by | Feb 19, 2025 9:00 am | Comments (5)
Hamden Newhall Neighborhood Association President Tina Jennings-Herriott.
A Newhall meeting saw neighbors and Hamden town officials engaged in debate over what community members really need, in the latest installment in a group of residents’ fight to allocate one-time federal funds to addressing their crumbling home foundations.
by | Feb 18, 2025 2:53 pm | Comments (15)
Thomas Breen file photo
Prez Srajer: "The tenant movement is here to stay."
Nathaniel Rosenberg file photo
"Just cause" co-sponsor Laurie Sweet (center), in January.
Hartford – Connecticut Tenants Union President and New Havener Hannah Srajer was in the middle of laying into the “unchecked greed” of corporate landlords who use no-fault evictions to hike rents when the co-chair of the state legislature’s Housing Committee said her three minutes were up. She asked Srajer to summarize the rest of her testimony.
“The tenant movement is here to stay,” Srajer concluded. “We’re not raising new problems. We’re just making them more visible. Let’s get this done.”
by | Feb 17, 2025 9:15 am | Comments (22)
Thomas Breen file photo
Eco-friendly affordable housing on Dixwell: More, please.
With the Connecticut General Assembly’s legislative session in full swing, New Haven’s eight state lawmakers are pushing 184 different bills that touch on everything from growing housing near transit to digging deep on thermal energy to requiring movie theaters to disclose what time the films, and not just the trailers, actually start.
by | Feb 12, 2025 3:01 pm | Comments (6)
Dereen Shirnekhi photo
Terri Ricks (in red), with Mark Griffin (right), thanks Mandy's Ari Hoffman and Sara Bigman and pushes for them to encourage other management companies to enact similar policies.
After settling a tenant-discrimination case that changed how Mandy Management approaches renters with criminal histories, Mark Griffin is ready to take his fair-housing fight to the state legislature — as he also awaits a full pardon for his decades-old misdemeanor conviction.
by | Feb 11, 2025 3:48 pm | Comments (13)
Thomas Breen file photo
Mandy CEO Gurevitch: Transparency benefits landlords and tenants.
One of the city’s largest landlords has settled a tenant-discrimination case by agreeing to adopt a formal policy detailing which criminal convictions it will and won’t consider before signing a lease with a prospective renter.
by | Feb 10, 2025 2:32 pm | Comments (12)
West Haven Officer Robert Rappa's body-worn camera footage. Note: Videos show graphic violence.
“We recognize they’re going to go in either way,” city housing authority director Shenae Draughn explained when asked why her agency provided a regional police task force with a key to a Mill River Crossing apartment in advance of an early-morning drug raid-turned-fatal shoot-out with a civilian, as an 8‑year-old was nearby.
by | Feb 7, 2025 9:34 am | Comments (9)
Thomas Breen photo
LCI's Brennan, at the scene of a recent tenant-displacing fire in Newhallville.
The Livable City Initiative (LCI) has collected $27,200 over the past few months in hearing officer-approved fines of landlords who have missed inspections, failed to register with the city’s rental business licensing program, or not acted quickly enough to correct blight or housing code violations at their properties.
And the agency is now taking four more landlords to court in a bid to collect an additional $23,700.
by | Feb 4, 2025 10:47 am | Comments (4)
Nora Grace-Flood File Photo
Resident Suki Godek outside her Catholic Worker House "tiny" home.
Nora Grace-Flood file photo
At DESK's drop-in center.
The following release was submitted by the Wessel Fund:
The Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen and Amistad Catholic Worker are this year’s recipients of the Unsung Heroes Award from the Irmgard and Morris Wessel Fund.
by | Feb 3, 2025 10:33 am | Comments (13)
Thomas Breen photo
Cherif, with Scotch: Stipulation reached, eviction trial avoided.
(Updated) A mom of three young disabled children can stay in her Orchard Street apartment through the end of May — per a court-mediated agreement she struck with her landlord on the day her eviction case was set to go to trial.
by | Jan 31, 2025 3:14 pm | Comments (13)
Friday's blaze, as documented by @NewHavenFire on X.
Thomas Breen photos
Property manager David Kone: No comment.
Displaced tenant Anthony Bruton: "The smell was so strong."
Another apartment building owned by Bethany-based landlord Jianchao Xu burst into flames Friday morning — displacing a half-dozen tenants, including Anthony Bruton, who rushed to safety after an overwhelming smell of smoke wafted up into his second-floor apartment.
by | Jan 24, 2025 3:19 pm | Comments (28)
Newman Architects rendering
The latest design for 450-ish apartments planned for State St.
Zachary Groz photo
Newman Architects' Paul Santos: Looking for mix of traditional and modern.
(Updated) A development team’s plan to build nearly 450 apartments atop a publicly owned parking lot on State Street inched forward — with a second community meeting, a refined design and an estimated price tag of $125 million.
Continue reading ‘State St. Parking-To-Housing Plan Advances’
by | Jan 23, 2025 5:31 pm | Comments (9)
Nathaniel Rosenberg photo
CTTU Vice President Luke Melonakos-Harrison at the mic, fighting for "for housing stability, for dignity and respect."
(Hartford) New Haven’s tenants union leaders are back at the state Capitol for the second straight year to push for limits on landlords’ ability to evict tenants — and they’re hoping this session goes better than the last.
by | Jan 22, 2025 2:44 pm | Comments (23)
Zoom photos
McClune and Schwan: $300 more is too much; Chen: That's the market.
