Paul Bass Photo
A crumbling government-subsidized housing complex in the Dwight neighborhood crawled with power-washers, construction workers and hazmat-suited cleaners Monday in response to an emergency order from the city’s building official.
The work is taking place at Antillean Manor, a 31-unit complex on Day Street between Chapel Street and Edgewood Avenue.
City Building Official Jim Turcio issued an emergency order on Oct. 21 for Carabetta Management, which runs the complex, to repair deteriorating concrete balconies and walkways, broken guard rails, and rusted-out reinforcement rods.
“They threw 20 men at it right away” after he met with Carabetta brass last week, Turcio said. “They’ll get it to the point where it’s livable for the winter.”
The complex, which opened in 1972, is technically a cooperative, but no one has heard form the supposed co-op officials for years. Meanwhile the place has steadily fallen apart. With rain pouring into apartments and mold building up, and walkways chipping apart, the city recently ordered two families relocated, one temporarily in a hotel, then into another apartment at the complex. (Click here to read a previous story detailing the current problems at the complex.)
The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) pays Section 8 rent subsidies for all 22 households still living at Antillean Manor. (Nine of the apartments are empty.) It pays the rent to Carabetta, which manages but doesn’t technically own the complex. Carabetta takes its cut, then sends it … back to HUD — which assumed the $759,200 mortgage in 1984 after the co-op defaulted.
The complex’s future is about to become more complicated. On Monday Mayor Toni Harp called for a Congressional investigation into HUD’s handling of conditions at complexes like Antillean Manor and the larger Church Street South, where officials are scrambling to find new homes for 288 families.
Meanwhile, unlike at Church Street South, Turcio’s order produced swift short-term results at Antillean Manor.
“They threw 20 men at it right away,” Turcio said. “They’ll get it to the point where it’s livable for the winter.”
Concrete Progress
Carabetta hired a Massachusetts company called Whitman Restoration to repair the second-story balcony walkway that winds around the complex — and is so chipped (pictured) that kids trip on it and officials feared a collapse could eventually occur.
Carabetta determined that it was these chipped walkways, not leaks from the roof, were responsible for rain pouring into tenants’ apartments.
“How do you put concrete on top of a rotted walkway?” one skeptical tenant asked as work progressed Monday.
Turcio said the crew is carrying out a three-step repair to those balcony walkways: First grinding them down to create a pitch that leads away from doors; sealing the the area with epoxy to keep rain out; then add a “flip-resistant finish” to enable safe walking. “I don’t want it so smooth people can’t walk on it,” he said.
In addition to having its own workers (including Juan Cuevas, pictured) power-wash exterior walls, Carabetta is having all the apartments inspected.
A crew from ServPro of Meriden suited up to tackle moldy vacant apartments.
The activity Monday was good news to tenants like Jamar Hailey (pictured), a Yale-New Haven Hospital food-service worker who has lived at Antillean Manor since 1997. A month ago Carabetta moved Hailey’s family to a different apartment in the complex because, in the old one, “every time it rained, it leaked in my room.” He said he’s happy with the new apartment.
“We take very seriously the residents’ need for a good, safe place to live,” Carabetta Senior Vice-President William Stetson said Monday. “The next step is: What is the permanent solution?”
Who’s In Charge?
That will prove far more complicated than pouring concrete on a balcony.
Carabetta has been speaking with HUD for years about the future of the crumbling complex, according to both Stetson and HUD spokeswoman Rhonda Siciliano. Two ideas are being thrown around: Demolishing the entire complex all at once. Or demolishing half, rebuilding there, then demolishing the other half. The first scenario would involve moving all the households into new lodgings elsewhere; the other would involve moving half of them. Carabetta wants HUD to help it obtain government financing not only to demolish and rebuild Antillean, but first to purchase and rehab other low-income housing nearby for the families’ new lodgings. As with the crisis at Church Street South, the plan would require HUD to allow the households to use their Section 8 subsidies — currently tied to Antillean Manor apartments (through “section-based” certificates) — elsewhere.
In itself, that plan would require years and lots of deal-making.
The bigger problem, according to City Hall, is who should be in on the deal in the first place.
Carabetta doesn’t even own Antillean, noted Serena Neal-Sanjurjo, chief of the city’s anti-blight agency, the Livable City Initiative (LCI). LCI inspectors sparked the recent developments at Antillean Manor by condemning apartments.
Neal-Sanjurjo said city lawyers are trying to track down someone affiliated with the old cooperative — still the listed owner. It has so far had no success. Residents interviewed said they didn’t even know the complex is a co-op and that they supposedly own or owned it.
“We need to establish ownership or none of us can make a decision about anything” involving the complex’s future, Neal-Sanjurjo said.
Harp: HUD Owes Answers
Mayor Toni Harp expressed outrage that HUD has been paying the rent all these years at Antillean Manor and Church Street South — and holding the mortgage at Antillean — while allowing both complexes to deteriorate beyond livability.
“I know that HUD sends people in to inspect these facilities. Why did they let them off the hook?” Harp asked. “How did they pass? And what is HUD’s real responsibility?”
She spoke of visiting HUD officials in D.C. earlier this year to plead, in vain, for them to take action on Church Street South. (It took a legal aid attorney working with tenants, and Harp’s inspectors, to force action months later.)
“They acted like it wasn’t really their problem. When in fact they are really the key component in terms of ensuring this housing is safe. Yes, we have a responsibility. But they’re the payer! They have the ultimate responsibility,” Harp said.
She called for Congress to hold hearings into how HUD inspects and “react[s] to these kinds of projects. Because if it happened here, my guess is that it’s happening all over the country.
“They’re not inspecting their own stuff. And if it’s a large project, there are ways of getting around real inspections.
“They are in control …It really becomes a legislative issue for Congress. Because I don’t think they’re going to change unless there’s some pressure.”
HUD’s Siciliano offered this response to Harp’s remarks in an email message:
“The [Antillean Manor] project’s age and design are such that, like Church Street [South], it has become functionally obsolescent and probably more cost effective to tear down and replace. In an effort to preserve this important affordable housing resource for New Haven, HUD was instrumental in initiating a management agent change to the current agent, Carabetta management, who most likely will be an important player in the redevelopment effort.
“In the interim, we look forward to working with the city, the ownership and management agent to bring all units back into compliance with local codes and HUD Physical Condition Standards.”
Click on or download the above sound file to listen to Harp’s appearance Monday on WNHH’s “Dateline New Haven,” in which she covered topics ranging from the public schools and lighting on the Green to the new park off Cherry Ann Street and the new apartment complex at Crown and College streets. The segment on Antillean Manor begins at 40:40.