Aliyya Swaby Photo
Inspectors head to the roof.
The city condemned one apartment, ordered part of another sealed off, and issued a stop-work order after an inspection Wednesday at the perpetually troubled Church Street South complex across from the train station.
City officials have butted heads for years with Northland Investment Corp., the Newtown, Mass.,based slumlord at the 301-unit federally subsidized complex. New Haven has tried, to no avail, to get the landlord to improve conditions and increase safety or sell the property to someone who’ll build a nicer community. New Haven’s previous mayoral administration tried to convince the federal government in 2013, to no avail, to cut off the $3 million in taxpayer Section 8 rent subsidies it sends to Church Street South’s owners each year to keep them in business.
On Wednesday, city Building Official Jim Turcio, Livable City Initiative (LCI) Deputy Director of Housing Code Enforcement Rafael Ramos and Deputy Building Official Dan O’Neill visited the complex in response to numerous tenant complaints about water leaks and mold infestation.
With the help of a fire truck ladder, they climbed onto the roof to inspect it and then visited the two apartments. Fire Chief Allyn Wright and Fire Marshal Bobby Doyle coordinated and watched from below.
LCI ended up condemning one of the apartments where mold had infested a large section of the first floor. It ordered Northland to put the apartment’s five occupants up at the Residence Inn on Long Wharf until it completes rendition work, Ramos said. In the other apartment, severe mold and water damage was confined to one room. Ramos and LCI ordered the room sealed off and cleaned up.
Northland Senior Vice-President Peter Standish emailed this comment to the Independent: “We are working directly with the city and the resident to rectify the situation as quickly as possible. The safety and security of our residents is our primary concern. We have temporarily secured accommodations for the family and are taking steps to complete the repairs needed and get the family back home.”
In the condemned apartment, the upstairs portion was dry and untouched. But inspectors found a severe infestation of black mold throughout what used to be the family’s downstairs play room. Water leaking from the ceilings left soft sunken patches of wall, and one gaping hole, and pooled along one side of the room.
The mold was visible growing under a fresh coat of paint on one wall.
The family living there discarded moldy pillows and blankets on the floor of the linen closet around the corner from the play room. Mold tracked up along the sides of the closet.
In the bathroom adjacent to the closet, the floor tiles puckered, soggy with water seeping in from below. And again — mold, this time on the wall next to the sink.
Turcio, also issued a stop-work order against Northland for work the company was doing on an exterior staircase. He said the company had no permit to do the work, which he said was being done unsafely.
Turcio and Ramos withheld comment on the other findings of their inspection pending completion of a full report expected next week.
Water damage at Rivera’s windows.
Other tenants are hoping for future repairs. Zuleyka Rivera said she has asked Northland to get rid of the black mold in her apartment numerous times over the three years she has lived at Church Street South. She renewed her complaint last year, when she brought her newborn home. Instead, they sent people to paint over it.
The last time someone painted over the mold was a month ago, Rivera said. No mold is yet visible, but water still drips from her ceiling and windows. “It moistens the walls,” she said. “The wall has a soft part.”
Two years ago, city officials found major housing violations, including leaking roofs and unprotected electrical sockets, during a surprise inspection of the premises. Two years before that, in 2011, a carbon monoxide leak displaced 26 people and sent four adults and a child to the hospital, shaming landlord Northland into fixing up the property.
At the time Northland spokesperson Mary Brennan Coursey said: “The safety and well-being of the Church Street South families has and will continue to be our number one priority. The staff at Church Street South has been working around the clock in conjunction with the city to make sure our residents are as comfortable as possible.”
City inspectors in the past have found as many as 60 percent of Church Street South’s apartments out of compliance in past inspections. Even HUD found lots of problems when it checked 24 apartments in 2013: 12 systemic problems and 11 “life-threatening” health and safety violations.
Health and safety violations included exposed electrical wires; blocked emergency exits; mold; tripping hazards; sharp edges and a missing lock on a utility door. Inspectors also noted damaged hardware/locks on doors; cracked walls; peeling paint on the floors of stairs and hallways; missing seals on outside doors; missing, damaged or inoperable refrigerators; damaged walls; and windows that either didn’t lock or would not open.
But Northland promised to make repairs, and HUD signed off on the renewal.
The water leaks are nothing new. “I hear this over and over again,” before and after Northland took over as landlord in 2008, Hill Alder Dolores Colon said Wednesday. Northland performs “shoddy repairs” and the problem continues, she said.
Although the leaks come from the roof, apartments “all the way down are affected. Water travels the way it wants to travel,” Colon said. People have lost possessions of value, including any electronics or furniture, and their health is compromised.
“Everyone wants to own real estate,” Colon said, and Church Street South is “prime real estate” because of its proximity to the Yale Medical School and Union Station. “No one wants to invest in the people because they’re poor.”
Right now, Colon is working to “get residents to get together and act as a united voice,” to make Northland act on repairs, she said.