Thomas Breen photo
Tenant Malika Sharif at St. Martin’s.
A landlord plans to gut-rehab all 63 apartments at a federally subsidized Goffe Street complex over the coming year — leaving low-income tenants concerned about uprooting their lives in the meantime.
In late June, SPH Management, the property management company that runs the St. Martin’s Townhouses at 200 Goffe St., started informing tenants in Building E of the six-building complex that they should start packing their bags and preparing to move to a hotel as their apartments are remodeled.
The complex is owned by St. Martin’s Preservation II Limited Partnership, a New York-based holding company controlled by Joseph Goldberg of Fairstead Affordable LLC. Goldberg’s company purchased the complex on June 28.
Bridget Dornbach, an SPH attorney, said Monday that the complex’s two, three, and four-bedroom apartments will get new kitchens, bathrooms, and paint jobs
“To be able to do that work,” she said, “we need to have tenants out of their apartments.”
According to Dornbach and five St. Martin’s tenants interviewed, the management company initially planned to relocate the complex’s tenants to the Extended Stay America hotel in Shelton, nearly 20 miles away from St. Martin’s.
By car, that’s a roughly 30 minute drive. By public transit, that’s a three-transfer, hour-and-a-half bus commute.
St. Martin’s Townhouses at 200 Goffe St.
After getting pushback from tenants, legal aid attorneys, and Newhallville/Dixwell/Prospect Hill Alder Steve Winter, the company has decided instead to relocate displaced tenants to the Village Suites hotel on Long Wharf.
Families living in Building E’s 11 units, Dornbach said, will have to move out of their apartments by the end of the day on July 9.
Tenants who are returning to their same St. Martin’s apartment post-rehab should be able to return by the end of July or the beginning of August, she said. Tenants who are moving into a different unit in the complex post-rehab won’t not be able to move back in until mid-September.
Tenants who choose to stay at the Long Wharf hotel during the rehab will have to continue to pay to their monthly rent for the St. Martin’s units they have been displaced from, according to Dornbach.
“They’re still getting lodging,” she said, as the property management company will cover the hotel costs and a daily food stipend in the range of $20 a day. That stipend differs depending on the size of the family, she said.
Tenants who choose to stay with family or friends instead of going to the Village Suites hotel during the St. Martin’s rehab, she said, do not have to pay rent and will get a slightly larger daily food stipend, in the range of $30 a day.
These proposed rehabs to St. Martin’s 63 units won’t take place all at once, Dornbach said, but rather in building-by-building stages over the coming year.
Even after the renovations the complex will remain affordable for low-income tenants, she said, through its current mix of Section 8 and other federal housing subsidies.
Soon to be displaced St. Martin’s tenants Rosemarie Wilson and grandson Gabriel.
Tenants interviewed at the complex Monday said they’ve received nothing but mixed messages from management about where they’ll be moving and for how long in the past few weeks.
The tenants were relieved to hear that they won’t have to move their lives and belongings all the way out to Shelton for up to three months. All five tenants interviewed said that even a move to a hotel on Long Wharf will be tough to accommodate considering how many of them are elderly, disabled, have young children or grandchildren, and/or don’t have their own cars.
As of Monday morning, none of the tenants interviewed had received any verbal or written notice from management that they would be able to move into the Village Suites on Long Wharf rather than the Shelton hotel.
“I’d want to see everything clarified for the tenants in writing,” said Winter, who represents this area of Goffee Street on the Board of Alders. “I’m glad that it looks like the management and the property owners are responding to our call for a reasonable relocation. It would have been totally unacceptable for people to have to go all the way to Shelton, particularly if you rely on public transit.”
Malika Sharif, a 67-year-old tenant who has been living at St. Martin’s for the last quarter century, agreed.
SPH’s letter to Sharif, notifying her of the temporary move.
“All this stuff is inconvenient,” said Sharif as she sat in a living room piled high with moving boxes filled with dresses, hats, books, and walking canes. “Everything’s centrally located where I am now.”
A certified nursing assistant (CNA) and the former owner of a boutique clothing store in Hamden, Sharif regularly visits her doctor on Whalley Avenue. She relies on her fiancee to get around town, as she can’t drive due to a host of back and knee injuries.
She said she has already moved a fair amount of her belongings into a storage facility in Hamden. She has thrown out cupboards full of pots and pans she won’t be bringing with her. The management company, she said, has told her she can temporarily house her belongings in a storage pod to be placed in one of St. Martin’s parking lots. But she doesn’t want her stuff just sitting in a parking lot for months.
“I’ve got boxes and boxes,” Sharif said, gesturing to belongings accumulated over the past nearly three decades in her apartment.
Tasha and Maritza Santiago.
Tasha and Maritza Santiago, a married couple with six kids who live in a three-bedroom apartment on the second floor their St. Martin’s building, said the forced move has upset their 3‑year-old son, who has autism.
“He hasn’t been himself” since the Santiagos first found out a few weeks ago that they would have to move to a hotel, Tasha said. He can tell how stressed his parents are. She said she worked so hard to get her son a therapist, and now she’s worried he’ll lose that care if he has to miss a few appointments while the family is living out of the Long Wharf hotel.
“We all got hit last minute with this,” Martiza said. “It’s not fair.”
Ella Williams, who moved to New Haven from Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina, said she is also concerned about how the forced move will affect her and her granddaughter.
“What am I supposed to do with all my food?” she asked.
New Haven Legal Assistance Association (NHLAA) Attorney Amy Marx praised St. Martin’s landlords for undertaking comprehensive renovations at the low-income housing complex. Marx said she is working with tenants, Alder Winter, and Livable City Initiative (LCI) Executive Director Serena Neal-Sanjurjo to set up a meeting early this week between the landlord and tenants.
“Management really, really must communicate properly with the tenants to whom they are responsible,” she said. “The initial decision to relocate tenants to Shelton was obviously inappropriate.” It’s good progress, she said, that the owner has agreed to move the tenants to a hotel within the city, instead.
But there’s still more work that needs to be done, she said, particularly in regards to communication: Owners and managers need to provide clear, written notice of their intentions, and tenants should not be left in the dark until just a few days before their mandated move as to where they are going and why.
It seems like the owners have tried their best to relocate tenants ; even providing a food voucher. If there are lapses in communication; I'm sure a letter from the friendly legal aid representative will help clarify matters. In the end, the tenants will benefit from the rehab work.
One question--- was it necessary to clear out the entire apartment if work is to be done on kitchens and bathrooms? Why not just the 2 areas to be redone -- Also- perhaps the painting could be done at another time. This way, the whole apartment does not have to be emptied and disruption is kept to a minimum.