously, she continued, that does not mean that you need to ​“tolerate a direct threat” to people’s health and safety. Tenants and anyone else whose behavior does pose a direct, imminent, and actual threat to others — regardless of whether or not they have mental and behavioral health issues — ​“are probably going to find it very difficult to find a place to live that is not an institutional setting.” Flaherty said that, based on her initial read of this case’s legal filings and based on this reporter’s description of the trial proceedings, she cannot say definitively whether or not this tenant’s alleged behavior rises to the level of a legal ​“serious nuisance.”

The ultimate goal, she said, should be ​“more opportunities for safe, accessible, decent, affordable housing in all of our communities.”

Alongside that policy goal needs to be a ​“fundamental reexamination of who we are as a society,” she continued. ​“Do we actually believe what we say about wanting to provide opportunities for people to live in the community to be part of our communities? Or are they kind of those empty promises that are not really kept because we don’t put the action behind them?”

Flaherty said that, through her work on the state’s right to counsel program — which guarantees lawyers for tenants facing eviction in certain low-income zip codes across Connecticut — she hears questions raised about ​“a person’s ability, generally.” Her first thought is: ​“Have we as a system looked at, maybe it’s an obligation on the part of the judicial branch to affirmatively provide assistance to a person with a disability by appointing them a lawyer?”

While the state may not be obligated to do that in all cases right now, she said, it should be.

That will keep proceedings focused on the relevant law, she said. And it will ensure that tenants, including the most vulnerable — including those accused of wrongdoing — are not kicked out of their homes unless if a court finds that their actions rose to the level of the relevant law.

Other recent stories about New Haven eviction cases working their way through housing court so far in 2022.

• ​“Or” Evictions OK’d
• Fair Rent: Dog’ll Cost You $150
• Rent Trumps Repairs In Elliot Street Eviction
• Though Sympathetic, Judge Blocks Eviction
• Family Feuds Fill Eviction Court
• Rent Help Winds Down. What’s Next?
• Eviction Withdrawn After Rent Catch-up
• Hill Landlord Prevails In​“Lapse” Eviction
• Landlord Thwarted 2nd Time On Eviction
• Church Evicting Parishioner
• Hard-Luck Tenant Hustles To Stay Put
• Eviction Of Hospitalized Tenant, 74, Upheld
• Judge Pauses Eviction Amid Rent-Relief Qs
• Amid Rise In​“Lapse-of-Time” Evictions, Tenant Wins 3‑Month Stay
• Leaky Ceiling, Rent Dispute Spark Eviction Case