Is Mandy Management raising the rent to align with market rates, or does the megalandlord practically set the market rates?
That question was asked at a Fair Rent Commission hearing on Tuesday evening, at which Lenox Street tenants Douglas Schwan and Natalie McClune succeeded in getting a monthly rent increase knocked down from $300 to $100.
by | Jan 22, 2025 1:42 pm | Comments (16)
Thomas Breen photo
20, 34 Fair St.: Garages demolished, housing to come.
A development team has knocked down two vacant Fair Street garages — as builders move forward with plans to construct 168 new apartments on the housing-rich downtown edge of Wooster Square.
Continue reading ‘Fair Street Demolition Clears Way For More Apartments’
by | Jan 20, 2025 11:53 am | Comments (6)
Thomas Breen photos
201 Winchester and 235 Winchester (below), now under new ownership.
For the first time in more than two decades, a vacant lot and an incomplete apartment building on Winchester Avenue are no longer controlled by NFL cornerback-turned-housing developer Kenny Hill.
by | Jan 17, 2025 3:28 pm | Comments (8)
Laura Glesby Photo
Mandy Management tenants Noela, Mlebinge, and Jacqueline in the Clarion hotel lobby on Wednesday, waiting to go home.
After a two-night stay in a Hamden hotel, a family of nine Congolese refugees moved back to their Dickerman Street apartment on Friday morning — where, for the first time this winter, the heat came on.
by | Jan 16, 2025 9:44 pm | Comments (27)
Laura Glesby photos
U-ACT protester Mell: “Show me the law telling me I cannot walk up those steps!”
Alexis Terry in the tent on City Hall's first floor.
Four dozen people showed up to City Hall on Thursday night to protest a city policy of issuing 72-hour eviction notices upon discovering outdoor encampments — leaving a symbolic tent outside the mayor’s office after a standoff with police.
by | Jan 15, 2025 1:46 pm | Comments (36)
Zachary Groz photo
Alder Caroline Smith: Let's find a compromise.
contributed photo
So long, 15 Edwards relief proposal.
The city’s zoning board unanimously rejected a local landlord’s plan to build 23 apartments atop a vacant former Edwards Street firehouse after a marathon hearing saw skeptical neighbors and pro-housing advocates debate over how much density should be allowed in this stretch of East Rock, and across the city at large.
Continue reading ‘Zoners Douse Edwards Firehouse-Apartment Plan’
by | Jan 13, 2025 10:09 am | Comments (14)
Arthur Delot-Vilain photo
Local investor Roberts: Wanted to buy, but didn't have enough $ for auction deposit.
A Fair Haven foreclosure auction brought out no new bidders — leaving the property to fall into the hands of the federal government, and the current tenant bracing to find a new place to live.
Continue reading ‘Feds Prevail At Quiet Foreclosure Auction’
by | Jan 10, 2025 3:19 pm | Comments (18)
Laura Glesby Photo
W. Matthew Harp, right, and his attorney Kirt Westfall.
LCI Photo
The since-cleaned-up backyard of 75 Brewster.
One man’s trash is another man’s tenant’s loose tires, copper pipes, and splintering wooden cart of debris and furniture.
Local landlord W. Matthew Harp floated that idea at a series of back-to-back civil citation hearings involving some of his properties, which saddled him with nearly $20,000 in fines.
by | Jan 9, 2025 12:34 pm | Comments (0)
Thomas Breen photos
"Old," leaving the warming center for a bit: "I try not to complain."
David Cox: "This is not where I want to be."
As the temperature outside dipped into the 20s Thursday morning, David Cox sat inside a Dixwell church extended-hour warming center — his legs crossed, bundled up in a coat and scarf and beanie hat, his walker by his side and a window sill lined with Pothos plants behind him.
He didn’t want to be at that warming center. And he didn’t plan on staying long. But for now, with the weather dangerously cold, it was a safe place to be.
by | Jan 9, 2025 10:51 am | Comments (8)
Thomas Breen photo
Tenant Gabriella B.: Next time, will make sure to get a lease in writing.
A state judge approved the no-fault eviction of an Edgewood family after cautioning both landlord and tenant about the quicksand-like perils of oral, rather than written, leases.
by | Jan 8, 2025 2:50 pm | Comments (4)
Contributed photo
Sherrill Petaway, with uplifting Post-It notes on her scrubs.
Sherrill Petaway has spent years looking for a new home. Since July, she’s been engaged in a boot camp of sorts. One that will bulk up her credit so that she can buy a house — sooner rather than later, she hopes.
The steepest challenge, as her Neighborhood Housing Services of New Haven coach and counselor says, is patience.
Continue reading ‘One New Havener’s Hunt For A Home Of Her Own’
by | Jan 8, 2025 9:19 am | Comments (17)
Zachary Groz photo
Alder Caroline Smith (right): "There are lot of different goals in the neighborhood."
A housing meetup at City Hall quickly devolved into a fiery exchange of barbs over whether or not 23 new apartments above a historic firehouse will help or hurt an East Rock block.
Continue reading ‘Developer, Neighbors Clash Before Zoning Vote’
by | Jan 7, 2025 2:06 pm | Comments (1)
Thomas Breen photo
Judge Spader: "This case is hereby dismissed."
A state housing court judge cleared a local megalandlord’s potential criminal record after finding that he complied with the terms of a year-long diversionary program.
Continue reading ‘Ocean Landlord's Criminal Housing Case Dismissed’