Thomas Breen File Photos
LCI's Javier Ortiz investigates conditions in a Vernon St. apartment.
Liam Brennan, hired by city to review LCI.
A former mayoral candidate has been tapped to guide future reforms to enhance housing code and blight enforcement at the Livable City Initiative (LCI), as the Board of Alders reviews a mayoral proposal to remove affordable housing development from that city agency’s work.
On Friday, the morning after alders grilled LCI’s director during a City Hall budget workshop, Mayor Justin Elicker announced that his former electoral opponent, Liam Brennan, has been hired by his administration to conduct a six-month review on the department’s direction.
Brennan, who stepped down as Hartford’s Inspector General earlier this month in order to take the new consulting position, had focused on housing and zoning reforms during his 2023 Democratic mayoral campaign. He called at the time for “a philosophy sea change” in LCI, arguing that the department should expand its housing inspection team and refocus on landlord accountability rather than its affordable homeownership development efforts.
In his proposed $680 million Fiscal Year 2024 – 2025 (FY25) budget, Elicker has planned to do just that.
The budget proposal, which is now in the hands of the Board of Alders, would restructure and expand LCI so that the department would be exclusively charged with addressing housing quality and blight concerns. Housing code inspectors and “neighborhood specialists” working on blight issues would fall under this umbrella.
Meanwhile, the affordable housing and homeownership development initiatives that LCI currently also handles would be relocated to a new “Neighborhood and Community Development” division under the city’s Economic Development Office. That new division would be under the supervision of a proposed new deputy economic development administrator. LCI’s acquisition/disposition coordinator would be transferred to that division.
This planned overhaul of LCI comes at a time when concerns about safety and living conditions in the city’s relatively old housing stock have heightened. Several tenant unions advocating for better housing conditions in New Haven have formed in the last two years. Last budget season, advocates with the Room For All Coalition pressed alders and city officials to add more inspectors. Fair Rent Commission complaints have quadrupled.
And every day, some tenants have woken up to scurrying mice, contracted lead poisoning, breathed in mold, and dodged crumbling ceilings, in many cases while paying rent to some of the largest landlords in the city.
Laura Glesby photo
Economic Development Administrator Mike Piscitelli and LCI Director Arlevia Samuel: Funding for housing services matters.
LCI Director Arlevia Samuel told alders on Thursday night that each LCI inspector handles over 3,000 housing code inspections per year, investigating tenant complaints as well as conducting regular check-ups on Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher units and licensed landlords’ apartments. In 2023, inspections have increased by 66 percent.
That can amount to a caseload of eight inspections per day (or perhaps up to 15 per day if an inspector is looking at an entire apartment building.)
Elicker’s proposed budget would increase the number of LCI housing inspectors from 13 to 18 and would add an attorney and administrative assistant to the department.
As the departmental changes undergo review from alders, Brennan will undertake a six-month effort to assess and produce recommendations on how LCI can be more effective at housing quality enforcement, drawing from research on how other municipalities operate.
Per the Request for Qualifications that the city sent out for the position, Brennan will be paid $100/hour, with a cap of up to $15,000 per month and up to $75,000 total over a six-month period.
“I’m super excited about doing this,” he said over the phone on Friday. “I was very heartened by the proposal for the budget for next year.” He said he wants to enter this role from a perspective of open-mindedness to others’ input, but anticipates that one recommendation will involve “an interactive interface for residents when they have complaints” about housing, “so they can know the status of what’s going on with their cases.”
“While Liam Brennan and I might have been short-term political opponents in the last primary election, we’re long-term allies when it comes to ensuring New Haven families have affordable, safe, and high-quality housing and that New Haven is a city where all our residents have the have the opportunity to thrive,” Elicker is quoted as saying in a press release.
Officials Make Case For More LCI Funding
Alders including Jeanette Morrison, Richard Furlow, and Evette Hamilton will continue to deliberate through budget hearings.
The mayor’s proposed budgetary changes to LCI faced an initial round of scrutiny from alders at Thursday evening’s Finance Committee meeting.
The seven proposed new LCI positions (comprising five housing inspectors, an administrative assistant, and an attorney) would earn a total of $536,309.
“We anticipate the salaries for these new positions will be covered by funding from a U.S. HUD Community Development Block Grant,” said City Spokesperson Lenny Speiller in an email. “However, depending on the actual total amount of the final salaries of the individuals hired, an additional funding source might need to be identified.”
The proposed new deputy economic development administrator position, meanwhile, would have a salary of $136,409.
At the meeting, Economic Development Administrator Mike Piscitelli and LCI Director Arlevia Samuel outlined the challenges currently facing the department.
One is simply that “the housing stock is getting older” in New Haven, Piscitelli said — leaving many housing units in the city in deteriorating conditions as demand for rental units has increased. He said that LCI has struggled to keep up with the sheer need for inspections, despite the work ethic of the department’s inspectors, who he emphasized “will get up in the middle of the night for heating requests” or “work weekends to get elevators running at Bella Vista,” where many seniors live.
The department has had a hard time enforcing “compliance” as well, Piscitelli said. “We don’t have an attorney ready and available to scurry over to the courthouse,” which is where accountability for the inspection results takes place.
The department has also struggled to enforce the city’s residential rental licensing program, which requires landlords of most of the city’s housing stock to register with LCI and be subject to periodic inspections, yet which “we’re chasing to get people licensed into the program,” Piscitelli said, as many landlords do not know they are required to enroll. Piscitelli reported that approximately three quarters of the city’s housing units are unlicensed, despite city requirements.
West Hills Alder Honda Smith pressed Piscitelli on the reasoning behind proposals to splice LCI’s current development responsibilities outside the department and “putting the burden on the taxpayers.”
“A gap financing for an affordable housing project is very different from housing code inspections,” said Piscitelli. It takes a lot of work, he stressed, to facilitate affordable housing developments. Under LCI’s current structure, affordable housing financing programs “can seize up your director’s time, your deputy director’s time” — diverting energy away from housing code enforcement efforts.
Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison asked Piscitelli how he would prioritize the proposed seven new LCI positions and new Neighborhood and Community Development division administrator. “If we decide we can’t do this,” she said, referring to the proposed restructuring in its entirety, “what’s #1?”
Piscitelli responded that he couldn’t pinpoint one position that’s more important than the others, because they work in “totality.”
“What I’m thinking, and what I probably shouldn’t say out loud, is that we’re 2 percent of the city’s budget,” Piscitelli said, referring not only to LCI but to the Economic Development Administration as a whole.
“Housing is your focal point,” he added, referencing the alders’ stated legislative priority of bolstering affordable housing.
Adding the new positions would be “a scale expansion recognizing that housing has emerged as one of the single most important issues in the state of Connecticut,” he said.
After the presentation, when asked whether the additional five inspectors would be sufficient to meet the demand for housing inspections, Samuel responded, “No comment.”