Convicted Scammer Back In Dirty Water

A mysterious tube — carrying something out of a Clifton Street house’s sewage-flooding basement, through the backyard, over a neighbor’s fence, and out beside the Quinnipiac River, and installed without permits or permission from the riverbank property’s owner — led the Fair Rent Commission to drop two tenants’ monthly rents to $1 apiece. 

It also put a convicted mortgage fraudster who is still involved in New Haven rental real estate back in the spotlight.

The tube, according to representatives of the landlord and the city’s environmental health director, is only meant to drain rain and groundwater — not the rancid sewage that frequently fills the building’s basement. 

Fair Rent Commissioners maintained during their latest monthly meeting on Tuesday night that the plumbing solution was not by the book, having been implemented without a permit, across property lines, and right beside a major local body of water. 

They unanimously lowered rent for two apartments at 4 – 6 Clifton St. to $1 per month until the issue is fixed.

The commissioners met online via Zoom on Tuesday night and issued a rare cascade of unanimous decisions to lower three tenants’ monthly rents to $1 each in the face of extreme housing violations. 

One was for a renter at a rodent-infested, Ocean Management-controlled property on Henry Street in Dixwell. (Click here to read more about that case.)

The other two were for tenants at the three-family rental on Clifton Street in Fair Haven Heights that is owned by a 129 Church St.-based holding company controlled by Shmuel Levitin. 

One of the landlord company representatives who spoke up on the owner’s behalf at Tuesday’s Fair Rent Commission meeting, meanwhile, was Joseph Levitin, also known as Yossi Levitin — the man who pleaded guilty in 2012 to orchestrating a $10 million mortgage fraud ring while leaving a trail of blight in majority-Black and Latino neighborhoods. Levitin was eventually sentenced to 22 months in prison, a reduced sentence received in exchange for turning on the people he recruited into the conspiracy. 

The commissioners on Tuesday night voted to drop the monthly rent for one of the Clifton Street tenants from $1,800 to $1 for her two-bedroom apartment, as well as the monthly rent for a second tenant at that same property from $2,250 to $1 for her three-bedroom apartment, until the problems are fixed.

The Fair Rent Commission oversees complaints of excessive rent, landlord retaliation, and unsafe living conditions. Under the leadership of Commission Director Wildaliz Bermúdez, it has taken on a bigger role in soliciting, hearing and acting on rent and living-condition complaints, and in promoting the creation of more tenants unions citywide.

“These cases are emergencies,” reflected Fair Rent Commissioner Garry Monk about both the Henry Street and Clifton Street cases reviewed on Tuesday. ​“No one should be living in these conditions.”

"Smelled Like A Port-A-Potty"

When Emily Manto moved into the first floor of 4 – 6 Clifton St. in July, the apartment ​“smelled like a port-a-potty,” the tenant told the Fair Rent Commissioners on Tuesday.

She learned that sewage was continually flooding the basement, emitting a pervasive, unsanitary stench. 

Manto quickly learned to cover the vents leading into her apartment in order to limit the smell of feces and waste in her home. 

When Bermúdez inspected Manto’s apartment on Monday, in advance of Tuesday’s commission hearing, she said that when she lifted Manto’s vent covers, an ​“immediate sewage smell permeated from her vents into her apartment.”

According to Manto, the sewage has attracted flies, centipedes, spiders, and mosquitos to the building. She said she recently found mold in her closet, and her upstairs neighbor noted to the commission that the basement was developing significant mold as a result of the sewage.

“Every minute, I am breathing in black mold and sewage fumes,” Manto said.

As a result of the sewage, the house failed a Livable City Initiative (LCI) inspection in April, another one in June, and still another one in late July.

All the while, Manto said her air-conditioner has been broken and (as her upstairs neighbor also stated) the running water is frequently shut off throughout the building.

The house in question belongs to an LLC called Real Estate Investment Holdings, which is formally registered with Shmuel Levitin as a principal.

Speaking on the company’s behalf was not Shmuel Levitin, but an apparent relative who identified himself as Joseph Levitin.

When Joseph Levitin turned on his Zoom camera, it became clear that he’s also known as convicted scammer Yossi Levitin.

When pressed by commissioners to define his precise role in the company that owns 4 Clifton St., Levitin hesitated before calling himself the ​“office manager.” When reached by phone the next day, Levitin immediately hung up after this reporter introduced herself.

