Thomas Breen photo
Ocean Management’s Shmuel Aizenberg: Just call us.
If the letter had reached us, we would have responded. If tenants agreed to meet up with us, we would have made repairs sooner.
A prominent city landlord offered those explanations for why his company has run afoul of city inspectors.
That landlord is Shmuel Aizenberg. He offered that communications critique outside housing court on Tuesday.
Aizenberg runs Ocean Management, a property management company that partners with out-of-town investors to bring millions of dollars every year into buying up rental properties in and around New Haven. Those investor-property manager partnerships then take the form of various limited liability companies (LLCs), which in turn legally own different groups of rental properties.
Ocean controls hundreds of low-income apartments and millions of dollars worth of properties across the city. His company is also looking to develop new apartments across town, including 129 planned new market-rate units at 500 Blake St.
On Tuesday, Aizenberg returned to the third-floor housing court at 121 Elm St. for the second hearing in two weeks about three criminal housing cases brought by the state’s attorney’s office.
All three cases stem from housing code violations found by the city’s Livable City Initiative (LCI) over the past year at various Ocean Management-controlled properties in Dixwell and Newhallville.
Click here for a previous story about those three cases — which involved trash in the yard, junked cars, rotted eaves, and missing gutters — and about the fixes that Ocean has made to those rentals.
Cases Continued; Scheduling Snafu Cited
State prosecutor Donna Parker.
In court on Tuesday, State Superior Court Judge John Cirello continued all three matters until Oct. 26 after Senior Assistant State’s Attorney Donna Parker said that one of the Ocean properties still has an “outstanding violation.”
That lingering housing code issue remains open, she said, because of a scheduling issue with one of the properties’ tenants.
Aizenberg’s company has been unable to get that property’s tenant to agree to an LCI reinspection, which is necessary for the city — and the state’s attorney’s office — to officially close out the criminal housing court case.
“We’re trying to work with LCI and counsel to make that tenant understand that the repair needs to be done,” Parker said, “and he or she needs to allow Mr. Aizenberg or a representative in to fix it.”
Aizenberg: LCI Needs To Communicate Better
Ocean Management photos
Before and after photos of Ocean Mgmt upgrades: 233 Quinnipiac Ave. 1st Floor, and 19 Valley N.
80 Sherman Ave., and 342 Sherman Ave. 1st Floor
After the hearing, Aizenberg spoke with the Independent about these cases, and about his business more broadly.
He critiqued the sometimes scrambled lines of communication between LCI and landlords when it comes to housing enforcement, and he defended Ocean Management as a responsible, committed player in New Haven real estate.
Aizenberg said that these three housing code violations escalated to criminal prosecution and landed him in housing court because LCI sent certified letters about the various violations to his business’s previous corporate address at 50 Fitch St. Ocean is now based out of 101 Whitney Ave.
If a LCI inspector had simply emailed or called him about the code violations, he said, the violations would have been addressed more promptly, and the cases would have never gone to court. He said his company started working on repairs even before he got the court summons.
“There has to be more communication between LCI and the landlords,” he said. “We have our office downtown, two minutes away. We’re not living in the past. We’re in 2021. Send one email, one phone call. We’re here to help. We’re not waiting for any notice or order from the court. It’s not us. It’s really not us.”
As for Ocean as a whole, Aizenberg said that he has a property manager, a maintenance manager, and over 40 staffers who work for his local company and are focused on responding to tenant needs and making sure properties are up to code.
He said his company has over $1 million in escrow at one of its bank accounts to ensure that he has a dedicated pot of money reserved for maintenance, repairs, and upkeep.
And he shared dozens of before-and-after photos with the Independent of various Ocean-owned properties that his company has fixed up.
“I put millions of dollars” into making sure these properties are clean, safe, and attractive places to live, he said.
As for the criminal housing court cases that brought him to the state courthouse again on Tuesday, Aizenberg said, “All the work has been done.” The remaining issue is getting a tenant at one of the properties to agree to a time for LCI to come by for a reinspection. That tenant works from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., he said, and Ocean and the tenant have been unable to settle on a time for a code inspector to come.
This type of scheduling trouble with tenants isn’t unique to this case, Aizenberg said. He said that his company has tried four times to schedule repairs for a first-floor bathroom at 55 Carmel St. Each time, the tenant has said he wasn’t home.
“Not all of the tenants cooperate. We try to inspect the property.” That’s sometimes easier said than done.
LCI: Keep Addresses Up To Date
Thomas Breen file photo
LCI’s Arlevia Samuel: Certified letters work best.
In a phone interview Tuesday afternoon, Acting LCI Executive Director Arlevia Samuel defended her agency’s code enforcement protocol.
Like it or not, certified letters are still the best way for the city to ensure that a housing code enforcement order makes it to a landlord, she argued.
It’s easy for someone to say they didn’t get a phone call, or never saw an email, she said. A certified letter includes a verification that that letter was delivered and received. Samuel said that LCI calls only when there’s an emergency violation that has to be fixed within 24 to 48 hours.
LCI’s files for the Ocean properties involved in these criminal housing cases show that the certified letters were received — but that no one ever signed for them. Samuel did not have an explanation for why those receipts did not include signatures. Aizenberg argued that the lack of a signature was evidence that he never received them.
As for the letters going to the wrong business address, Samuel said that it is the landlord’s responsibility to keep their corporate information up to date with the city’s residential licensing program.
“Don’t say we sent it to the old address when you don’t give us your active address” in a landlord’s residential licensing program registration, she said. “Don’t try to blame us.”
Samuel also stress that LCI doesn’t “just go to a warrant.” Some of the housing code violations that LCI found at these properties date back over a year. LCI conducts at least one reinspection before applying to a judge for a criminal housing court warrant. Even with miscommunications, these issues should not take so long to fix.
And what to do about tenants with whom it is difficult to schedule reinspection appointments?
“At the end of the day, your lease should have a clause that states very clearly that, upon 24 hours or 48 hours notification, you need to be inside the unit for a specific purpose,” Samuel said.
Ocean Management shouldn’t push off a reinspection date continually because of difficulties arranging with a tenant, she argued. They should be able to just set a date at which LCI can come, and if the tenant is not able to be present, that tenant should still be able to consent to a reinspection even in their absence.
This is a common and well-known issue. Lci has no issue making phone calls for many things that are not important, but when trying to send people the housing court doesn't bother making a single other attempt to communicate aside from the letter. It's really archaic and they should be doing better