by | Dec 3, 2024 3:26 pm | Comments (11)
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Expect more of this, now that tenants unions can form at buildings with at least 5 rental units.
Five thousand more apartments’ worth of New Haven renters are now eligible to form tenants unions — thanks to a Board of Alders-approved update to the laws governing the Fair Rent Commission.
by | Dec 3, 2024 1:49 pm | Comments (27)
The St. Luke's proposed $32M development ... before it lost its sixth floor.
A long-delayed Whalley Avenue redevelopment lost a floor — and saved $2 million, because of how much more expensive it is to build with steel and concrete instead of just wood.
by | Dec 2, 2024 3:06 pm | Comments (21)
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Future homeowners Melvin Poindexter (center) and Sylvia Cooper (right), shoveling dirt alongside state housing commissioner Seila Mosquera-Bruno.
Melvin Poindexter and Sylvia Cooper dug their shovels into a pile of dirt on an empty Hazel Street lot — and helped move the ground that they, and future generations of their respective families, will some day soon call home.
by | Nov 27, 2024 2:07 pm | Comments (35)
Might this one day be built at 924 Grand?
Laura Glesby Photo
Youth Continuum's Tim Maguire (right), with city Homeless Services Director Velma George: Looking to create "a one-stop shop for unhoused youth."
A proposal for a peer-led youth homeless shelter in Wooster Square is back on the table — with a higher price tag and a new design prioritizing privacy and public health.
Continue reading ‘Alders Advance $500K For Long-Delayed Youth Shelter’
by | Nov 25, 2024 3:04 pm | Comments (19)
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Barnett Brodie (left): "It's impossible for me to match shingles from 50 years ago" or to force tenants to clean hallways.
The landlord didn’t contest that tenants kept a laundry basket in a common hallway. Or that he had old shingles on the house.
He did wonder why the city was pushing him to do something about it or potentially face a fine.
by | Nov 21, 2024 3:59 pm | Comments (22)
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Hearing officer Megna, with LCI attorney Bedosky: "That's a big fine for a two-family home."
(Updated) A Queens-based landlord is on the hook for $25,500 in fines — after missing a City Hall hearing he said he didn’t know about, that concerned two LCI inspections he was surprised to learn he’d skipped.
by | Nov 20, 2024 8:31 am | Comments (34)
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Alder — and now homeowner — Jose Crespo...
Laura Glesby photo
... and his new James Street house.
One of Alder Jose Crespo’s constituents wants her security deposit back — from a landlord who happens to be Alder Crespo.
Continue reading ‘Alder, Constituent Spar Over Security Deposit’
by | Nov 18, 2024 1:22 pm | Comments (16)
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Alder Smith, U.S. Sen. Blumenthal, Board Chair Kilpatrick, and Interim Director Draughn: With Biden bucks, "use it or lose it."
Eco-friendly housing planned for 34 Level.
Three electric vehicle charging stations, 4,000 square feet of rooftop solar, and energy-efficient appliances will be built into an entirely electrified affordable senior apartment complex in West Rock — thanks to a newly secured $450,000 federal grant.
Continue reading ‘Fed Grant To Help Senior Housing Go Green’
by | Nov 15, 2024 3:14 pm | Comments (23)
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Landlord and Alder Kampton Singh: Licenses are not a problem because "I follow the rules."
Bill Santillo walked into City Hall with an open mind, ready to learn about a landlord licensing program he’d once staunchly opposed.
by | Nov 14, 2024 5:02 pm | Comments (3)
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"Hammock Home, Hammock Home, don't let us down! New Haven is a union town."
“Mold, mice, potholes, trash! What are you doing with our cash?”
A dozen tenant advocates chanted that message on Thursday, calling for the new property manager of an east-side apartment complex to negotiate a lease with their union.
by | Nov 13, 2024 2:49 pm | Comments (28)
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At Tuesday's BZA meeting, where commissioners heard plans ...
... for 8 rent-reduced apartments to rise at Lombard ex-laundromat site.
An empty Fair Haven lot that once sparked a high-profile arson trial could soon be the site of eight new affordable apartments.
Continue reading ‘8 Apartments Eyed For Burned-Down Laundromat’
by | Nov 12, 2024 2:32 pm | Comments (17)
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Shovels up, for the Monarch ...
Honeycome Real Estate rendering
... the new Monarch apartments, that is ...
Thomas Breen photo
... and not the former linen-cleaning company (pictured).
The “route men” are long gone from the former Monarch Cleaners in West River.
So are the pleas of “Uncle Sammy, you got a summer job for me?” that sisters Cathy Dziekan and Jan Lougal still remember their dad being asked by extended family in need of work.
But the history of their family’s long-time laundry business will live on — in the name and in the story behind 64 new affordable apartments now on the rise on Derby Avenue.
Continue reading ‘Ex-Cleaners Ground Broken For 64 Apartments’
by | Nov 12, 2024 10:59 am | Comments (18)
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Blumenthal (right) with tenants union members Asia Foley and Sinclair McCutcheon: "The reach of this legislation would be very broad in protecting tenants."
