Contributed photo
Blake St. tenants union members winning official recognition from Fair Rent Commission Executive Director Wildaliz Bermudez (center).
A group of Blake Street renters delivered a 31-name petition to City Hall — and officially became New Haven’s first legally recognized tenants union.
Tenants of the 311 Blake St. apartment complex took that legal-recognition step on Nov. 23.
City Fair Rent Commission Executive Director Wildaliz Bermudez confirmed that 31 tenants from the 311 Blake St. complex signed on to the petition that was delivered late last month to her office.
Because only 45 of that 70-unit complex’s apartments are currently occupied, Bermudez said, the petition clears the local legal threshold that a tenants union include signatures from — to quote directly from New Haven law — “a majority of the tenants listed as lessees within the housing accommodation.”
“As more tenants become involved in tenants’ unions it can provide us with a better picture regarding the housing stock that is available,” Bermudez said in an email comment sent to the Independent on Tuesday, “and for discussions to occur regarding better ways to maintain properties and have a good well-maintained housing stock when items are needed to be addressed.”
The Blake Street Tenants Union is now the first officially, legally recognized tenants union in the city.
Their registration comes nearly three months after the Board of Alders approved a new law in early September that gives tenants unions a seat at the table in New Haven city government by allowing them to band together and collectively amplify concerns about high rents, poor housing conditions, and other matters that might come up during a city Fair Rent Commission investigation. (Click here to read a full breakdown of the rules defining what a tenants union is, how they can register with the city, and what role a tenants union representative can play in Fair Rent Commission investigations and hearings.)
311 Blake St. renter Jessica Stamp is one of the lead organizers of the newly recognized Blake Street Tenants Union.
“I want to stay,” she told the Independent in a recent interview about her current apartment. Her rent is affordable, which allows her to save money, and she enjoys her “fabulous closet space.”
She said that she and her neighbors organized a tenants union in part because of a lack of response from her landlord, an affiliate of the megalandlord Ocean Management, when Stamp and other tenants have complained of rodents, disruptive construction, and other safety issues.
Representatives from Ocean Management did not respond to requests for comment by the publication time of this article. Click here to read a previous article about the Blake Street tenants union’s organizing efforts that included comments from 311 Blake’s then-property manager, who said at the time that tenants wouldn’t be facing increasing rents after planned renovations.
Alexander Kolokotronis, an organizer with CT Democratic Socialists of America who has been working with the 311 Blake tenants for eight months, told the Independent that getting signatures for the petition was “not about the bureaucratic process of getting the minimum, but about engaging as many people as possible.”
Stamp said she is excited that the union will help her neighbors that have been anxious about rent hikes, safety issues, and possible evictions. “This will give them relief,” she said. Having filed the petition, tenants are now protected from rent hikes and evictions for at least six months under state law.
Now that their union is legally recognized, Stamp hopes this will “empower people to speak up.” Before, she felt that tenants withheld their complaints out of a fear of retaliation by 311 Blake’s landlord.
Before the union files any complaints with the Fair Rent Commission, she continued, they plan on collecting data from tenants to help demonstrate what Stamp described as a pattern of concerns at the property.
Stamp feels happy with the work she is doing for the union and says that she would still want to be a part of a tenants union even if she had an “incredible landlord, because people can lean on each other, support each other.”
She said she’s wary of just how much of an impact the tenants union will have on how Ocean operates as a landlord, given the 1,000-plus apartments they own across hundreds of rental properties in New Haven.
Still, she feels lucky to at least live in an Ocean property that is possible to unionize. Most of Ocean’s units are scattered throughout the city in three-family houses. Under the current ordinance, only tenants in buildings with 10 or more units can come together. The law also allows tenants unions to form if the renters live in adjoining properties owned by the same landlord and that add up to at least 10 apartments.
Stamp hopes to someday change that part of the local law and allow all of the tenants living in Ocean properties to create one larger union. She hopes that the city will support tenants in building a coalition that is “bigger and stronger.”