Plan Unveiled To Raze, Rebuild Co-ops

Managers of a crumbling government-subsidized housing complex in the Dwight neighborhood are looking for community support to demolish the complex and build 42 new affordable apartments there.

The management company, Carabetta, Tuesday night unveiled the plan to raze the long-neglected Antillean Manor. The current 31-unit complex on Day Street between Chapel Street and Edgewood Avenue would be replaced by the new building, which would feature three floors of mostly two- and three-bedroom units, all handicapped-accessible.

The Harp administration supports the plan, but key questions remain unanswered — including whether the federal government will sign off on the plan and what will happen to the tenants. Meanwhile, neighbors are raising concerns about Carabetta’s track record.

Eric M. Polinsky of Carabetta and attorney James Segaloff presented a tentative plan to members of the Dwight community management team Tuesday evening at Amistad Academy, across from Antillean. Carabetta has managed the complex for the last four years, with conditions becoming dangerous enough that the city at one point ordered emergency repairs of death-defying balcony cracks and mold-producing leaks. Technically, Antillean Manor is a co-op. But the cooperative has long since ceased to exist; the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has been sending Carabetta more than $330,000 a year in Section 8 rental subsidies to manage the place.
(Carabetta can retain up to $18,600 a year for management if excess money is left after the bills are paid, which hasn’t happened for over a year, according to the company’s lawyer.) Now Carabetta wants to buy the complex outright, temporarily relocate the tenants, and build the new subsidized complex. (This story earlier incorrectly stated the amount of annual HUD subsidies.)

Polinsky said all 31 units are currently occupied.

Segaloff said Carabetta has spent an excess of $300,000 upgrading the site. Polinsky said the complex is in considerable debt.

“No one [else] is going to buy this property with a bunch of mortgages on it,” Segaloff said.

Polinsky and Segaloff did not provide specific estimates of the cost of their envisioned project. They stressed that all plans were preliminary.

And they stressed that they’re in the process of organizing a meeting with tenants next week to present an initial plan, subject to change, for the project. That was news to tenants interviewed Wednesday morning, who said they’d heard nothing about the plans and were miffed that Carabetta unveiled them at a separate community meeting.

Mayor Toni Harp and Serena Neal-Sanjurjo, head of the city government’s neighborhood development and anti-blight agency, the Livable City Initiative (LCI), told the Independent that they support Carabetta’s plan. Neal-Sanjurjo said the city would have preferred a home-ownership project, but the city supports Carabetta’s ​“commitment to family units and affordability.” The neighborhood has recently seen multi-million-dollar upgrades in housing complexes within a block of Antillean, Dwight Gardens (another failed cooperative turned over to a private developer) and Kensington Square. Neal-Sanjurjo said the Carabetta project would continue that progress.

“There is lots of work to do” still to get the Antillean project going, she noted.

The neighbor’s alder, Tyisha Walker, has been involved in discussions about the plan. She said she supports the idea of bringing more affordable housing to the neighborhood. She also said she wants to make sure tenants are taken care of — and that tenants’ and neighbors’ voices are heard.

Neighbors at Tuesday night’s meeting responded to Carabetta’s pitch with some hesitation — and a lot of questions.

What’s the target date for the new complex? management team chair Florita Gillispie asked.

Polinsky said the company hopes to be ready to apply for a state tax credit in the fall, with approval expected in spring 2018. Demolition and construction would be slated for that summer, with new tenants able to move back in come spring 2019.

Segaloff interjected, noting that Carabetta must also receive approval for a planned development district, which allows for broad zoning variances, from the Board of Alders and City Plan Commission.

Olivia Martson, a real estate agent who lives in the neighborhood, asked if the new project could promote homeownership instead of rentals. ​“We’re so saturated” with government-subsidized rental complexes, Martson said.

Polinsky noted that in earlier conversations, both LCI and Harp had also expressed a preference for homeownership, but he said the company concluded such an approach doesn’t make financial sense.

“We think that we’re good managers, and we’d like to community to think we are too,” he said.

One sticky issue might be the turnover of the property, still technically owned by the non-existent co-op, to Carabetta. Tenants there still have legal say over any sale, argued New Haven Legal Assistance Association attorney Amy Marx, whose agency represents some Antillean Manor residents. She argued that the former co-op would need to reconstitute its board to OK a sale.

Other big unknowns:
• Will HUD approve the sale of the property? It currently holds a mortgage worth in the neighborhood of $700,000 and would have to sign off.
• HUD would also have to sign off on continuing to pay site-based Section 8 rents at a new complex.
• HUD would also have to approve portable Section 8 vouchers to enable tenants to find and afford new homes of their choosing when Carabetta demolishes the complex; and whether tenants would have a right to return to the new complex.

Segaloff emphasized to management team members Tuesday night that Carabetta is dedicated to providing the vouchers. But the decision is up to HUD. He said the company would also put current tenants at the top of the wait list to occupy the new apartments.

“We don’t want these people displaced,” Segaloff said.

HUD spokesman Brian E. Sullivan told the Independent that the agency can’t say whether it would cover vouchers for tenants until it receives Carabetta’s plan to remake the property. ​“Since we have not received any formal plan,” its too early to know, Sullivan said. He said the two options would be supporting portable vouchers for tenants to take the private landlord of their choice with the assistance of New Haven’s housing authority; or site-based vouchers for use at another Carabetta property. (The company’s portfolio includes the Bella Vista complex.)

By the end of Tuesday night’s meeting, management team vice-chair Curlena McDonald said the group will refrain backing the project for now. After all, she pointed out, Carabetta has yet to solicit opinions from the tenants themselves. ​“We need that perspective before we make a decision on that,” she said.

“Right now, we don’t know how those individuals feel,” McDonald added.

Linda Townsend Maier, a longtime community leader who heads the Greater Dwight Development Corporation, knows how she feels about Carabetta.

“They just got rich” running Antillean Manor while conditions deteriorated, Townsend Maier said while raking and planting flowers on Edgewood Avenue Wednesday. ​“They didn’t maintain the property. They are quintessential poverty pimps. They come in and gouge the neighborhood. Now they want to come in and use the money they stole from the neighborhood. Will they maintain it? HUD should be ashamed.”

Tenants interviewed Wednesday emphasized the importance of receiving vouchers to rent apartments elsewhere during demolition. They were mixed about whether they’d want to return.

One woman, who declined to be named, said the neighborhood is too dangerous. ​“I’m trying to raise my kids,” she said, as her 1‑year-old daughter (pictured above) played on the complex’s narrow second-story balcony. The woman said she doesn’t take her daughter to the two nearby parks because of all the bottles and needles on the ground. And she complained about the people who ​“congregate” around the complex and cause trouble.

“I want to move to East Haven,” she said. ​“It’s nice and quiet out there.”

A neighbor, also the mom of a young child, said she appreciates the complex’s proximity to businesses and to public transportation. She called Carabetta a ​“decent” landlord that has trouble keeping maintenance workers on staff because of the high volume of needed work.

Dinah Sellers has lived at Antillean Manor since 1972. She is one of only a handful of original tenants left, and only a handful who even remembers the cooperative board.

“At my age it doesn’t matter to me. I’m going to be 78. They do what they have to do,” Sellers said of Carabetta’s plans, of which she had not been informed. She said the cooperative fell apart because ​“the people just didn’t want to cooperate.” She said she would like to return to a rebuilt Antillean Manor, providing this time she can live on the first floor instead of the second. ​“I’m tired,” she said, ​“of going up and down those steps.”