Tenants Seek A Ticket Back Home

Shannon Steed has lived at the crumbling Church Street South public-housing complex for 22 years — and came to a meeting looking for a guarantee that she can move back when the complex is rebuilt. She didn’t get it.

Steed is among the hundreds of tenants gradually being moved out of the 301-unit federally subsidized complex across from the train station because of a public-health emergency that will soon lead to its demolition.

She was one of dozens of the complex’s tenants who filled a 54 Meadow St. conference room Wednesday evening for the latest public meeting about the relocation process out of water-damaged apartments, and the potential for return to the site once it’s rebuilt into a larger mixed-income community.

She and others wanted to talk primarily about whether they’ll be allowed back into the newer, safer complex after living somewhere else for a few years. But that wasn’t the official agenda for the meeting. So city officials tried to refocus the conversation, pushing attendees to talk less about housing concerns and more about an upcoming application for a federal five-year grant to rebuild the property and provide services for its former tenants.

The Livable City Initiative (LCI), the city’s anti-blight agency, is taking the lead on applying to the Choice Neighborhood Program of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) due June 28. The city has decided to partner with landlord Northland Investment Corp., which still owns the land.

This could be the last time New Haven can compete for a HUD Choice grant.

LCI Executive Director Serena Neal-Sanjurjo explained the program to the room of Church Street South tenants Wednesday. It would provide up to $30 million in new federal money over five years to support rebuilding Church Street South as a mixed-income residential development with 25,000 square feet of stores, improving the Hill neighborhood, and helping the complex’s former tenants train for good jobs, get education opportunities and access health care.

She asked people to complete a survey explaining the needs and services they want the application to address, on factors including education, health, employment and financial challenges. The city needs to have tenants do that as part of the application process. Hence the meeting. (A second meeting is scheduled for Thursday night for the same reason.)

But families were much more interested in talking about when they would be moved out of Church Street South and whether they would definitively be able to move back in. And they were determined to talk about it.

First Step: Relocation

The first woman to raise her hand asked whether the relocation process is directly tied into the application. More than 200 families have chosen to take portable Section 8 vouchers they can use to find a landlord to rent to them.

“Y’all trying to relocate us to where this is at?” the woman asked.

No, Neal-Sanjurjo responded. The New Haven Housing Authority (HANH) will continue to issue vouchers and help families relocate for now, as LCI head the application process for rebuilding the complex.

Attorney Amy Marx, of New Haven Legal Aid Association, whose organization represents more than 100 of the families being relocated, pressed Neal-Sanjurjo to clarify whether the services in the application would be available for all former tenants, even those who had decided to live in other cities and towns. About ​“60 families have already left,” Marx said. ​“Many of the remainder have taken vouchers somewhere else or are living in a project somewhere else.”

Yes, Neal-Sanjurjo said. The application allows New Haven officials to follow the families for five years to provide them with services.

“Are you letting us back in?” another woman raised her hand to ask.

“There will be an opportunity for some to come back,” Neal-Sanjurjo said.

The room started buzzing as people discussed that potential in the room.

As the side chatter continued, HANH relocation coordinator Michelle Lee-Rodriguez took a question in Spanish, translating for one man who repeated the question of whether tenants would get to return to Church Street South.

Yes, she responded, in English and Spanish. She promised tenants will be updated throughout the planning process of the grant, as HANH continues to issue vouchers.

Neal-Sanjurjo added that New Haven might not receive the grant, so ​“we can’t change your thought process right now.” She urged tenants to continue engaging in the voucher process, instead of focusing on moving back to a property with an uncertain future. It’s very difficult to win a federal CHOICE grant. New Haven has tried before and failed. If it gets the CHOICE grant, the bulk fo the money will go to Northland Investment Corp., the current private owner of Church Street South, to build a new 1,000-unit mixed income and mixed-use community with 30 percent ​“affordable” housing. (That ​“affordable” phrase has different meanings depending on the sources of government subsidy involved.)

Steed raised her hand to express concern that many families have not yet received vouchers to move out.

Lee Rodriguez explained that HANH is giving priority vouchers to people already moved from moldy apartments to hotel rooms and those with disabilities, and then starting with the families that moved into the building the earliest.

Marx doubled down on this response, announcing that families with priority who still haven’t received vouchers should talk to her.

Neal-Sanjurjo stopped Marx from continuing on the topic and tried to refocus the conversation to the application. ​“I don’t want to lose sight of this meeting,” she said. ​“We’re here to talk about a site grant application. …We want to talk about what your needs are and what you want to see in this application.”

Some tenants began to leave the room. The ones still in the room wanted to hear more about relocation.

Looking For A Guarantee

Marx asked Neal-Sanurjo to clarify whether every tenant will have the right to return if the property is rebuilt through the application.

“This application allows us to give them top priority,” Neal-Sanjurjo responded. ​“If they chose to come back to the site, they can do that.”

Will there be five-bedroom apartments on the site, or just two and three-bedroom apartments? Marx asked. Many families need those bigger apartments or they won’t be able to return. That’s a key question: It’s hard to find those big apartments in New Haven.

Neal-Sanjurjo did not make a commitment on those bigger units.

“Everyone will be moved through the process as part of the grant,” Neal-Sanjurjo said. ​“We have a requirement to follow everyone for five years.”

One tenant, Judith Ortiz, raised her hand to ask in Spanish whether families who move to other cities would be able to participate in the application process.

Yes, Lee Rodriguez responded. ​“For the next five years, we’re going to be knocking on your door.”

Before ending the meeting, she and Neal-Sanjurjo reiterated the importance of filling out the survey either that night or in the near future and dropping it off with LCI.

“I’m going to fill it out,” Steed said, after people had started to disperse. She works at 18 Tower Lane, around the corner from Church Street South, and would love to stay close to her job, where she has been for 15 years. Steed said she doesn’t know where she would move with the voucher.

She needs just one bedroom.

Her friend and co-worker Jessica Andino has been living at Church Street South since 2007. She received a voucher to move on May 19, despite not being in a priority group. Her apartment’s bathroom has mold on the ceilings and walls. But she didn’t tell HANH officials that during the voucher application process.

“I’m happy but I’m kind of concerned,” she said. ​“I filled everything everything right. I’m not disabled. Neither is my kids. Everything was normal on my side.” Andino has gone to a few open houses for apartments in New Haven, but also would be happy eventually to move back to a rebuilt Church Street South to be close to work.

Two-Thirds To Northland

“The most important thing in this conversation to me is housing,” Attorney Marx said after the meeting.

Of the total $30 million over five years the [CHOICE] grant would provide, $21 million would go to Northland to rebuild the complex.

“The services are wonderful, Marx said. ​“I fully support the idea of doing a community survey to ask what services will be available to Church Street South tenants because they were tenants in the past. What was not discussed in this meeting was housing.”

Families want to know what right they would have to take a portable HUD Section 8 rental voucher now and move back later, she said.

Marx said the most important questions are whether Church Street South Section 8 voucher-holders will have priority over others with vouchers to move back to the rebuilt property, and whether the building will be welcome and inclusive of Section 8 tenants.

“The meeting gave short shrift to that component,” she said.

HANH Director Karen DuBois-Walton said after the meeting that the federal grant would require city officials to consider the needs of former tenants looking to move back when deciding how to rebuild the property. She said she ​“can’t imagine” how the city would get through the process without building five-bedroom apartments, if former tenants need them.

The city likely also has the option to build some of the replacement affordable housing in nearby land parcels. ​“All people have to be accommodated for,” she said.

Previous coverage of Church Street South:
• 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