Markeshia Ricks Photos
A construction worker heads into the house …
… while old debris heads out.
A blighted Newhallville house showed signs of life when workers began hammering away putting up new sheetrock and siding.
Then the state put a stop to it for after discovering asbestos in the house, while neighbors wonder what dangers lurk in its walls and whether it will remain a neighborhood eyesore.
The house in question is three-bedroom single family colonial at 200 Ivy St. The house’s condition ran down as it went through a series of owners.
The original owner, Jackie Stewart, lost it to foreclosure back in 2002, then regained possession four years later, according to land records. But she continued to struggle to pay the bills, and lost the house again to foreclosure, to Wells Fargo, in 2018.
Wells Fargo sold the home to the Federal National Mortgage Association, aka Fannie Mae, the quasi-government lending agency. Fannie Mae put the house up for sale under a 210-day “first look” program limited to potential owner-occupants or borrowers of federal housing funds. Neighbors saw license tags from Connecticut but also New York and other states pull up with people looking at the house. But no one ended up purchasing what had become a derelict property.
So then Fannie Mae listed the property for general sale. It found a buyer, West Haven contractor Ronald Saul Suchite-Ronquillo, who purchased the property on Jan. 31.
Suchite-Ronquillo subsequently obtained a permit to do $8,000 of construction work for a rear second-story addition for a bedroom and installation of smoke and CO detectors, according to city records. (He couldn’t be reached for comment.)
When longtime Ivy Street resident Jeanette Thomas and her daughter Jackie Buster noticed work happening at the house, they asked one of the men inside working if someone had bought the house.
Buster said the man said that he owned the house. She asked if he had been told that the house was riddled with mold, asbestos and lead paint.
“He said that there wasn’t any asbestos in the house,” Buster recalled.
That was news to Buster and Thomas. Buster said she had inquired twice with realtors about purchasing the property. Buster’s family has lived across the street from the house for nearly 50 years and transformed a vacant lot into what is now known as the Ivy Narrows Bird Sanctuary. (Read about that here and here.)They thought they might be good candidates to transform the long-empty house at 200 Ivy St. into another neighborhood gem before an out-of-town landlord scooped up the property.
Thomas recalled that a realtor told them that she’d show them the house but only if she could do it from outside. She was unwilling to step foot in the house because of its condition.
“I only got a few steps in,” Thomas said. “I had to get out of there.”
Thomas said she couldn’t breathe inside the house. Buster said the inside was covered with what appeared to be a thick green moss that likely was mold. The realtor told the women that the environmental remediation needed could cost as much as $36,000.
“She said they were basically just selling the land,” Thomas said. “She said the house should come down.”
A second realtor gave the same advice. But three weeks ago, the realtor sign disappeared from the yard and the construction workers appeared putting up sheetrock and siding.
This past Wednesday, a Dumpster appeared. Workers were tossing objects out of the window.
All of this was alarming to Buster and Thomas. They wanted to know why someone was doing construction on a house reported to have significant environmental health hazards but without any precautions that would protect the neighborhood and the people working on the house. So they contacted their alder, Delphine Clyburn, City Building Official Jim Turcio and eventually the city’s health department.
Attempts to reach the contractor who pulled the permits for Suchite-Ronquillo, Alfredo Preziosi, were unsuccessful.
Though a building department inspector didn’t find any problems with the construction, the state health department did.
Acting on a tip, the state Department of Public Health showed up at the property last week. It tested pipe insulation found on the premises; the insulation was found to contain asbestos, according to department spokesperson Christopher Stan.
The contractor agreed to suspend work on those parts of the house with insulation until it can be cleaned up. First, Suchite-Ronquillo must hire a licensed asbestos abatement project planner to put together a plan to remove the asbestos, Stan said. DPH must approve the plan, which Suchite-Ronquillo would then carry out before other work could resume.
Thomas Breen and Paul Bass contributed reporting.
Thank goodness for the diligence of the neighbors. But my concern is that the contractor KNEW there was asbestos (th realtor would have told the buyer, and the buyer SHOULD have told the contractor. But the buyer or the seller is trying to pull a fast one by not paying the cost to properly remediate ... just do the demo work with protecting workers AND the surrounding environment, and throw the contaminated demo'd product in a open dumpster and haul it to the landfill. Illegal and dangerous!!! Where are the hefty fines???