Thomas Breen photo
Seth Poole at a Newhallville community management team meeting.
The latest candidate to enter New Haven’s mayoral race pledges to crack down on out-of-town slumlords if elected as the city’s first non-Democratic chief executive in 66 years.
Seth Poole, a 43-year-old New Haven native and longtime labor and community health care advocate, filed his official papers to run for mayor on May 1.
Neither a Democrat nor a Republican, Poole is running as an unaffiliated candidate in the November general election. The last non-Democrat to win a mayoral election was Republican William Celentano. He last won office in 1951 (defeated two years later by Democrat Richard C. Lee).
“Ultimately I feel like there’s a huge section of the city that has not had its needs addressed for a long time,” Poole told the Independent Wednesday. As someone who grew up in New Haven, went to the city’s public schools, has spent decades leading community groups, and lives in Edgewood, he said, he believes he has a firmer grasp than any of the other candidates of the truly unmet needs of everyday New Haveners.
He joins a burgeoning field that already includes incumbent Mayor Toni Harp, former East Rock/Cedar Hill Alder Justin Elicker, affordable housing activist Urn Pendragon, and local philanthropist and retired nurse Wendy Hamilton. Unlike Poole, all four of those candidates are seeking the Democratic nomination for mayor.
In particular, Poole said, his administration would prioritize shining a light on and more fairly regulating out-of-state landlords who manage to evade city inspections and squeeze low-income tenants for exorbitant rents in unsafe conditions.
“Slumlords are able to pay cash for buildings because banks are selling them for cash,” he said. “So many buildings are being handed from person to person without any oversight. I think putting a spotlight on absentee landlords is completely necessary to stop a lot of this from happening.”
Poole owns a house on Sherman Avenue, where he and his family live. He also owns a rental property on Edgewood Avenue. He said he has found that LCI does a “very good job at putting the microscope over properties and holding [local] landlords accountable.” That type of accountability, he said, does not extend as consistently towards out-of-state landlords.
A frequent commenter on New Haven Independent articles, Poole recently shared that same sentiment underneath an article about last weekend’s lethal fire at a Hill rooming house owned by a series of New York-based landlords.
“We can, and will do better as a city when out-of-state purchases are limited, prevented and/or regulated with as much diligence as owner occupants and local real estate investors have been subjected to for years,” he wrote. “This is more than a quality of life issue; it is a life-threatening problem that must be addressed immediately.”
Allan Appel file photo
Poole (right) with New Haven Rising co-founders Scott Marks and Lauren Miller in 2012.
Poole works as a youth development specialist and educator at Planned Parenthood of Southern New England (PPSNE), and is a member of the Mayor’s Task Force on AIDS, serves on the board of the city’s Livable City Initiative, and is the board chair for Citywide Youth Coalition.
He’s also a former program director for the Boys and Girls Club of New Haven, a former co-chair for the Edgewood Ward 24 Democratic Committee, a former chair of the Whalley-Edgewood-Beaver Hills (WEB) Community Management Team, and one of the founding members of the local labor advocacy group New Haven Rising.
Poole attended Trinity College in Hartford, where he majored in International Studies with a concentration on Asia. Click here for a recent story in the Arts Paper about how Poole participated in this year’s local Chinese New Year festivities by recording a story at the Yale-China Association about his affection for martial arts movies, his lifelong interest in Chinese language and culture, his visit to China, and how he still uses Mandarin when speaking with his young daughter.
Although Poole’s official registration filing indicates that he is exempting himself from forming a candidate committee, he said he does plan on changing that status in the near future so that he can start raising money for his campaign.
I like that a native New Havener, local public schools graduate, unaffiliated politician, and homeowner of a two-family house in Edgewood is running for mayor. I agree with Seth that absentee real estate investing is a major issue in the city and I am curious to hear more about the role he believes local government can play in addressing that issue.