Christopher Peak Photo
Before Tuesday night’s meeting, tenants grilled up dinner.
Across from Union Station, the once busy Church Street South apartment complex feels like an eerie maze. Bugs swirl around illegally dumped heaps of garbage and rubber tires; weeds attempt to break through the asphalt. On the outskirts, by the cinderblock walls, youngsters sit on corner stoops smoking marijuana and catcalling at passersby. Inside the labyrinth, a group of scuffed-up guys carrying backpacks and rolling suitcases dodged into entryways, trying to remain out of sight.
The trashed complex.
Most of the 301 families who once lived there are gone, chased out by dangerous living conditions festering under the management of a government-subsidized private owner. But, long after the place was supposed to be empty of humans and torn down to make way for a bigger mixed-use complex, 20 families remain in the partially demolished, mold-ridden crumbling old version — and officials are urging them to hurry up and find new homes elsewhere.
Officials delivered that message in a meeting with nine of those families in the second-floor community space of the federally subsidized complex. The meeting was called largely to address security concerns for the remaining families until they finally find new homes.
Plans are in the works for five tenants to move into other rent-subsidized housing in the region. Another 15 residents received highly coveted “tenant protection vouchers” through Section 8, a federal rent subsidy that works almost anywhere on the private market, so there was hardly a reason why they should still be in Church Street South, the officials reminded attendees.
Nudging them out the door, the officials intimated that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) could decide to pull the Section 8 rent vouchers if they don’t use it to relocate soon. But officials also chose not to give the last families a deadline by which they have to be out.
“What else can we do? As of now, most of the development is empty. As the summer comes, we don’t want this to turn into a health and safety issue for you,” Jocelyn Barsczewski, the relocation manager for Glendower Group, the Housing Authority of New Haven’s development arm, asked those in attendance. “Some of you have had [the voucher] for six months, a year. That’s sufficient time to identify a unit.
Glendower’s Jocelyn Barsczewski.
“I personally have shown you units. Is it a matter of scheduling? Is it that it’s at certain times? Do you want to go with someone else? We need to come up with a plan to secure a place.”
Officials originally vowed to help all the complex’s families find new homes by … Christmas 2015.
Mary Sayles, for one, said she’s been wanting very much to move but hasn’t yet found the right place. She is hoping this week to win approval for a new apartment.
Sayles, who has asthma, spent her high school years at Church Street South before moving back again seven years ago. She said she has been looking for a place where she can breathe.
“Me and my grandkids and my daughter, we’re all asthmatics, so we can’t have rugs in the house. A couple of apartments that we did see, it was nice, but we just couldn’t take it,” said Sayles, holding an inhaler in one hand. Wednesday, HUD is scheduled to look over the four-bedroom apartment she wants on West Ivy Street. Two prior rental locations she’d found failed the inspections.
“I’m just ready to move,” she said. “I’m gonna miss it, but it’s time to go. They’re knocking it down, and I’m leaving.”
The meeting drew fewer than half of the remaining families. Mary Sayles is at left.
Serena Neal-Sanjurjo, executive director of the Livable City Initiative, New Haven government’s anti-blight agency, added that if tenants don’t get out soon, they’ll likely have to move within the site, clustering everyone left into one area. “You cannot be scattered across the complex,” she said.
The remaining families at Church Street South skipped waiting lists and won special portable Section 8 vouchers that can help them transition to living on the private rental market — whether in New Haven, Chicago, Honolulu, Miami or Guam, as Barsczewski reminded those who showed up for the meeting. (Tenants living at the complex had “site-based” subsidies, meaning the subsidies stayed with the apartment after tenants left. To ease the relocation, HUD made portable subsidies available, that tenants can take with them.)
“People have been waiting for years and years for what you have. You have the opportunity through no fault of your own,” she said. “Please do not jeopardize your voucher. I cannot stress that enough. This is an opportunity I don’t want anyone to miss out on.”