Levitin and his associates, Rebecca Benjamin and Aaron Kanevsky, explained during Tuesday’s Fair Rent Commission meeting that Real Estate Investment Holdings has tried multiple times to address the sewage flooding issue over the last few months, and are still working on finding a fix.

He and his colleagues repeatedly described how the house’s sewage system was originally connected to the stormwater drainage system, and during heavy precipitation, the mixture of rain and wastewater would overflow.

“We’ve hired many different companies,” he told the commissioners, later noting that ​“these things take steps of trial and error.”

Most recently, he said, ​“we hired a different company,” which ​“put in this huge sophisticated system.” He added, ​“a lot of money was put into this.”

Manto and her upstairs neighbor, another Fair Rent complainant named Celia Lincoln, both said the sewage hasn’t actually been cleaned up, even though Levitin maintained that his company had hired a professional cleaning company to clear it up.

During her inspection on Monday, Bermúdez found pools of sewage in the basement. And Lincoln said she checked the basement just before Tuesday’s Fair Rent Commission meeting and found ​“puddles” of wastewater.

“It’s just a disaster down there,” said Lincoln. ​“The floor is really gross. It’s covered in mold and sewage still. There’s still tons of trash down there — empty bottles of whatever ​‘outdoor cleaner’ is.”

"You Can't Flow Water Into The Quinnipiac River Just Because"

The ​“sophisticated system” that Levitin mentioned appears to rely on a tangle of unsecured indoor-outdoor tubing. 

“It doesn’t look like it was completely finished,” said Lincoln.

As photographed on Wednesday, it seems to operate at least in part by a narrow tube coming out of the basement. 

The tube has been piled loosely through the backyard…

… draped over over the back fence…

… and positioned so as to spout into a thicket of greenery in the backyard of an adjacent property at 736 Quinnipiac Ave.

Though implementing a new plumbing system (or significantly altering an old one) would have required a permit from the city’s building department, no permits were taken out for this tubing. 

Bermúdez was unable to identify the contents of the pipe, but pointed to its close proximity to the Quinnipiac River. 

“Whatever is being released from this pipe is going not only into the neighbor’s backyard but into the river,” she told the commission.

Commissioner Javier Cabrera pressed the landlord representatives on that pipe: ​“What is going on there?”

Aaron Kanevsky replied. ​“It’s just a pump that takes the water that comes in from the rain from the water and brings it back to where it came from in the water.”

“Do you guys own that property next door?” asked Cabrera.

“I don’t know exactly where the property line is,” Kanevsky said. 

“You can’t do that. You can’t flow water into the Quinnipiac River just because,” Cabrera interjected.

“It’s water from the Quinnipiac River,” said Kanevsky.

“You can’t do that,” Cabrera repeated.

Neighbor Never Contacted

According to Vanessa Zuniga, whose family purchased the house next door at 736 Quinnipiac Ave. in July, no one from Real Estate Investment Holdings LLC has ever contacted her family about placing the tube into her backyard.

Zuniga first noticed a tube running from 4 – 6 Clifton St. into her property soon after she and her husband bought the house in July.

She said her husband ​“saw people trespassing into our property and dumping buckets full of grey sludge.”

Soon, Zuniga and her husband installed the wooden fence that now runs in between the properties. 

Within the last couple of weeks, Zuniga said, someone slung the tubing over her fence, back onto her property. ​“They sneak it over the fence, but behind the bushes,” she said, so it’s not easily visible.

“We have four kids. This is concerning. We should be able to use our portion of the yard,” Zuniga said. She criticized ​“the complete disregard for the pollution and waste, or whatever that sludge was, going into the river.”

“We’ve never been contacted by the owner,” she added.

Zuniga said she and her husband contacted the Health Department about the potential pollution.

The city’s environmental health director, Rafael Ramos, said that he does not believe the tube system is polluting the river.

“The pump is meant to pick up groundwater that seeps into the property around the foundation,” he said.

During deliberations on Tuesday, commissioner Douglas Losty, who frequently advocates for less punitive responses to landlords, made each motion for rent to be reduced to a dollar and for the Health Department to be summoned to the property.

Fair Rent Commission Chair Elizabeth McCrea convinced her colleagues to ​“require proof, paperwork from reputable companies that the cleaning was done, the work was done, the infestation rodent problem was properly handled.” 

The commissioners noted that the landlord must contract with a ​“licensed company” and obtain the requisite permits.

They then reduced each of the two Clifton Street tenants’ rents to $1 per month.