Connecticut’s senior U.S. senator stood side by side with members of the city’s first officially recognized tenants union to announce proposed legislation to make it easier nationwide for renters to organize and collectively bargain with their landlords.
by | Nov 11, 2024 9:06 am | Comments (5)
Arthur Delot-Vilain file photo
Opuszynski (left): “I bought it from [Xu] after he didn’t want to deal with the headache.”
A Madison-based investor now owns two of three foreclosed former co-op properties on Henry Street — after buying the row home for $480,000 from Bethany-based landlord Jianchao Xu.
by | Nov 7, 2024 1:22 pm | Comments (16)
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LCI hearing officer Bob Megna: Fines approved.
It took an hour and a half for volunteer hearing officer Bob Megna to issue $1,000 fines to 27 local landlords — part of the city’s latest effort to revive a mandatory landlord licensing program after a lapse in enforcement.
Continue reading ‘$27K In Fines OK’d For Unlicensed Landlords’
by | Nov 6, 2024 4:32 pm | Comments (31)
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James Lazarus: "They want to uproot me."
Parks Department carries away belongings-turned-"trash."
The city’s Parks Department has officially cleared the homeless encampment on the Upper Green — amid a debate over when unattended belongings become discardable “trash.”
by | Nov 1, 2024 8:50 am | Comments (14)
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Activist Sean Gargamelli-McCreight at Monday's encampment arrests.
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U-ACT's Suki Godek and Joel Nieves join Thursday's protest.
“When the city evicts our unhoused neighbors from the train station and the Green, they call it a cleanup,” arrested homelessness activist Adam Nussbaum said during a protest on the front steps of the downtown courthouse. “And we ask, clean for who? We all know to them, ‘clean’ means dead.”
by | Oct 30, 2024 8:29 am | Comments (19)
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269 Humphrey: 6 apartments now. 15 to come.
An East Rock landlord won permission to boost the number of apartments at a Humphrey Street house from six to 15 — after a local attorney pointed out that the existing building contains four floors, not three, and therefore has enough gross floor area to accommodate the higher unit count.
by and | Oct 28, 2024 1:47 pm | Comments (33)
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Officers arrest homeless advocate Mark Colville.
Police made seven arrests of activists for the unhoused and removed four tents on the Upper Green Monday after a weekend of negotiations over the city’s latest homeless encampment.
by | Oct 25, 2024 8:58 am | Comments (37)
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Property Manager Amanda Naranjo (center) helps cut the ribbon ...
... on "the Archive" on Chapel St.
Downtown renters looking for a shiny new two-bedroom apartment can now spend $3,399-plus per month — to live in a two-building, 166-unit complex that has risen from the ashes of a pair of long-vacant Chapel Street lots.
by | Oct 24, 2024 11:06 am | Comments (30)
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Homelessness, policing on the agenda for Hill CMT.
Hill South neighbors pressed the mayor, the police chief, and their district’s top cop to do more to build up the ranks of the city’s police department — and to work harder to address homelessness in the neighborhood.
by | Oct 23, 2024 11:28 am | Comments (25)
Jabez Choi photo
Mark Colville (right) and volunteers handing out food and supplies on the Green ...
... to campers like Strongbow Lone Eagle.
Though their tents are largely gone, unhoused campers have set up sleeping bags on the grassy patch behind United Church on the Green — where they continue to distribute and receive food and other aid, as an activist crew keeps up their protest of homeless encampment sweeps.
by | Oct 22, 2024 3:00 pm | Comments (23)
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Jianchao Xu's property manager, David Kone, at LCI hearing: "Obviously, there's been some miscommunication."
A Bethany-based landlord was hit with $18,200 in city fines — as part of a rejuvenated quasi-judicial process designed to give the Livable City Initiative (LCI) more teeth when confronting negligent rental property owners.
Continue reading ‘Landlord Fined $18K For Missed Inspections’
by | Oct 22, 2024 1:27 pm | Comments (32)
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LCI's Liam Brennan (center) and Javier Ortiz with Fire Inspector Steve Martin at an inspection on Nash St.
Watch out, derelict landlords: housing code violations can now come with a $2,000-a-day price tag levied directly by the city.
The Board of Alders instituted that maximum fine for landlords renting out units that are deemed to be unsafe on Monday evening, escalating the consequences from a previous $250-per-violation fine.
Continue reading ‘Alders Approve $2,000 Fines For Landlords’
by | Oct 17, 2024 6:59 pm | Comments (40)
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Police, social workers, and unhoused activists in the final hours of Thursday morning's encampment.
(Updated) As a tent encampment on the Green came down Thursday morning, city homelessness services coordinator Velma George and Lora Weeks soon realized they had met before — at a different New Haven encampment, back in 2016.
George had been an outreach social worker. Weeks had been living outdoors.
Eight years later, they found themselves back in the same positions.