DSA, Tenant Union Target City Hall

A Quinnipiac Meadows tenant union and its local lefty organizers have turned their sights on City Hall in their latest effort to boost low-income renters’ collective bargaining power.

The groups staged a protest on the front steps of 165 Church St. Monday evening.

As the sun set and a brisk winter cold set in, three residents of the Quinnipiac Gardens apartment complex and a half-dozen local Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) organizers rallied outside of City Hall with cardboard signs reading, ​“Protect Tenants From Slumlords” and chanting ​“No Rats! No Rent Raises!”

The target of this demonstration wasn’t the landlord, but rather citywide policy. Unlike in August, when Quinnipiac Gardens Tenant Union members and organizers took their housing-upkeep complaints directly to the tenants’ landlord at Pike International’s Howe Street headquarters, Monday’s protest focused on city government.

Based on Mayor Justin Elicker’s engagement with the protesters and on the presence Monday night of some of the mayor’s top City Hall housing officials, the Elicker Administration is on board — at least, ​“in spirit” — with the tenant union’s push for greater recognition and collective strength.

“This is something that I think is important for the city to support,” Elicker told the tenant union members and supporters Monday. ​“There’s a lot of challenges that the city faces with absentee landlords that oftentimes don’t take care of their properties appropriately. …

“The spirit of what you are trying to accomplish is good, and something that could be modeled as well [by those in] similar situations” elsewhere in the city.

In a follow up interview Tuesday afternoon, meanwhile, Quinnipiac Gardens’ property manager dismissed the tenant union’s ongoing complaints about conditions at the complex as misplaced, exaggerated, and stemming primarily from ​“agitating” outsiders bent on pushing an explicitly political agenda.

3 Demands For Recognition

The tenant union organizers and members came to City Hall with three specific requests, as described by Quinnipiac Gardens tenant Cony Tolentino, DSA organizer Luke Melonakos-Harrison, and a one-page handout distributed at the protest. Those demands include:

1. For the city to formally ​“recognize” the Quinnipiac Gardens Tenant Union. ​“We come today, number one, so that the city will recognize the union,” Tolentino said in Spanish, as Melonakos-Harrison translated into English.

2. For the city to work with the union to provide ​“an avenue for collective complaints” to be filed with the Fair Rent Commission, the Livable City Initiative, and ​“other relevant city agencies.” Melonakos-Harrison said that the Fair Rent Commission currently accepts complaints only on an individual tenant-by-tenant basis. The tenant union, which organizers say has 40 members who all live at the Pike-owned Quinnipiac Meadows apartment complex, would like to be able to file complaints with that commission as a group.

3. For the city to enforce state statute 47a-20, which prohibits rent hikes within six months of when—per the language of the law—“the tenant has organized or become a member of a tenants’ union.” ​“The third point is that they don’t raise the rents, especially when they have not finished repairing all of the apartments,” Tolentino said.

Much as he has done during other protests of his administration — like this recent one involving his pick for police chief —Elicker showed up to the event, and engaged directly with the protesters about their demands. Also at Monday’s protest, in addition to the mayor and the tenant activists, were Fair Rent Commission Executive Director Otis Johnson, Jr., LCI Executive Director Arlevia Samuel, newly tapped LCI Deputy Director Mark Wilson, Chief of Staff Sean Matteson, and Downtown/Yale Alder Eli Sabin.

“There are some legal questions that I think our team needs to answer about the appropriate process for the city to support a tenant union to engage with the Fair Rent Commission,” Elicker said. He said he has passed along the tenant union’s requests to the city’s corporation counsel for a legal review.

“I don’t want to say, ​‘Yes, we recognize the union,’” without first getting an opinion from the city’s lawyer, he said. He promised to meet up with the tenant union members and organizers in a ​“week or two” to continue the conversation about their demands.

“We recognize the union in spirit,” the mayor continued, ​“but we need to do more work” to make sure the city follows the appropriate legal process when engaging with the union.

Asked about the tenant union’s specific demands in regards to the Fair Rent Commission — that is, that the commission recognize the union and allow for the filing of collective complaints — Johnson said that he has been working with the union since they formed with August … but otherwise declined to comment on any of the specific requests.

Per state statute, the Fair Rent Commission has the power to investigate tenant complaints about extreme rent increases and unsafe rental living conditions, and broker compromises between renters and landlords. It has previously reversed rent hikes, cut existing rents in half, and even reduced rent to $0 in an effort to force landlords to fix up unsafe apartments.

