Nora Grace-Flood photo
Ocean's Shmuel Aizenberg and attorney Ian Gottlieb in court Tuesday.
A state judge turned down a megalandlord’s request to have a potential criminal record scrubbed clean — after determining that the head of Ocean Management did not qualify for “accelerated rehabilitation” because he is likely to get in trouble again and end up back in housing court.
That was the upshot of an accelerated rehabilitation hearing held for Shmuel Aizenberg inside the housing court at 121 Elm St. Tuesday morning.
The hearing took place after the landlord was charged with a criminal misdemeanor for failing to fix water damage in a Hamden apartment complex, along with five other housing-code-violation infractions for Ocean rental properties in New Haven.
Aizenberg is the head of Ocean Management, a local megalandlord-property management-real estate investment outfit. Through its affiliates, Ocean controls over 1,000 mostly low-income apartments across the city. Ocean has been selling and selling and selling off its local rental portfolio in recent months, as tenants unions form citywide to protest conditions at their properties.
Upon arriving in court on Tuesday, Aizenberg had six pending cases involving various housing code violations pending against him. Five of those are infractions, while a sixth case involves a criminal charge.
Shmuel Aizenberg in court Tuesday.
Aizenberg had previously applied to participate in an accelerated rehabilitation (AR) diversionary program regarding that sixth case, which saw the landlord charged with a Class C misdemeanor for a water-damaged kitchen ceiling and walls in a first-floor apartment inside a 12-unit complex on 11 Gorham Ave. in Hamden that violated the town’s public health code.
The other cases included holes in the roof and trash in the yard at the three-family house at 65 Truman St.; inadequate heating at a 17-unit apartment building at 1455 State St.; damp and bulging ceilings and holes in the floor at the three-family house at 234 Fillmore St.; and still more LCI-found problems at the two-family house at 155 Fillmore St. and the 70-unit complex at 311 Blake St.
The single criminal charge would have been dropped from Aizenberg’s record had he been accepted into and completed the requested-for AR program.
State Superior Court Judge Walter Spader, Jr. denied on Tuesday a request by Aizenberg and his attorney Ian Gottlieb to allow the landlord to partake in the program. The judge sided with Senior Assistant State’s Attorney Donna Parker, who argued that Aizenberg is likely to repeat the offenses on which he had been brought to court.
Two of the major factors in the court’s decision to offer accelerated rehabilitation are the severity of the crimes under consideration and the likelihood that the accused might offend in the future.
That second matter, the chances of Aizenberg repeatedly offending housing and health codes, is “where the state takes issue,” prosecutor Parker said on Tuesday in opposition to Aizenberg’s AR request.
“There have been 31 cases before the court between 2019 and 2023,” concerning Ocean Management’s operations, Parker said. And Ocean “still owns a plethora of properties” with a potential plethora of problems. While many of the charges facing Ocean are just infractions, it’s the pattern behind the landlord’s behavior, Parker suggested, that should disqualify him from finding protection through accelerated rehabilitation.
Attorney Gottlieb, who represented Aizenberg in court Tuesday, argued that there was not substantial evidence to prove that Aizenberg would commit another misdemeanor or worse. He said that damages at the Hamden property had been fixed back in April. Plus, Ocean Management currently has 54 properties on the market to be sold — which Gottlieb said means that there are “potential offenses that won’t even make it before the court.”
Judge Spader: “I can’t find faith that we’re not likely to have more cases coming.”
“There’s enough evidence before the court over the past year,” Judge Spader responded.
Aizenberg has been a regular on the criminal housing docket in recent years — getting fined again and again and again and again and again for persistently dangerous living conditions, such as ceiling leaks and rodent infestations and holes in walls and chipping paint, found by Livable City Initiative (LCI) inspectors at various local Ocean-controlled rental properties.
Spader alluded to those past violations and cases pending in the present: “I can’t find faith that we’re not likely to have more cases coming.”
“Maybe those cases will be resolved. But I deny the application,” he concluded.
Aizenberg will next appear in court to face those still-pending six cases on Oct. 24.