A Last Pre-Foreclosure Look At A Lifetime Past

by Allan Appel | Dec 9, 2008 12:01 pm

Posted to: Housing

The house still contains the crib Richard Nocerino slept in and a portrait of his dapper bow-tied dad. Even the baby shoes that his parents kept in their bedroom until the end.

Nocerino gave a bittersweet tour of the 14 Batter Terrace three-family house Saturday morning. The occasion was hardly a sentimental tour down memory lane. It was rather the sale by foreclosure of the house that has been in Nocerino’s family since 1942, when his grandmother Adelena bought it for $7,800.

This morning the only tour-ists were the court’s attorney and one prospective buyer.

That buyer, Henry Weeks, of Hamden, came with a check in hand — $18,500, 10 percent of the appraised $185,000 value. But at the start of the proceedings he wasn’t sure he was even going to bid. He wanted the tour first.

His only opponent would be the plaintiff, in this case, the City of New Haven, which had brought the foreclosure action due to $4,600 in unpaid taxes dating from 2006.

(Homeowners on Batter Terrace have battled to renew their street amid the foreclosure crisis. Click here to read a previous story about that.)

Why wasn’t Nocerino, a solid citizen and 22-year veteran electrician with Metro North, father of three kids and homeowner in Hamden, holding onto the house himself?

The answer was complex. In a word, the house was not even his. It potentially belonged to the state of Connecticut, which now supports his mom, Vivian, who lives in a Hamden-area extended care facility.

A Fall at Shaw’s

And by that hung a tale that began two years ago with a fall in the aisle of Shaw’s Supermarket.

“She fractured her hip. And my dad, living alone, after 50 years of marriage, well, things went down hill from there. Colon cancer, hospice. He died a year ago, and the house has been empty since.”

His mom apparently is not in complete control of her memory, Nocerino said. She still thinks she’s coming home. “But she’s not. The social workers say she can’t return, and the state, through Title 19 Medicaid for seniors, pays the nursing home $12,000 a month. I do her laundry because she likes it that way.”

To be eligible for such Title 19 coverage through the state Department of Social Serivices, an individual apparently cannot have an asset such as a house.

When Vivian Nocerino left Batter Terrace for the facility, Nocerino told the nursing home about the house, all his family’s assets. “I reported everything,” he said, as he looked down the street. He remembered the Italian, Jewish and Irish families who used to live there and the friends he had played with: there the druggist Louis Rosenkranz had lived, and Louis Schiff who had the salvaged goods store on Legion Avenue.

In the process of dealing with the nursing home, Nocerino said he discovered that only his mother and father’s name appeared on the deed. And there was no will. When George Nocerino died, Vivian inherited it, via survivorship. “But I don’t own it,” Nocerino said.

“When the tax bills came, I also called up the city,” he said, “and told them I didn’t own the house. Would I like to buy it now, fix it up, and rent it out? Sure, but I just can’t do it.”

Nocerino showed Henry Weeks (pictured) the second floor, complete with its original 1950s Congoleum tiles, where his unmarried aunts Rose and Helen used to live before they died in 1990. He pointed to the still shiny cedar closets where their clothes had hung.

Nocerino said he had expected the state’s Department of Social Services to put a lien on the house to recoup through its sale some of the expense of his mother’s care. That hasn’t been the case, at least so far.

It’s somehow fallen through the cracks. But would it have implications for Henry Weeks or another prospective buyer?

It was a bit mystifying to attorney Justine Miller as well. “But we did a title search, and apart from the back taxes and $250 in fees owed to the Water Pollution Control Authority, the title is unencumbered. I also contacted the plaintiff’s attorney,” said Miller, “to find out if the city’s claim for taxes stands before a DSS claim. And they say it does.”

The Sale Commences

After the tour of the three-family house, still solid after 108 years of living, the formal sale commenced.

“The city has faxed me its opening bid,” said Miller, “and it is $11,500. Do I hear another bid?”

“Twelve-thousand five hundred,” said Weeks. “I have two kids, and if I can get the house for them and they can fix it up, it’ll be good.”

There were no other bidders. Miller commented on how Weeks’ deposit, a registered check of $18,500, significantly exceeded his bid.

Miller was asked if he thinks the court will allow such a low bid to stand. Judges usually insist that bids be at least 60 to 70 percent of the market value. Miller said he thinks that may not apply in such a terrible market.

Don’t Forget the Baby Shoes

He and Richard Nocerino wrote down each other’s phone numbers, an exchange sad but friendly enough. Nocerino asked for time to remove his dad’s old car, still in the garage; that appeared to be no problem at all.

Then Nocerino stuck his hands in his pockets and looked down the curving, gracious one-block street of Victorian-style homes, as if remembering each family in each house on the block.

As if channeling his mom’s voice, Nocerino apologized for the disorder of the house he had just shown. He said his daughter, who is about to marry, had taken some beloved furniture pieces; that he had already removed three Dumpsters worth of stuff and would remove more in the next 30 days, by which time the court would rule on the sale. Likely that will include his dad’s portrait and his baby shoes, and a small red volume lying on a third floor book shelf: Who’s Who Among Italian Americans.

“Our generation,” Attorney Miller said to Nocerino as she folded up her papers and got into her car, “moves out of our houses into condos. The generation of your parents, well, their surroundings are more important than being near their kids. That generation is carried out of their houses.”

The foreclosure sale of 14 Batter Terrace, which was just one of many scheduled for a single Saturday in New Haven, was concluded, for now.

Previous Independent coverage of New Haven’s foreclosure crisis:

To learn about the ROOF Project, a community-wide effort to help New Haveners navigate the foreclosure crisis, click here.

The following links are to various materials and brochures designed to help homeowners avoid foreclosure.

How to prepare a complaint to the Department of Banking; Department of Banking Online Assistance Form; Connecticut Department of Banking, Avoiding Foreclosure; FDIC Consumer News; Statewide Legal Services of Connecticut, Inc; Connecticut Bar Association Lawyer Referral Service.

For lawyer referral services in New Haven, call 562-5750 or visit this website. For the Department of Social Services (DSS) Eviction Foreclosure Prevention Program (EFPP), call 211 to see which community-based organization in the state serves your town.

Click here for information on foreclosure prevention efforts from Empower New Haven.

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A Last Pre-Foreclosure Look At A Lifetime Past

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