Thomas MacMillan Photo
Gallo. Top photo: 1294 State.
After years of neighborhood complaints, a notorious landlord is looking to legitimate an alleged illegal rooming house. Neighbors like Marie Gallo are looking for an opportunity to shut it down altogether.
The owners of the building, at 1294 State St., have been renting rooms without a license for several years, according to neighbors. During that time, the block has become a hotspot for drug-dealing, loitering, and prostitution, neighbors said.
In November, after the owners put up a sign advertising rooms for rent, the city got involved. City Building Inspector Andy Rizzo sent owners a letter saying he had reason to believe they were operating a rooming house. In December, the owners applied for a rooming-house license. The application hit a snag when Rizzo discovered the building doesn’t even have a certificate of occupancy.
With the license application still in limbo, neighbors are organizing to see if they can put the kibosh on the rooming house once and for all.
The building stands at the corner of Warren Place and State Street in Cedar Hill, the often forgotten pocket of East Rock that’s cut off from the world by I‑91 and the park. The block between Warren Place and May Street has long been home to loitering and drug dealing that have held the neighborhood back, said Cedar Hill activist Rebecca Turcio. The rooming house’s tenants include prostitutes who work from the sidewalk, she said.
Johns pull up and “they go right in the alley right next to the package store and get whatever they get,” she said. “How do we keep fighting this?”
The property is operated by Diamond Properties Management, a controversial outfit run by Janet Dawson and Michael Steinbach. Read about the pair’s exploits elsewhere in town here, here, and here.
Diamond Properties could not be reached for comment.
People are always loitering on the sidewalk outside the rooming house, and drug deals are commonplace, said Turcio. “I’m tired. It’s really unfair to us.”
Gallo echoed Turcio’s complaints. She runs Gallo Appliance a block away on State Street and is the vice-president of the Cedar Hill Merchants Association. The rooming house and the surrounding block have been the main stumbling block to the association’s efforts to “upgrade our image,” Gallo said. The block has a lot of “undesirable activity,” much of which is “fueled by that property alone,” she said.
Rooming houses create an environment where people can come and go quickly and anonymously, which lends itself to drug use and crime, said Justin Elicker, the local alderman. “The neighborhood does not want that place there, period.”
Elicker said rooming houses can be an important resource for “people who are hitting hard times,” but only if they are managed properly and safely.
Turcio and Gallo said the neighborhood has embraced a variety of other halfway houses, shelters, and supportive housing operations — because those have been supervised well. Turcio said the neighborhood includes a 40-bed nursing center for people with AIDS, a Columbus House homelessness facility, a home for convicted sex offenders, a halfway house for people returning from prison, and a sober house.
“It’s a lot of burden on one community,” Turcio said. “It’s not that we don’t want rooming houses. It’s that we have so much. It’s exhausting to constantly have to battle what comes into the community.”
“We’re going to do a meeting, and we’re going to decide our next step,” Turcio said. “I think we can block them somehow or other.”
“We’re going to attempt to see if we can change zoning,” said Gallo. The area is a BA zone, which means that rooming houses are allowed by right, as long as they are licensed. If it were a BA‑1 zone, the owners would have to apply for special permission to operate a rooming house.
Rizzo said the application for a rooming house license is “still sitting in my file because part of the approval process is checking for legal occupancy.” The building does not have a certificate of occupancy to be used as a residence, he said. “The only legal occupant we found was a church.”
In order to get a certificate of occupancy, the owners needs to submit an architectural floor plan for approval by the fire marshal, Rizzo said. That will take some time for them to draw up, he said.
“Meanwhile, I’m keeping an eye on them,” he said. “If they drag their feet,” he’ll turn the matter over to the city’s legal department to shut down the rooming house, he said.
“I haven’t set a deadline,” he said. “We are staying on top of it.”
The Cedar Hill Merchants Association is planning a March 7 meeting to talk about the rooming house. Rizzo said he will be there.
A visit to the address on Monday found several men loitering on the sidewalk who said they don’t know of any problem with men loitering on the sidewalk.
“I don’t know anything about that,” said a man with black velcro shoes sitting on a milk crate outside the Marine Package Store.
A younger man in a Yankees cap walked away. A third man, hanging outside the door to the rooming house said he was just visiting. A man who gave his name as Santos said he lives in the back. “I don’t see nothing,” he said.
“I haven’t seen nothing out there,” said Cyril Jack, working behind the counter at Omar’s News nearby.
“I don’t know nothing,” said Rocky, the owner of Marine Package. “I come inside. I go straight home.”
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