by | Jun 17, 2024 10:56 am | Comments (5)
Laura Glesby Photo
DESK director Werlin (center): Guided by "accessibility."
In order to operate a soon-to-be-renovated four-story hub of meals, healthcare, and gathering for unhoused clients, Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen (DESK) is going to need an elevator.
And in order to dig an elevator shaft, the organization first needs to shore up the foundation of the parking garage next door.
by | Jun 11, 2024 12:27 pm | Comments (16)
Thomas Breen photo
284 Orange, now under new ownership.
An Edgewood-based landlord has purchased a church-affiliated apartment building downtown for $2.7 million — leaving the property’s tenants to wonder whether the new owner will be any better than the last at promptly repairing leak-damaged rental units.
by | Jun 10, 2024 2:09 pm | Comments (15)
Arthur Delot-Vilain photo
Rose Appi with the pod that's been storing her furniture since March.
A years-long leak has sunk a Fair Haven Heights condo association into $138,000 in debt — landing the group in bankruptcy court, and leading to a legal fight over whether the association’s water bill or urgent maintenance should be paid for first.
Meanwhile, Winters Run resident Rose Appi has been living with all of her furniture in a storage pod since March as construction crews work to repair the source of the water problem beneath her condo’s kitchen.
by | Jun 7, 2024 4:53 pm | Comments (6)
Edgar Becerra and Josue Arana (center) join ULA for Friday's protest.
Edgar Becerra and Josue Arana packed their belongings into a total of two mid-sized suitcases and a backpack. On Friday morning, they stepped one last time out of the house at 200 Peck St. where they’d lived for the past year. They did not know where they would be sleeping that night.
The eviction culminated a months-long court battle revealing the triple power of one local business’s role as an employer, landlord, and visa sponsor to the temporary migrant workers it hires.
by | Jun 6, 2024 4:37 pm | Comments (28)
Laura Glesby Photo
Anderson Curtis of ACLU-CT: Criminal record discrimination "amounts to perpetual punishment."
Mandy Management refused to rent 58-year-old Mark Griffin an apartment because of two misdemeanor convictions from more than three decades ago.
Continue reading ‘Complaint: Tenant Screening Discriminates’
by | Jun 5, 2024 4:48 pm | Comments (6)
Laura Glesby Photo
ConnCAT Youth Program Assistant Rachel Graziano (center) cuts the ribbon to her future home alongside ConnCORP's Ian Williams and Erik Clemons.
Rachel Graziano currently lives in Naugatuck, because the rent there is cheaper — but not for long.
By July, she’ll finally move back to her hometown of New Haven, renting a brand new Newhallville house built by her employer, the local workforce and housing developer ConnCAT/ConnCORP.
by | Jun 5, 2024 1:45 pm | Comments (16)
Arthur Delot-Vilain photo
Sinclair McCutcheon (second from left): "We are better together.”
(Updated) Ocean Management is looking to sell a 70-unit Blake Street apartment building for nearly $14 million.
One of the property’s prospective buyers, if they can round up enough money in time, is that same building’s tenants union.
by | Jun 4, 2024 3:09 pm | Comments (36)
Laura Glesby and Thomas Breen Photos
10 Liberty (top) and 48 Grant, soon to become housing?
Two abandoned factory buildings in the Hill are each a step closer to revival as housing, after alders approved a tax break and a zoning change on Monday night.
Continue reading ‘Factories-To-Housing Tax Break, Rezoning OK'd’
by | Jun 3, 2024 4:15 pm | Comments (2)
Judge Stone: Landlords can't control everything.
New Haven’s new housing court judge ruled that a Newhallville landlord isn’t on the financial hook for thefts allegedly perpetrated by one rooming house tenant against another — in part because the owner doesn’t have “exclusive control” over what goes on in a renter’s room.
Continue reading ‘Judge: Thefts Fell Outside Landlord's "Control"’
by | May 31, 2024 4:09 pm | Comments (5)
Javier Ortiz checks the carpet.
Laura Glesby Photo
Landlord Johnny Brinkley and tenant Sandra McKinnie: The mice are your fault.
Sandra McKinnie’s landlord was in the middle of installing new smoke detectors when the inspectors arrived.
by | May 31, 2024 3:19 pm | Comments (0)
Lisa Reisman Photo
Newhallville's Jeanette Sykes: "You are taking a step in the right direction."
Questions from Newhallville neighbors flew fast and furious at a community meeting with a representative from Mandy Management on Thursday evening: Why is an old eviction still coming up when I’m applying for an apartment? How do I overcome a bad credit score? And what is the turnaround time for addressing repairs and upkeep?
by and | May 30, 2024 3:19 pm | Comments (29)
Laura Glesby Photo
Clarice Elarabi with a photo of her twin brother, Michael Randall, who perished in the fire (pictured below).
A lawsuit stemming from a fatal fire at an illegal Hill rooming house won’t go to trial after all — now that the Elicker administration has agreed to a $14.5 million settlement with the estates of the two men who died during that blaze.
Continue reading ‘City Reaches $14.5M Fatal-Fire Settlement’
by | May 28, 2024 12:00 pm | Comments (4)
Thomas Breen photo
Galina Zalman, in front of her 33 Hazel St. home in 2020.
New Haven’s new housing judge heard three versions of what went wrong at a Hazel Street rooming house.
