Lenox Tenants To Ocean: Time To Bargain

Lenox Street tenants union members joined hand in hand — or, at least, sign in sign — with labor and renter advocates to demand that megalandlord Ocean Management do what they did on Blake Street, and come to the collective bargaining table.

That was the message of a rally that took place Wednesday at noon outside of Ocean’s headquarters at 101 Whitney Ave. 

The event, organized by the statewide Connecticut Tenants Union, saw members of city tenants unions — including those at Ocean properties on Lenox and Blake Streets — join with members of New Haven Rising, UNITE HERE, the People’s Center, and Democratic Socialists of America to call out the local megalandlord / property management company / real estate investment outfit.

Rally attendees waved signs reading ​“Tenants Demand: Security Safety Stability Respect” and chanted slogans like, ​“Ocean Ocean, don’t let us drown, New Haven is a union town.” 

They took turns at a microphone to castigate Ocean for alleged delayed maintenance and poor communication with tenants at 195 and 199 Lenox St. They accused the landlord of not promptly addressing leaks and floods, particularly in ground-floor apartments; not providing regular garbage pick-up services; and relying too much on tenants to take care of snow plowing. (Click here to read more about individual tenant concerns with the property, as described at a previous Lenox Street Tenants Union rally outside Ocean’s headquarters in early February.)

Each speaker also pressed Ocean to meet with the Lenox Tenants Union to collectively bargain renters and other lease terms with the city-recognized union that represents the 11-unit rental property. 

“We are demanding that Ocean take the time to meet with our tenant union to negotiate a lease,” said Alisha Moore, a union member who’s lived at the Ocean-owned Lenox Street property for six years. ​“We deserve respect. We deserve dignity. We deserve to be heard.”

“We are more than the money we pay for rent,” added Connecticut Tenants Union President Hannah Srajer, ​“and if we pay something for rent, we should get something for it.”

Srajer and Blake Street Tenants Union co-president Sarah Giovanniello said during Monday’s rally that Ocean ought to collectively negotiate with the Lenox Street union as it has already begun to do with the Blake Street Tenants Union, which represents a 70-unit Ocean-owned property at 311 Blake. A press release sent out by the Connecticut Tenants Union in advance of Wednesday’s rally stated that Ocean signed a ​“collective agreement” with the Blake Street union on Feb. 29, ​“a historic milestone for CT’s tenant unions.”

“The only way we have gotten these people to do anything, to fix anything, is with collective power,” Giovanniello said.

“What the Lenox tenants union wants is what Blake [street tenants] already have, which is respect, dignity,” and the ability to collectively bargain with their landlord.

Robert Walters, who has lived at the Lenox Street Ocean property for nearly two years, said he showed up to Wednesday’s rally to send a message to his landlord, and to City Hall: ​“Have landlords more accountable for their actions, or lack of action.”

Ocean principal Shmuel Aizenberg did not respond to a request for comment by the publication time of this article.