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Tenant Hall: “If you’re not working, they help you.”
A Massachusetts landlord that gets paid millions of government dollars a year to house poor people in New Haven is looking for a new 20-year tax break — and no one’s complaining.
The landlord is a Boston-based partnership called Beacon Corcorcan SP Jennison (aka “BCJ”). It owns the 339-unit Monterey Place public-housing development in Dixwell. For 20 years it has received millions of dollars in tax breaks from the city to own and manage the complex. Now it’s asking for a 20 year-renewal on its tax abatements.
The request comes before the Board of Alder’s Tax Abatement Committee for consideration Tuesday night. (Update: The committee voted to approve the request. It now goes before the full board for approval.)
From the complex’s tenants to city officials to the neighborhood’s alder, people interviewed supported the request — because, they said, the landlord is showing how public housing can be managed right. Unlike when a private company seeks public help to build middle or upper-income housing, this request is generating no visible opposition.
“I think they should have an extension because they provide excellent services at Monterey,” said Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison, who represents the area. “I don’t get many complaints. The property always looks immaculate. It’s just a wonderful, wonderful place for people to have a nice home. They do a good job.”
BCJ struck the original tax agreement with the city in 1998 as part of the broader agreement to build Monterey atop the grave of the old Elm Haven public-housing projects. The Housing Authority of New Haven (HANH) owns the land. BCJ has a 99-year lease and owns the buildings, according to HANH Executive Director Karen DuBois-Walton.
BCJ paid $225 per unit at the beginning of the agreement, which called for the levy to rise just 3 percent a year.
The company paid a little over $100,000 in taxes on five key properties at Monterey in 2014. Their tax bill this year would be over $500,000 without the breaks. (See chart.)
Dara Kovel, BCJ’s top official in town, said the company needs the tax break because the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has cut the amount by which it subsidizes public-housing developments. So BCJ is losing money on the apartments, as the complex costs more than $500,000 above what it receives in federal reimbursements, she estimated. (She wrote this memo to the city laying out the case.)
BCJ has received approval to switch to a different HUD program for reimbursements, called Rental Assistance Demonstration (“RAD”). That would switch the reimbursements to project-based Section 8 subsidies, which are higher than the traditional public-housing subsidies HUD offers.
But a condition of that RAD approval is an extension of the city tax agreement. Hence the request to the city. BCJ is also asking that the city add a community center in the complex into the agreement and make it tax free.
HANH’s DuBois-Walton noted that BCJ technically has the right to pursue market-rate rentals or sell to a market-rate developer once its current agreement ends in 2018.
How To Win Friends
Campbell (below) and her flower garden (above.)
The support for BCJ and Monterey stands in contrast to to the controversy surrounding another Massachusetts landlord that gets paid millions of federal dollars a year to house poor people in New Haven: Northland Investment Corp., owner of the 301-unit Church Street South complex across from Union Station. The city tried (unsuccessfully) to get that landlord’s Section 8 rental subsidies revoked because of that complex’s unsafe conditions. In the end legal-aid lawyers successfully pushed to have that complex razed (though the city is now working with Northland to get federal money to rebuild it).
Walk through Monterey Place, off Dixwell Avenue by the Wexler-Grant School, and you’d believe you’re in a different universe from Church Street South. You see manicured lawns, brightly colored freshly painted stand-alone homes, flowers, clean streets.
It’s quite a contrast not just to Church Street South, but to what the same blocks looked like when the development was known as Elm Haven — dangerous, dirty, crumbling towers and low-rises that the city finally tore down (although former tenants still have reunions and fond memories). Then New Haven got money under a federal housing program called HOPE VI designed to build less dense, more attractive clusters of mixed-income homes. And in New Haven, the housing authority, which owns the land, hired contracted with a private landlord — BCJ — to construct and own the buildings atop the land and then manage it.
The complex has remained clean and well-kept since its opening nearly two decades ago, tenants said.
Lora Campbell recalled the crime and noise and rundown conditions at the old Elm Haven low-rises when she lived there. Today, 83 and retired from a career in the school system, Campbell lives in a tidy one-family house on Foote Street that’s part of Monterey. When she had a leg amputated two years ago, BCJ put in a wheelchair ramp for her.
“When I need something done, they come and do it,” said Campbell, who has lived at Monterey for 16 years. “They’ve got people cutting the grass.” Campbell planted a flower garden in front of her home with her granddaughter Shayla Reyes.
Tiffany Hall’s family lived at the old Elm Haven, too. Hall, who’s 30, has lived at Monterey for two years. And is happy about it. “It’s nice here. Everybody’s friendly. It’s quiet,” she said. “They’re [BCJ] nice people. If you’re not working, they help you.”
“I have no complaints,” echoed Marjorie, a senior who has been at Monterey 13 years. (She declined to give her last name.) “Everything is good. Just like it is outside, it is inside. Everything is well taken care of. It’s safe.”
Former Yale law professor Bob Solomon, who ran the housing authority at the time of the BCJ Monterey deal, called tax policy an important tool in preserving affordable housing.
Solomon, who now teaches at University of California, Irvine School of Law, said he doesn’t have enough updated info to judge the wisdom of BCJ’s request for an extension.
“Monterey is heavily subsidized. The cost per unit was very high, for many factors, including demolition. Because it was replacement housing and there were not enough units for full replacement, it has, in my view, too many low-income units, which is in itself a complicated question. Beacon Corcoran did a good job in making it all work. Without seeing the numbers, I cannot opine on whether they need additional abatement, but I think it is likely that maintaining the large number of subsidized units is a restriction that leaves hard choices. Inadequate operating costs leads to deteriorated housing and deferred maintenance. New Haven knows this better than anyone. If the additional abatement is necessary to properly maintain the housing, so be it,” he argued in an email exchange.
“Beacon Corcoran is a for-profit company. If they are managing the property well, they deserve reasonable profit. They should not get a larger subsidy so they can increase their profit, but they should get an abatement if it is the only way they can fulfill the social purpose of maintaining quality low-income housing and still earning a reasonable profit.”
And people wonder why New Haven is broke. Another 20 year tax break? Ridiculous! If the housing can't make it to profitability in 20 years, it should never have been built.