In the process, she also got a firsthand look at some of the challenges facing people living one false step away from homelessness.
by | May 28, 2024 8:41 am | Comments (9)
Thomas Breen photo
15 Colby Ct., to be replaced by 4 new townhouse rentals.
A pair of plans to build four needed houses apiece moved ahead for underused plots of Upper Westville and Newhallville.
by | May 21, 2024 4:08 pm | Comments (12)
Thomas Breen photo
Broken past, fixed future for 596 George (pictured)?
The city has abandoned plans to convert a long-vacant duplex on George Street into owner-occupied housing — and is now looking to sell the boarded-up brick buildings to a local nonprofit with the goal instead of creating affordable rentals for veterans.
Continue reading ‘Plan Shifts For Historic George St. Duplex’
by | May 17, 2024 1:02 pm | Comments (14)
Thomas Breen photo
146 Greenwich (right): Room on the block for another car?
Trachten and Rodriguez offer different views to BZA on adding housing without parking.
The city’s latest clash of cars and beds took place at the dead end of Greenwich Avenue, where an alder sought to stop the creation of a single new apartment on the grounds that the street already has too many parked vehicles.
by | May 16, 2024 2:41 pm | Comments (3)
Thomas Breen file photo
150 West St., after the 2019 fatal fire.
A reporter entered the courtroom for a trial about a fatal fire at an illegal rooming house — not to write about the case, but to get screened as a possible juror.
by | May 15, 2024 7:30 pm | Comments (27)
Thomas Breen photo
Anthony: "I'm not getting arrested."
Anthony wasn’t sure where he and his fiancee would be spending the night Wednesday.
But he did know where they wouldn’t be: in a downtown encampment proposed, and ultimately postponed, by a group of unhoused activists.
“I’m not staying on the Green,” he said. “I’m not getting arrested.”
by | May 15, 2024 2:08 pm | Comments (3)
Laura Glesby Photo
Christopher lines up for the 180 Center's final night as a warming center.
At 6:15 p.m. sharp on Tuesday, Christopher ambled over to the 180 Center on a crooked foot.
It was the last night that the last warming center in New Haven would offer shelter for the season, and Christopher didn’t know where he’d sleep on Wednesday.
“I haven’t got that far yet,” he said.
by | May 14, 2024 11:42 am | Comments (18)
Laura Glesby File Photo
Ocean's Shmuel Aizenberg and attorney Gerry Giaimo in housing court.
Ocean Management’s Shmuel Aizenberg won’t have to take the witness stand in Waterbury after all — now that his company has struck a last-minute settlement in a long-standing child lead poisoning lawsuit that had been set to go to trial this week.
That jury trial was to determine how much the local megalandlord had to pay a mom whose son suffered “irreversible brain damage” while living at one of Ocean’s New Haven apartments on Edgewood Avenue.
While the dollar amount of that deal remains secret, public land records show that plenty of cash has been flowing into Ocean’s coffers — as the company has sold another 37 New Haven rental properties for nearly $13 million over the past two months.
by | May 10, 2024 2:00 pm | Comments (16)
Laura Glesby Photo
Clarice Elarabi (pictured) is suing the city for the death of her brother, chef and gardener Michael Randall, in a 2019 illegal rooming house fire on West St.
Clarice Elarabi woke up at 3:12 a.m. feeling “just so hot. Like, on fire.”
She stuck her head out of the window. She took a cold shower. She tried and failed to go back to sleep. “I was so hot,” she said, “I didn’t know what was going on with me.”
Two hours later, Elarabi learned that her twin brother’s house in the Hill had erupted into flames.
The blaze took his life. It hurled her into life-altering grief. And Elarabi is now preparing to argue in court that the City of New Haven could have prevented it.
by | May 10, 2024 9:26 am | Comments (78)
Wooster Lofts LLC rendering
Apartments that won't be built on Hamilton St.
A Hamilton Street parking lot will remain a Hamilton Street parking lot for the time being, now that a local landlord has withdrawn a housing application in the face of several neighbors’ car concerns.
Continue reading ‘Housing Plan Dropped Amid Parking Dispute’
by | May 9, 2024 3:15 pm | Comments (3)
Paul Bass Photo
Lead plaintiff Personna Noble, at right, at 2016 announcement of lawsuit at pre-demolished Church Street South.
The last of $18.75 million in checks have gone out to former tenants of Church Street South, closing out a seven-plus-year legal quest to compensate families subjected to unhealthy living conditions.
by | May 9, 2024 2:00 pm | Comments (18)
Fair Rent's Wildaliz Bermúdez with new tenants union rep Zach Postle.
A cracked window at 1455 State.
Zach Postle and his neighbors got tired of waiting days and weeks and months for their landlord to respond to maintenance concerns like broken windows and busted heating, so they formed a tenants union — the sixth to officially file with City Hall, and the fifth created at an Ocean Management rental property.
by | May 6, 2024 12:47 pm | Comments (58)
Clockwise from top left: Up to 64 new apartments eyed for Hamilton St.; developer Yoon Lee; the 63 Hamilton parking lot; Lost in New Haven's Rob Greenberg.
A bid to provide lots more places for people to live on Hamilton Street has prompted pushback from some neighbors over where current and future residents and visitors will be able to put their cars.