Landlord’s Court No-Show Debated In Eviction

Raphael Badouch got his day in housing court Tuesday in his company’s effort to evict a nonpaying tenant. He didn’t personally show up.

Raphael Badouch also had a day scheduled in housing court on April 11, to be arraigned in a separate case involving 24 code violations at the same property. He didn’t show up then, either.

That led the judge to ask: Where in the world was Raphael Badouch?

State Superior Court Judge Walter Spader, Jr. asked that question (not quite with that wording) as he presided over a two-and-a-half-hour trial Tuesday in the ongoing eviction case 232 West Hazel St LLC v. Chelsea Wickerson. The trial took place in New Haven’s third-floor housing court at the state courthouse at 121 Elm St. 

Badouch, a Lakewood, N.J. investor who controls the holding company that owns 232 West Hazel St., was not required to be present for that trial; a lawyer and property manager showed up on his company’s behalf instead.

Badouch was supposed to be present on April 11 in a separate housing case involving the same property, not as a civil litigant filing an eviction suit, but as a criminal housing court case defendant. He was to be arraigned in that second case, in which he is being prosecuted for 24 housing code violations at 232 West Hazel St. He didn’t show up.

According to a Dec. 20 housing code compliance notice sent to Badouch by the Livable City Initiative (LCI), those code violations at 232 West Hazel included at that time a leaking bathroom ceiling, a leaking and damp bedroom ceiling, the need to install a house meter, the need to clean and sanitize an old sewage spill in the basement, and missing smoke and carbon monoxide detectors in the basement, among a host of other issues.

“How can I let this landlord use this court” to pursue an eviction for nonpayment, Spader asked towards the end of Tuesday’s trial, if ​“they’re not paying attention to this court on the enforcement side”?

If a landlord is ​“blowing off the court” by failing to appear in a criminal housing court matter, he continued, that goes to an ​“equitable question” the judge must consider when presiding over an eviction case related to that very same property — especially since the tenant is claiming she didn’t pay rent because of the property’s poor condition.

Legal aid attorney Dan Burns, who represents tenant Chelsea Wilkerson (whose name is misspelled as Wickerson in the official case name), agreed.

“We have an absentee landlord looking to get money” while not making necessary and timely repairs to provide a safe and healthy place to live at 232 West Hazel, Burns said. ​“Being a landlord is hard work. If you don’t want to put the hard work in, don’t be a landlord” and sell the property instead.

Eliana Schachter, Badouch’s company’s attorney in the eviction lawsuit, stated in her closing argument that the landlord and property manager want to make the necessary repairs to 232 West Hazel, but have been consistently denied entry to the first-floor apartment by the tenants.

“If my client did have access, these repairs would be done,” she argued. (See more on that dispute below.)

While she is not representing Badouch in his criminal housing court matter, Schachter added, ​“the punishment” for not showing up to an arraignment in a criminal housing case ​“is not a tenant who lives forever [at an apartment] without paying.”

In a text message comment provided to the Independent after Tuesday’s trial, Badouch said that he didn’t show up to his first criminal housing court arraignment because of travel, religious holiday, and mail reasons.

“I was away for Passover and only got court notice when I got back,” he said. ​“The date was April 11 and I was away a week before and never actually received that notice until I got back.”

He promised to show up to court for his rescheduled court-ordered arraignment in the criminal housing matter on May 2.

Asked to respond to Burns’ critique that he is an absentee landlord neglecting his responsibilities to fix up one of his New Haven rental properties, Badouch repeated the argument made by Schachter and Richenberg over the course of Tuesday’s trial. 

“Well those [code violations] would have [been] taken care of if not the tenant that refuses to give us access to the property,” Badouch wrote. ​“So on one hand she reported us but then won’t give us the ability to actually address those issues.”

Spader did not issue a ruling at the end of Tuesday’s eviction trial. He promised to review all of the evidence and testimony in the matter and hand down a decision soon.

Rent, Repairs Debated

The civil court case heard on Tuesday stems from a Jan. 23 eviction lawsuit filed by a holding company controlled by Badouch. His company bought the Newhallville rental property last August.

The lawsuit claims that the first-floor tenants failed to pay their $1,650 monthly rent from last October through this January, and should therefore be forced out so that the landlord can regain possession of the property.

In a Feb. 6 answer and special defense filing, Wilkerson, the lead tenant in the case, argued that she and her family have suffered for months from an apartment beset by mold, a leaky ceiling, and mixed wiring. She also mentioned in her court filing a sewage backup at the property.

Wilkerson and her legal aid lawyer Burns, 232 West Hazel St. property manager Richenberg, and landlord-hired attorney Schachter, and LCI Deputy Director and top city housing code enforcement official Mark Stroud take turns addressing the court at Tuesday’s trial about what has and hasn’t been fixed at 232 West Hazel St., why, who’s to blame, and what the city and the court should do about it.

