City Cracks Down on ​“Junkyards”

New Haven’s anti-blight agency has cited seven Newhallville homeowners for allegedly running junkyards on their properties — which at least some of the homeowners call an unfair accusation.

The city’s Building Department issued the seven citations on May 8 and May 9, following May property inspections by Linda Davis-Cannon, the Newhallville neighborhood specialist for the Livable City Initiative (LCI). The citations accuse the homeowners of violating city zoning ordinances that govern the number and use of parked vehicles allowed in a RM‑2, or High-Middle Density, residential district.

George Fairweather, for instance, has 10 cars parked in his driveway. He told the Independent that the cars all belong to himself and his tenants, who have every right to park their registered vehicles behind the home where they live. According to the city, Fairweather has turned his property into an illegal junkyard, and has 10 days to remove all unregistered vehicles and automobile parts in order to bring his home back into zoning compliance.

Three of those violations were found on Bassett Street, two on Thompson Street, and two on Shepard Street. The city found all seven homeowners in violation of Sections 14 and 29F of the New Haven Zoning Ordinance, which require residential properties with more than three parking spots to surround their parking lots with five-foot tall fencing and plantings to ​“screen noise, odors, visibility and headlight glare” from the street and adjoining properties.

“We look for properties with more than two unregistered cars and that may be doing some illegal car repairs,” Davis-Cannon said as she described what tips her off to a potential junkyard violation. Davis-Cannon also serves as a zoning enforcement officer deputized under both LCI and the Building Department. She said she looks for messy properties littered with auto parts and oil cans in addition to an abundance of suspect vehicles. She said she also pays close attention to which properties neighbors consistently complain about.

Even if a car is technically registered, if it hasn’t moved ​“for a long period of time,” and if it is in ​“beat-up shape,” the car still qualifies as part of a ​“junkyard,” Davis-Cannon said.

Davis-Cannon said the five zoning violation citations issued on Bassett Street and Thompson Street were for junkyard properties she first discovered during an October 2017 interdepartmental city sweep through the neighborhood. She said those five landlords had failed to remedy the zoning violations in the intervening months. The two violations issued on Shepard Street, she said, were for car-filled properties she first learned about in the past few weeks.

“The establishment and maintenance of a junkyard in this zone is prohibited by the New Haven Zoning Ordinance,” reads each of the seven citations. ​“You are hereby ordered to discontinue the use of this property as a junkyard and removed [sp.] all unregistered motor vehicles and auto parts within ten (10) days from the receipt of this letter.”

Davis-Cannon said that she plans to follow up with each property in the next ten days. She said Building Official Jim Turcio will follow up with the homeowners after that if they refuse to comply with the order. She said there is no specific fine associated with this zoning violation; the cases go to court, where a judge can impose fines.

A Monday morning walk through Newhallville found that each of the cited properties indeed had an abundance of cars parked in their respective driveways and back lots. Neighbors and homeowners who could be reached about the alleged violations argued that the city was out of line in describing these properties as junkyards, saying that the owners of each driveway and parking lot were in the right in how they used their respective properties.

“There’s no junkyard here,” Fairweather said as he surveyed the ten different vehicles parked in the lot behind his two-family, six-bedroom home at 77 Thompson St. Fairweather and his wife live in the two-and-a-half story building, and have six tenants. He said those tenants and their respective boyfriends and girlfriends have a total of eight cars that they park in his back lot. He said he currently drives his pick-up truck to his job with Metro North in Stamford every day, but that that car gets terrible gas mileage, and that he is currently working on fixing up the engine in the car he would prefer to be driving.

While Fairweather’s lot was still abundant in cars, the other two properties cited on the street by Davis-Cannon, 73 Thompson and 80 Thompson, were largely devoid of vehicles in their spacious drives and back parking lots. Davis-Cannon surmised that some of the cited tenants may have already cleared their properties of non-compliant uses since receiving the city’s letter last week.

Over at 193 Bassett St., Jerome T. Dunbar said the three vehicles in his driveway all had license plates and were all registered.

“Emphatically no,” he said in regard to the city’s assessment that his property was a junkyard. ​“My common law understanding of junkyard is that you’re dismantling cars and selling parts. That’s not happening here. All my vehicles have license plates.”

Dunbar’s driveway, layered with an inch of fallen leaves, houses a snow plow, a moving truck, and a third car.

“Junk is unusable,” Dunbar said. He said all three of his vehicles are very much usable.

Dunbar, who does legal research and writes legal briefs for a living, said he plans to request a hearing requiring the city to show proof that his cars are not registered and that his driveway and backyard are in violation of zoning ordinance.

“They’re beautiful people,” neighbor Michael K. said about Dunbar and his family. Michael said that Dunbar keeps up the property well, and does not run a junkyard, though he did say a family of racoons had recently camped out in his neighbor’s overgrown backyard.

The three other properties cited as junkyards were 95 Bassett St., 73 Shepard St., and 81 Shepard.

Both Davis-Cannon and Dunbar said the biggest problem lot in the neighborhood was at 95 Bassett, with upwards of 20 cars parked at a time in that lot. On Monday morning, the lot behind that three-family home had six cars, many without license plates. One more car was parked in the driveway, and another license-plateless car was parked outside the home on Shepard Street.

A few blocks up Shepard Street, the lot adjacent to 73 Shepard had four cars, the lot behind 81 Shepard had over six.

Neither property’s owners was present on premises on Monday.