A few of the last holdouts said they’d been having problems identifying units that meet their specific needs in a highly impacted market. The most common problem? Finding an apartment that’s big enough to house their family.
But other minor issues — no rugs or carpeting for Sayles, or no flights of stairs for Sandra Acevedo, whose mother is having a knee replacement — have also limited the options.
“There’s not a lot of volume out there,” said realtor Sandy Sauro, who’s helping families identify options. After scouring Craigslist, Zillow and private listings for units as well as taking calls from larger local poverty landlords, like Pike International, Sauro takes the tenants on showingsof potential apartments. Glendower also sets up the tenants with security deposits, boxes and movers to ease the transition.
(In addition to the vouchers, a separate deal worked out between the city and Northland Investment Corp., Church Street South’s owner, preserved 82 units of “project-based” subsidies fixed at one site, Beechwood Gardens on Whalley Avenue, where state funding keeps rents at $600. But those units aren’t yet available. Legal aid lawyers, too, believe that Northland’s investment choice isn’t in keeping with an agreement all the parties worked out to direct HUD’s subsidies toward building new affordable housing or converting market-rate units. “There’s two pieces to this housing crisis that have to be dealt with. Half of that is relocation of the tenants, and the other half is replacement brick-and-mortar housing,” said Amy Marx, a staff attorney with New Haven Legal Assistance Association. “We will insist that Northland is not allowed to rebuild, in any way, until it vests these $3.7 million in subsidies,” which should fund around 250 units. Otherwise, New Haven risks losing those units, if HUD’s subsidies roll back to Washington, she stressed.)
One elderly woman who’s hard of hearing, Patricia Mitchell, is the last occupant of her otherwise boarded-up court; others still have up to four families in a courtyard. Before the meeting Tuesday evening, resident Lateisha Parker sat outside on a chair while a visiting friend grilled hamburgers, ribs and sausage. Over in another section, kids played in a graffitied jungle gym — the last signs of vibrancy in the otherwise-abandoned complex.
Previous coverage of Church Street South:
• Church St. South Refugees Fight Back
• Church St. South Transfers 82 Section 8 Units
• Tenants Seek A Ticket Back Home
• City Teams With Northland To Rebuild
• Church Street South Tenants’ Tickets Have Arrived
• Church Street South Demolition Begins
• This Time, Harp Gets HUD Face Time
• Nightmare In 74B
• Surprise! Now HUD Flunks Church St. South
• Church St. South Tenants Get A Choice
• Home-For-Xmas? Not Happening
• Now It’s Christmas, Not Thanksgiving
• Pols Enlist In Church Street South Fight
• Raze? Preserve? Or Renew?
• Church Street South Has A Suitor
• Northland Faces Class-Action Lawsuit On Church Street South
• First Attempt To Help Tenants Shuts Down
• Few Details For Left-Behind Tenants
• HUD: Help’s Here. Details To Follow
• Mixed Signals For Church Street South Families
• Church St. South Families Displaced A 2nd Time — For Yale Family Weekend
• Church Street South Getting Cleared Out
• 200 Apartments Identified For Church Street South Families
• Northland Asks Housing Authority For Help
• Welcome Home
• Shoddy Repairs Raise Alarm — & Northland Offer
• Northland Gets Default Order — & A New Offer
• HUD, Pike Step In
• Northland Ordered To Fix Another 17 Roofs
• Church Street South Evacuees Crammed In Hotel
• Church Street South Endgame: Raze, Rebuild
• Harp Blasts Northland, HUD
• Flooding Plagues Once-Condemned Apartment
• Church Street South Hit With 30 New Orders
• Complaints Mount Against Church Street South
• City Cracks Down On Church Street South, Again
• Complex Flunks Fed Inspection, Rakes In Fed $$
• Welcome Home — To Frozen Pipes
• City Spotted Deadly Dangers; Feds Gave OK
• No One Called 911 | “Hero” Didn’t Hesitate
• “New” Church Street South Goes Nowhere Fast
• Church Street South Tenants Organize
