Thomas Breen photo
Gaetano Giardino in his studio apartment at 100 Howe.
Come August, Gaetano “Tom” Giardino may have to leave the first-floor studio apartment he has called home for 21 years if he can’t meet a 65 percent rent hike from a new landlord looking to build up the block.
Giardino, an 81-year-old Milford native whose only roommate is a shy black cat named Ricardo, currently pays $695 per month for his studio apartment in the six-story, 84-unit 100 Howe St. building near Yale’s downtown campus.
In February, soon after Nick Falker of the Wooster Square-based Cambridge Realty Partners bought the building and an adjacent surface parking lot for nearly $12 million from former owner David Ornato, Giardino got a lease renewal form that indicated his rent would rise to $1,150 per month starting Aug. 1. That’s an increase of $455 per month.
The new lease, furthermore, would last only 10 months. And it would prohibit all tenants from having pets.
“I don’t know what to do,” Giardino told the Independent in a Monday afternoon interview in his apartment. “It’s like I’m getting thrown out of my home.”
Cambridge Realty Partners Principal Nick Falker.
He said he barely scrapes by now on his $1,200 monthly Social Security check and his $499 weekly take-home pay from his job as a security guard.
“I don’t want to end up walking down the street pushing a shopping cart of cans,” he said.
Falker told the Independent that his company is simply increasing rents in the building to market rates.
“We are investing over $1.25 million into structural, aesthetic, and environmental building improvements that will benefit all tenants, as well as the City of New Haven and its residents,” Falker stated.
“These improvements include proper remediation of typical old building environmental issues, such as lead paint. We make buildings healthier and cleaner, in addition to improving them physically. These improvements are made economically feasible by current market rents. If current market rents are not accessible, then we cannot spend that money, no one benefits, and unsafe building conditions are allowed to persist.”
100 Howe St.
On March 7, Giardino filed a complaint about the rent increase with the city’s Fair Rent Commission. Otis Johnson, the city’s fair rent commissioner, said he’s still investigating the merits of Giardino’s allegation that the rent increase is too steep.
Giardino has an informal meeting with Johnson and his landlord’s lawyer, Ori Spiegel, scheduled for Thursday. If he and his landlord can’t resolve the dispute with Johnson serving as mediator, then Giardino’s complaint would be taken up by the full commission at a public hearing. Per city law, the commission has the power to reduce “excessive” rents.
Howe Street rent hikes, and developer investments, aren’t taking place just in Giardino’s building.
In addition to the 100 Howe St. planned improvements, Falker’s company is looking to build dozens of new market-rate apartments next door atop a surface parking lot at 104 Howe.
And across the street, the Feldman brothers’ company MOD Equities plans to build 30 more new market-rate apartments after they first finish tearing down two derelict, vacant historic buildings at 95 Howe and 97 Howe.
Stuck at the tail end of this Howe Street apartment boom and the city’s broader affordable housing crisis, is Giardino, who likely won’t be able to stay in the neighborhood to reap the benefits of the costly new construction and renovations.
And with rooming houses around town either closing or dangerously unsafe, and the wait list for public housing units 10,000 people long, Giardino’s options for where to live in New Haven are becoming smaller and smaller by the day.
“Trying To Get Rich Off People Like Me”
Yale graduate students bustled in and out of the building Monday afternoon, packing furniture into moving trucks just a few hours after commencement had finished. Meanwhile, Giardino crossed the street wearing a loose-fitting white-collared shirt and black tie and entered the complex through a side entrance near the parking lot. He skipped his mailbox and headed straight to his room to feed and water Ricardo.
“I don’t consider him a pet,” Giardino said about his cat. “I consider him a support animal.”
Otherwise alone in the apartment, Giardino said, he feels calmer when he pets Ricardo and takes in the colorful array of floral paintings, photographs, and screen prints that decorate his small and cluttered home.
He has needed that relaxation recently, he said, because the stress from the proposed rent increase has kept him up at night, worrying that by Aug. 1, he’ll have nowhere to live.
Giardino said he paid $390 per month for his studio when he first moved in in the mid-1990s.
He had spent the decades before bouncing around among apartments on Wooster Street, George Street, and Orchard Street. He worked for 17 years in Wooster Square for a manufacturer that made uniforms for Catholic schools. Then the manufacturer moved its work overseas, and laid off Giardino and his colleagues.
Since 100 Howe St. tenants aren’t allowed to paint their walls, Giordino added color over the years by blanketing the space with catalog-purchased artwork depicting many different types of flowers.
His overhead ceiling light doesn’t work, so the only illumination in the apartment’s main room comes from a small faux-antique desk lamp.
Giordino said it’s not easy for him to find a new apartment at a price he can afford. He has bad knees and can’t climb stairs. His monthly rent has risen only $10 or $20 during his 21 years at 100 Howe, he said. A proposed $455 increase is something he simply cannot do.
“They’re trying to get rich off of people like me,” he said. “This is no good. This is not legal.”
$35 Toilet Cleaning Fee
Cambridge Realty Partners’ plans for a new 100 Howe St., on display inside the building’s lobby.
Giardino’s old lease was just a single page, he said. The new lease from Cambridge is 15 pages long.
In addition to laying out the new rent, the lease includes pages of “sample replacement charges” that tenants would have to cover upon moving out.
“If any items are missing or damaged to the point that they must be replaced when you move out,” the document reads, “you will be charged for the current cost of the item, plus labor and service charges.” Some of those prospective charges include:
• Window glass: $180 each.
• Window screen: $85 each.
• Mailbox keys: $75 each.
• Door keys: $150 each key and lock.
• Refrigerator racks / shelves: $60 each.
• Mirror / medicine cabinet: $100 each.
• Doors: $150 each.
• Light fixtures: $100 each.
• Counter tops: $300 each.
On top of that are dozens more prospective cleaning fees, including:
• Kitchen sink: $25.
• Cabinets: $75.
• Flooring: $95.
• Refrigerator: $75.
• Oven: $50.
• Walls: $75.
• Toilet: $35.
• Carpets: $150 per room.
One Yale student leaving the building on Monday said he too would have faced a nearly $200 rent increase if he hadn’t decided to move to a different apartment in the neighborhood.
He declined to give his name, but said his studio apartment rent at 100 Howe would have jumped from $975 to $1,150 if he had renewed his lease. He said the monthly rate to park at the adjacent 104 Howe surface lot also increased for all tenants from $75 to $125 after Cambridge took over in February.
“I didn’t even look,” he said about the many other pages included in the lease renewal form. Once he saw that new monthly rent number, he knew he wouldn’t be sticking around.
I suspect Mr. Giardino is a very nice man. But his current rent is way below market, as evidenced by the $975 the student living in the building is paying for a studio. I suspect (and hope) the Fair Rent Commission will be able to limit the increase. But I fear that Mr. Giardino is facing a significant rent hike under the best of scenarios.