Thomas Breen photo
A sidewalk memorial to Kenneth Mims, who died in the Oct. 6 fire at 516 Elm St.
X photo
Firefighters on the scene of the fatal fire.
City housing code inspectors hadn’t been back inside 516 Elm St. for more than a year before last Sunday’s fatal fire — but not for lack of trying.
A review of Livable City Initiative (LCI) records and an interview with the housing code enforcement agency’s new director, Liam Brennan, revealed that the city had identified back in August 2023 a handful of problems with the three-family house near the corner of Elm and Kensington Streets.
That house burst into flames last Sunday, leaving 32-year-old New Havener Kenneth Mims dead and displacing nine other people, marking New Haven’s first fatal fire in more than two years.
The property has been owned since 2009 by 56 – 58 Avon St LLP, a company controlled by Bethany-based landlord Jianchao Xu. While the city has no records of 516 Elm being used as a rooming house, eviction court filings indicate it may have been — and Xu has been cited by the city in the past for an illegal rooming house conversion at a different local property he owns.
Xu did not respond to a request for comment by the publication time of this article.
City spokesperson Lenny Speiller, meanwhile, told the Independent on Friday that, starting next week, LCI and city fire inspectors will be conducting joint visits to all of Xu’s New Haven properties. They will “voluntarily ask tenants if they can inspect their homes and apartments for compliance with the housing code in an effort to ensure that smoke alarms are properly installed and that there are no other pressing health and safety issues.” He said the city believes Xu owns 22 different properties in New Haven.
Thomas Breen photo
LCI Executive Director Liam Brennan, at a Friday morning fire safety presser.
An order letter from Aug. 8, 2023 states that LCI Inspector Tarrol Stafford visited the property on Aug. 3, 2023, and found six different code violations.
The most urgent, requiring a 24-hour response from the property owner, called for the installation of new smoke and carbon monoxide detectors.
According to Brennan, in August 2023 the LCI inspector observed the landlord’s property manager installing those new smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, including on the second floor — where Mims would die more than a year later.
Smoke detectors appear to have still been present as of this month. During their initial investigation following the Oct. 6 fatal fire, state police and city fire investigators “located a smoke alarm in the vicinity where the deceased was found and in other locations throughout the building,” Brennan said.
Mayor Justin Elicker also said the building appeared to have smoke detectors, during a Friday morning press conference all about fire safety. “The initial investigation shows there were smoke alarms in the building,” including in the vicinity “where Mr. Mims was found,” he said.
The other city house code violations identified by LCI at 516 Elm St. back in August 2023 included a damp ceiling, rodent infestation, inadequate floor covering, and inadequate space for the storage, preparation, and cooking of food. LCI’s repair orders for those latter items came with a 21-day deadline.
Brennan said that LCI’s inspector scheduled a “recheck” for April 2024 to see if the landlord had made the necessary repairs. The inspector got a flat tire, however, and canceled the appointment, and never rescheduled another “recheck.”
The city’s housing code enforcement agency did try to inspect 516 Elm St. on two other occasions, in February and March 2024.
They did so as part of the city’s residential rental licensing program, which requires landlords to register rental properties with city government, pay an annual fee for a license, and open up their properties to regular LCI inspections.
Brennan said that the property’s owner, Xu, applied for such a license, but never showed up to the inspection appointments. LCI subsequently issued Xu a civil citation in April 2024. That inspection-no-show citation could result in a fine of up to $100 per day.
Brennan said that Xu’s civil citation case is scheduled to go before a hearing officer on Oct. 18. If approved, the fines would begin dating back to April’s issuance of the civil citation, and could result in LCI placing a lien on Xu’s Elm Street rental property.
If the property is not rehabilitated, Brennan added, LCI could issue a blight violation “in the future” — but, he stressed, “it would be too early to determine that” at this time.
He said that LCI has helped relocate some of the nine tenants displaced by the fire to area hotels; others have moved in with family or friends.
Was 516 Elm A Rooming House?
516 Elm.
While last Sunday marked the city’s first fatal fire this year, it was not the first time that a fatal fire has occupied city attention in 2024.
Earlier this year, the Elicker administration agreed to pay $14.5 million to settle two long-standing lawsuits filed by the estates of two men who died in a fatal fire at an illegal rooming house in the Hill in 2019. That rooming house was owned by a New York-based landlord named John Farrar.
Was 516 Elm St. a rooming house as well?
This property was not registered with the city as a rooming house.
Two recent housing court cases involving the eviction of tenants from this property indicate that 516 Elm St. may have been rented out by the room, as opposed to by the full apartment.
In one eviction case, from May of this year, the defendant’s address is listed as “516 Elm St., Apt. 1, Room 1,” rented at a rate of $900 per month. In another eviction case, from July 2022, a different tenant’s address is listed as “516 Elm St., First Floor, Room 3,” rented at a rate of $650 per month.
The city’s housing code defines a rooming house as any dwelling that contains one or more “rooming units in which space is let by the owner or operators to four or more persons.” A “rooming unit” is then defined as a “room or group of rooms forming a single habitable unit used or intended to be used for living and sleeping, but not for cooking or eating purposes.”
City law requires that rooming house operators register their properties as such with the city.
“LCI was not aware of this property being used as a rooming house,” city spokesperson Lenny Speiller told the Independent, “and the investigation by the Connecticut State Police will assess and determine whether there is evidence of this being the case.”
The city’s property records database, meanwhile, shows that, back in October 2017, the city’s building department sent Xu a violation notice for the illegal conversion of a six-family apartment building at 38 Bishop St. into a rooming house.
Posted to 516 Elm's front door, as of Friday.