Church Street South Mess Prompts Promise At Senate Hearing

The country’s top housing official promised that, in the wake of the disaster at New Haven’s Church Street South complex, the government will help families there find new homes and do a better job protecting families from health hazards in general.

U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Julián Castro made that promise Thursday afternoon when questioned by Connecticut U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy at a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Subcommittee.

Castro— a leading contender for the Democratic vice-presidential nomination — heard during a recent visit to New Haven about conditions at Church Street South, a 301-unit federally subsidized housing complex across form Union Station. HUD inspectors somehow approved conditions and continued rental payments there for years while mold and other health hazards and deterioration harmed children’s health and destroyed the buildings. Now HUD is making millions of dolalrs available to move all the families out so the complex can be demolished.

The exchange (a transcript and video of which were provided by Murphy’s office) went as follows:

Murphy: … Talk a little bit about HUD’s work with the city of New Haven to address the Church Street South project that you remarked on when you were there.

You know the details – this is a HUD-funded project on Church Street South that is really in absolute decrepit condition, to the point where we’ve had to move residents out. Black mold, bedbugs, really bad, crumbling lead infrastructure are the main causes. And I guess my question to you is two-fold. I just want to get your continued assurance that HUD is going to continue to work with us not just to move the residents out of that facility, but to then rebuild that affordable housing capacity.

But second, what we’ve learned is that the Real Estate Assessment Center, REAC, doesn’t really look at some of the conditions that were at the root cause of the problem in Church Street South. For instance, black mold, bedbugs, and lead don’t seem to be part of that assessment. And so, I know you’ve got a short amount of time left between now and the end of the president’s term, but are you thinking about ways to make these REAC assessments maybe mirror some of the real threats that a lot families are dealing with – mold and bedbugs at the top of the list – which are becoming, you know, real epidemic problems in places like Connecticut?

So one, can we have your continued commitment to help solve this particular problem, and then, is there a reform of REAC that you’ll be working on?

Castro: Yeah, and let me just briefly say thank you and I enjoyed the visit to Connecticut, and having the opportunity to hear some of the concerns of folks throughout the state. And of course, we have been working on Church Street, we look forward to making sure that those residents have what they need in terms of Tenant Protection Vouchers.

To answer your question just directly, the answer is that we do need to improve our REAC inspections process and I believe we make some of those improvements internally. On others, we may need legislative help. You brought up mold, for instance. It’s my understanding that one of the challenges that we have is that right now, the detection of mold does not trigger a negation, or a subtraction of points, to the degree that it probably should, and that we need to adjust the scoring system there, and that in this case and in some other cases that we’ve seen, that would help us be able to get to intervention or enforcement quicker. So we would like to work with you. You absolutely do have my commitment to continue to work with you both in ways that that process can be improved, and that we ensure we’re taking care of those residents.

Murphy: I appreciate both of those commitments.