After hearing a tenant’s tale of hardship, a judge ruled that she still needs to leave her current apartment so her landlord can move in.
That was the result of a hearing in housing court held on Tuesday.
The haring involved a request by Robert Pellegrini of Greenie Consult LLC, represented by attorney June Gold, for execution of an eviction based on non-payment rent and utilities, a lease that has already terminated, and the fact that he would like to use the premises as his own dwelling.
In the complaint for the case, filed Oc. 15, 2020, Gold wrote that the landlord tried to sell the property back in March 2020, at which point the tenants — a family with two parents and a son —were on a monthly lease, for a desired move-in date by a buyer of July 31. After the tenants “refused to leave” the property, despite written notice and “a financial incentive to ensure their compliance,” the buyer walked away and the landlord was transferred to a new job in Boston.
“Due to the untenable financial situation caused by the expense of maintaining two Connecticut homes and hotel-living in Boston, Plaintiff has sold the property where he resided in Connecticut with his wife and children,” the complaint read, adding that he intended to use the rental property as his new family home. His wife and children are currently living with their grandparents.
The tenants filed a declaration that the eviction should be halted under a pandemic-spawned moratorium declared by the federal Centers for Disease Control. Gold argued that Pellegrini’s family having to move in with grandparents is the exact public health hazard that the moratorium sought to avoid.
Gold told Judge Claudia Baio at Tuesday’s hearing that the case “has [the landlord] in such flux” and that “[he] needs access to his own home.”
One of the tenants, anmed LaToya, told the judge that they were willing to try to move out of the property, but their plans were complicated by the hospitalization of both her and her baby during the first week of March.
“I was still looking [for housing] even when both myself and my baby was hospitalized,” LaToya said.
She added that they kept being turned down from properties “without explanation.” Consulting with a realtor, she learned that an eviction that was supposed to be removed from their record by Gold after an April 2019 stipulation was never scrubbed. So prospective landlords could see it.
Gold claimed to have stopped the action — although she added that she is in actuality a high school math teacher and doing this work pro bono, so it was possible that something was missed.
“If there’s some other thing I need to do, I’m happy to do it,” she said.
“Your baby was born in February, presumably when you met with the mediator. You knew you had a baby soon,” Judge Baio told LaToya. “While I can understand you indicated that you haven’t been able to find a place to live, there was nothing filed and no evidence brought to the court. I looked at your indication that the plaintiff didn’t take action in the prior eviction, but that doesn’t appear to be accurate.”
In the end, Judge Baio ruled in favor of the landlord. But she gave the tenants until April 15 to move out.
“That will give you a little bit of time,” she told the tenants.
Landlords are people too. Smaller landlords are not corporations, and deserve just as much consideration as tenants do in deciding disputes as long as everybody follows the rules.