WWJD II: Tenants Tell Church, ​“Start Work!”

Tenants of the Emerson Apartments returned to their residence after work Wednesday evening — not to wind down from the day, but to wind up their landlords’ energy to make their homes habitable again.

At least 30 community members rallied outside Trinity Lutheran Church, the next-door neighbor and owner of those apartments at 284 Orange St., to protest substandard living conditions at the apartment building after two residents were displaced due to slow-going plumbing repairs — and after the landlords received a stop work order from the city for failing to get building permits to patch up the bathroom pipes. 

“We just wanna go home,” resident Alex Kolokotronis said. ​“And we have no idea when and if we can even return.”

“You would not expect this from a church!” he declared, as protesters chanted, ​“Trinity Lutheran you can’t hide, we can see your greedy side!” 

Kolokotronis, a statewide union organizer, and Jim Blau, who works in information technology at Yale, began unionizing residents at the apartment back in February when the pair were displaced because of flooding in their respective bathrooms. The union won city certification. Both tenants have been living in hotels for the past month while management tries to fix the broken pipes that caused the water damage. 

Read in detail about their stories here. Both were told to continue paying rent until they cited state law to prove they were not responsible for doing so while living remotely. 

Kolokotronis said he was told the repairs would take about a month to complete. He later found out that his landlord had not applied for the appropriate building permits to ensure the work was done right. 

“We live in this building that was constructed in 1875. It was remodeled in the 1930s,” he said. ​“When we start talking about buildings of this age, there’s worries about what materials are used that are embedded in the very structure of the building.” 

He reported the issue to the city, he said, to make sure the work was done right and by ​“people who can handle this with care, knowledge, and expertise.” 

In turn, the city issued a stop work order on Feb. 29. Building Official Bob Dillon said the landlord successfully applied for permits on March 12, but has yet to pay the $680 fee that must be submitted to the city before those permits are formally granted. 

The apartments were purchased by Trinity Lutheran Church in 2000 and now managed by Emerson Apartments LLC, whose principal is Raymond Sola. Attorney James Giuletti replied on their behalf to requests for comment from the Independent, emailing only that ​“My client, Emerson Apartments, LLC is working with the tenants and the city to make repairs as soon as possible.”

On Wednesday, tenants and supporters gathered outside the church to push for a response from their landlord about when they might be able to get back in their apartments — and start negotiating about other outstanding issues like mold infestations and rent increases.

“He just won’t respond,” Blau said of their property management. He said that he did hear from Raymond Sola when his renters’ insurance ran out, at which point the landlord agreed to put him up in a one-room hotel. Blau said Sola made that offer only after the Livable City Initiative inspected the apartment and promised themselves to help Blau find accommodations elsewhere.

Other than that, Blau said, neither property management nor ownership are responding to any inquiries concerning the timeline of repairs or potential for negotiations. 

Kolokotronis is still covered by renters’ insurance at the hotel where he’s staying. Both have been displaced for 35 days.

“It’s been really stressful,” Blau said. ​“It’s mostly just the uncertainty,” he said, but it’s also a major inconvenience. His son is now living full-time with Blau’s ex-partner while his apartment is under construction. Because the hotel would not take pets, Blau had to leave his cat, Jack, locked up in the bedroom of his apartment and returns twice a day from his Milford hotel to feed him.

While looking for answers, Blau and Kolokotronis said they’ve met other residents experiencing similar issues, like another neighbor unable to stay in his apartment because of an ongoing mold issue. 

One tenant named Nour, who declined to give her last name, recalled a similar inconvenience three years back when she moved into her first one-bedroom apartment. Without a union or roommates at the time, Nour was left alone in dealing with a three-week plumbing problem that she said ultimately exposed her to dangerous mold.

“I genuinely really love the place,” said the 29-year-old, who works as a physician associate at Yale New Haven Hospital.

She’s lived in the building for four years, first in a three-bedroom with two roommates before deciding to move out and go solo in a one-bedroom upstairs.

One day in September, she came home from a shift at the hospital and found a leak in the bathroom. She told her property manager, Raymond Sola, about the issue — and he said he’d come back with help the next day.

It wound up taking more than three weeks of Nour prodding management before someone came to the apartment to fix the bathroom. In the meantime, conditions worsened in her apartment rapidly.

“Debris and spiders started falling out of the ceiling,” Nour remembered. Mold had grown around the flooded bathroom and spread to the walls of her bedroom and kitchen.

Nour would shower at friends’ places when possible, otherwise cleaning up and using the bathroom at the hospital before returning home only to sleep on her living room couch. 

“I’d been starting to inhale a lot of the dust and mold — I got progressively sicker over the month from the inhalation,” she said.

Though the issue was ultimately resolved, she said that ​“hearing about everything going on now, it makes me kind of frustrated because of these instances in the past where I was let down and I felt like I was being pushy.” And, unlike Blau and Kolokotronis, Nour paid rent the whole month while her apartment was virtually unlivable. 

Now a union member, she said, ​“I feel like I’m not alone anymore. I feel like I’m protected and I know what my rights are.” 

“To me the major story is that they won’t talk to us,” Blau pressed to Wednesday’s crowd. ​“Are they in jail? Are they in a coma? Did they flee to Bolivia?”

“No!” another tenant yelled back. ​“Because they’re still taking my rent.”

Standing between his apartment and the historic church next door, Blau shouted: ​“Love thy neighbor — respect our union.”