On the one hand, Burns and Wilkerson made the case that the longstanding code violations documented by LCI in its Dec. 20 inspection report were the foundational reasons for the rent dispute at the center of the eviction case. 

Wilkerson told the court that she stopped paying rent because of the persistence of these housing code violations, particularly the mold, and the impacts they’ve had on the health of her young nieces, who live with her in the apartment. 

Why exactly didn’t you pay rent? Burns asked his client.

“Because of the lack of help we received as far as the issues that were happening” with the apartment, Wilkerson responded.

In response to Burns’ questioning, the tenant said she would be happy to pay her rent in full going forward if all of the housing code violations are addressed. She said she would be willing to open up her apartment to a follow-up LCI housing code inspection as well as to the property manager if indeed these problems are going to be fixed.

Schachter and Richenberg introduced text-message-screenshot evidence alleging Wilkerson and her sister Ivonna Foskey, who also spent extended periods of time at the Newhallville apartment, stopped paying rent primarily because of financial difficulties and the hardship caused by a death in the family. 

The landlord’s representatives argued that the property manager wanted to make the fixes ordered by LCI, but his maintenance men were consistently rebuffed by the tenants, who did not allow them access to the apartment.

That communication breakdown between tenant and property manager has led to the unnecessary prolonging of issues that can be fixed in a matter of days in the first-floor apartment, Richenberg said, even as his team has already addressed all of the matters in the basement.

“Every time I send someone to do the job,” Richenberg said with frustration, ​“she stop him.”

“My client made [repeated] efforts to gain access to the unit,” Schachter said. The tenant has consistently declined to let him in.

Much of Tuesday’s trial saw Burns and Schachter questioning LCI’s Stroud about the recent history of city housing code inspections at the West Hazel Street property, as well as about what he could say about the apartment’s current conditions.

Stroud confirmed under questioning that LCI housing code inspector Christian Feliciano inspected the property and identified a number of code violations that made its way into the Dec. 20 compliance order sent to Badouch. That order was sent by certified mail to Badouch’s address in New Jersey, Stroud said. LCI ultimately applied for a warrant in January seeking his prosecution in criminal housing court for these persistent code violations at 232 West Hazel.

Stroud said that the 24-hour repair timeline associated with some of the violations detailed in the compliance order, such as repairing leaking bathroom and bedroom ceilings, is such a quick turnaround because the matters pertain to ​“life, health, and safety concerns” at the property.

Burns asked Stroud a number of different times and different ways whether or not the issues detailed in this code compliance report have been addressed. Stroud stressed that he was not the inspector who visited the property. He has never been inside the first-floor apartment, said, and he has no firsthand knowledge of the property’s current condition.

In her cross-examination of Stroud, Schachter emphasized this point that Stroud did not know what repairs had been made and what hadn’t. She also pointed to emails she said the landlord’s representative had sent to LCI expressing frustration about not being able to access the apartment to make repairs.

In her subsequent questioning of her own client, Schachter elicited testimony from Richenberg that all of the LCI-ordered repairs have been made for the matters outside of the first-floor apartment, such as in the basement, while some of the inside-apartment matters are outstanding only because the property manager hasn’t been able to get inside the unit.

Richenberg said that his team painted the property and put in a new kitchen after buying it last August. ​“It was a very nice apartment,” he claimed. ​“I want to do my job.”

As Spader made clear at both the beginning and end of Tuesday’s trial, he’ll be taking into consideration the separate criminal housing case Badouch is currently wrapped up in — as well as his nonappearance at the first arraignment — as he considers the eviction case involving the same property.

He said he’d take ​“judicial notice” of that criminal housing matter. And that ​“the court does have some concerns there” with Badouch’s initial failure appear.

Burns jumped on that comment early on in Tuesday’s trial by emphasizing what he saw as a fundamental injustice of the parallel if separate court proceedings.

The principal of this West Hazel Street landlord company is ​“seeking justice” in one court venue ​“while avoiding it in another. That’s not fair.”

See below for other recent stories about New Haven evictions:

• Lenox Landlord Prevents Sheffield Eviction
• Senior Dodges 50-Cent Eviction
• Landlord Prevails After Eviction-Paper Delivery Debate
• Sunset Ridge Becomes Eviction Central
• Eviction OK’d After Restaurant Shutters
• Eviction OK’d After​“Lapse,” Rent Debate
• Mandy Leads Pack In Eviction Filings
• Eviction​“Answers” Reveal Renters’ Struggles
• Eviction Suit Caps Tenant’s Tough Run
• Investor Skips Hello, Starts Evictions
• Eviction Deal Drops $1 Ruling Appeal
• Judge’s $1 Award Tests Eviction Rule
• Court Case Q: Which​“Nuisances” Merit Eviction?
• ​“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