Tenants: Maintenance Too Slow, Problems Persist

The few tenant union members who showed up to Monday’s protest said that, in the months since they first organized and went public with their union, the landlord has addressed some longstanding maintenance issues at the 71-unit Quinnipiac Meadows apartment complex. (Click here to read about some of the issues that LCI inspectors found in a late August visit.)

There’s still more to do, tenants insisted on Monday.

“It’s always a problem to get things fixed,” said Francisco Elias, who said he has lived at Quinnipiac Gardens for roughly 15 years. Refrigerators need to be replaced, kitchen cabinets need to be changed, he said.

As a handyman himself, Elias said, if something breaks in his apartment, he often fixes it himself.

He said he showed up on Monday ​“to support the group” — that is, the tenant union, of which he is a part.

Tolentino said she has lived at Quinnipiac Gardens for over 10 years. ​“Some apartments have been fixed,” she said, others are still in need of repair.

She said she hears from other tenants about persistent rodent problems at the complex. She fortunately doesn’t have rodents at her place, she said, because the ​“alarms” she has bought ​“keep the rats away.”

Enid Mendez said she has lived at Quinnipiac Gardens for roughly one year.

“My apartment is OK compared to others,” she said. ​“When I moved in, they had just renovated my apartment. It’s livable.”

Her biggest complaint right now is that the landlord recently raised her monthly rent by $15, bringing her total to $1,115 per month for her two-bedroom apartment. She could barely afford rent as before given that her sole source of income is Social Security disability, she said. The rent increase makes making ends meet that much harder.

“I want Quinnipiac Gardens owners to take responsibility to take care of us,” she said.

Property Manager: All Fixed; Beware Socialist ​“Agitators”

In a phone interview with the Independent Tuesday, Quinnipiac Gardens’ property manager — who declined to share his name for this story — told the Independent that he has worked diligently with LCI, his maintenance team, and tenants over the past few months to address every housing code issue identified by the city in late August.

“We addressed every single item,” he said. ​“They were re-inspected. Of the 30 units, we passed every single one of them.”

He said that his maintenance team has also ​“continued our mice abatement program, which is routine. We have a monthly program” to address rodent issues, which nearly all apartment complexes citywide struggle with in some way, he said.

“We make every effort to address infestation concerns whenever they come up. This is no different from any other complex in New Haven. What we’re dealing with is quite common, and very minor.”

He said that the property management company recently repaved the complex’s driveway, installed new LED lights throughout the property, renovated the laundry room, and refitted gutter lines and downspouts. He disputed the assertion that there are any appliances on the property that are not functional, and said every tenant has his personal cellphone number and can reach out anytime with concerns.

As for the $15 monthly rent increases, the property manager said that those are ​“quite small,” particularly given that ​“our rents are Quinnipiac are far below market.”

“Quite frankly, I’m flabbergasted at the nature of these complaints, because that property is in wonderful shape, and was confirmed as such by LCI.”

The property manager sent the Independent digital copies of ​“work order review” forms filled out by tenants, offering feedback on Pike’s maintenance services — on everything from filling mouse holes to repairing floors to fixing toilets — at Quinnipiac Gardens since September. The tenants who filled out those forms all ranked Pike’s maintenance serve as either ​“good” or ​“excellent,” according to those forms.

So what’s driving the continued public demonstrations and concerns voiced by this tenant union?

The property manager said he has his suspicions that this is really a political crusade led by outside agitators — and less by the people who actually live at Quinnipiac Gardens.

“My understanding is the organizer of this tenant union is a member of the socialists of America,” he said, referring to many of the union organizers’ membership in DSA — a democratic socialist organization that has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years, primarily in response to socialist Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 and 2020 bids for the Democratic nomination for president.

DSA has built up its local and statewide political presence in Connecticut in recent years, successfully advocating for a right to counsel law at the state legislature and also helping to elect a slate of democratic socialist candidates to local office in Hamden.

“We’re talking about an outside organization in order to make some sort of example, to push a certain agenda,” the Quinnipiac Gardens property manager said. ​“Which is unfortunate, because it’s causing this angst” among people who live and work at the property.

Asked for comment on Tuesday about that accusation of outside agitation, Melonakos-Harrison replied, ​“The property is definitely in better condition than when we started, as the tenants spoke to yesterday, and that’s as a result of the pressure the union put on Pike over the past several months.

“However, the primary target of yesterday’s action was the city and the issue of rent raises and municipal tenant union recognition. As well as ongoing concerns from multiple tenants who are still dealing with unreliable response from management on issues like lack of heat and pest control.”