Markeshia Ricks Photo
Neal-Sanjurjo pitches plan Monday night to Hill Alders Colon and Dave Reyes.
The Harp administration has decided to team up after all to try to rebuild the crumbling Church Street South housing complex with the company that destroyed it.
Brian Slattery Photo
Church Street South’s demolition began in March.
The administration won approval Monday night from the Board of Alders to submit an application to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for a $30 million grant to rebuild the area between Union Station and the Yale medical district — including Church Street South, the 301-unit HUD-subsidized complex that is now being demolished while officials scramble to find new homes for hundreds of families fleeing unlivable conditions.
The proposal calls for the administration’s anti-blight agency, the Livable City Initiative (LCI), which is the lead agency on the grant application, to work “with the community, the Board of Alders, and a technical team including city departments, architects, and Northland Investment Corporation, the owner of the Church Street South housing development, over the next two months to prepare the application.”
Northland is the Massachusetts-based owner of Church Street South.
The administration has battled for over a year with Northland over its handling of Church Street South. Until now, Mayor Toni Harp had said she was hesitant to agree to work with Northland to build a new, larger, mixed-income development there given that record.
The new funding would come from a HUD program offering “Choice Neighborhoods Grants.” A HUD Choice grant, which is hard to win, would allow the city “to replace deteriorated housing with new housing at the Church Street South Development Complex, reconnect Hill to Downtown including the Trowbridge area, create new public space and retail amenities and expand job opportunities for residents within walking distance of the surrounding neighborhood,” according to a letter submitted to alders by LCI Executive Director Serena Neal-Sanjurjo.
In an interview following Monday night’s vote, Harp said she decided to work with Northland after all because it has worked with the city on good faith on the tenant-resettlement crisis. Because New Haven needs more affordable housing now. And because this may be the last time the city can compete to receive a HUD Choice grant.
She said Neal-Sanjurjo persuaded her to team up with Northland in pursuing the grant despite concerns about rewarding bad behavior.
“She convinced me that it was better to work with Northland and get this perhaps last round of money. We don’t know if this kind of money will exist again. Rather than cut off my nose to spite my face, I said, ‘OK,’” Harp said.
“They have tried to be good partners” since legal-aid lawyers and the city forced HUD and Northland to take action to resettle tenants coping with mold and deteriorating structures, she said. “Nobody is ever going to be perfect. I think they have tried.”
Northland does still own the land upon which Church Street South sits, and has given no indication that it intends to sell it. It has expressed a desire to rebuild the property.
“As long as they control the land and the property, they have to be reckoned with,” Harp said. “I hate for them to benefit from these circumstances. However, I think it’s important we rebuild as soon as possible” and get the affordable housing replaced “and they’ll do that.”
Scene of a May 2010 homicide investigation at Church Street South (left), frozen drainage pipes (top right), illegal dirt bike riding in a publicly-accessible courtyard (center right), and broken apartment furnace (bottom right).
Northland originally bought Church Street South under the administration of Mayor John DeStefano with the clear intention of razing it and building a larger mixed-income, mixed-use development on the prime land across from the train station. But negotiations broke down when the DeStefano administration sought to have 30 percent of the new housing reserved as affordable. Northland kept the property; roofs leaked, mold got into the walls, porches fell apart — and HUD kept sending Northland over $3 million in rent subsidies.
The new HUD Choice application in fact calls for 30 percent affordable housing, though not necessarily all affordable to current Church Street South tenants who might wish to move back to what is now envisioned as a 1,000-unit complex.
“We appreciate that the city is pursuing the Choice grant,” Northland Chairman and CEO Larry Gottesdiener wrote in an email message to the Independent. “However, our sole focus continues to be the relocation of the Church Street South families into quality replacement housing. We honor their patience.”
Watchful Eyes
Markeshia Ricks Photo
Legal aid’s Marx with tenants at a recent meeting on relocation plans.
The Board of Alders was originally slated to give the grant application only a first reading, not to vote on it, at Monday night’s meeting at City Hall. But alders moved the item to the unanimous consent portion of the agenda to expedite approval in the face of a June 28 grant submission deadline.
LCI’s Neal-Sanjurjo said having the Board of Alders sign off “is a major approval for us in applying for the grant … [that] HUD awards to four cities in the country.
“It is very competitive,” she said. “We have a chance to develop a site that is largely subsidized, which is one of the criteria for the grant,” she said. “This gives us the opportunity to have skin in the game. It’s just that simple.”
Hill Alder Dolores Colon said that she is OK with the city moving forward with Northland on this application because she intends to hold Northland accountable every step of the way of any new partnership when it comes to what is built and how it is maintained. She said she wants Northland to be held to the standards that are visible in the Ninth Square redevelopment, where it is very hard to tell low-income housing from market-rate housing.
“That’s the kind of the standard we must hold them to … that I will hold them to,” Colon said.
The city’s decision to work with Northland to rebuild “leaves us with a sick feeling in the stomach given the extraordinary mess that still exists in the Church Street South saga,” said New Haven Legal Assistance Association attorney Amy Marx, whose agency represents families at the complex and forced HUD and the city to take action on conditions there. “There’s still no plan for how to rebuild the replacement housing.”
“The city has decided that it doesn’t want to miss out on $30 million. That decision is understandable on many levels. Nonetheless given all the transgressions of Northland, the devil’s going to be in the details of what exactly is rebuilt,” Marx said.
Northland and the city’s housing authority are scrambling to find landlords to rent to the Church Street South families using the $3.7 million in HUD Section 8 rental subsidies reserved for them. Marx said Northland needs to follow through on that commitment before it should be rewarded with more government money for Church Street South.
She also noted that the 30 percent of “affordable” housing envisioned for the new development at Church Street South is really “workforce housing” for people earning up to 60 percent of the area’s average median income. Church Street South families often earn half or less than that amount, she noted.
Any $30 million Choice grant, if the city can indeed win it, should come with “conditions on Northland,” Marx argued. “The grant and the application must be structured in a way that allows there to be very low-income housing in the building in the replaced. Because they’re Northland. Because of the history.”
Neal-Sanjurjo told the Independent Tuesday that the plan currently calls for building 1,000 apartments on the site. The 30 percent that will be either “affordable” or “subsidized” will therefore equal the number of apartments lost by the demolition of Church Street South, she said. She said former Church Street South families may indeed be able to return there if they wish.
Previous coverage of Church Street South:
• 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