WWJD: Evict Tenants Union Organizers?

The property manager of a church-owned apartment complex on Orange Street has ordered the two lead organizers of the building’s tenants union to move out or face eviction — from city-condemned rental units that they haven’t been able to live in for months.

That’s the latest in the long-simmering, and now escalating, standoff between Emerson Apartments LLC and tenants Alexander Kolokotronis and James Blau.

Kolokotronis and Blau learned late last week that ​“notices to quit” had been taped to their respective apartment doors at 284 Orange St., an 18-unit apartment building that stands right next to and is owned by an affiliate of Trinity Lutheran Church.

The two pre-eviction notices order Blau and Kolokotronis to leave their respective apartments by Wednesday, May 1, on the grounds that they and various anonymous alleged co-tenants are currently occupying apartments that they no longer have the right to occupy. 

Each notice is dated April 22 and signed by Raymond W. Sola, Jr., a member of Cloudland Management LLC, which in turn is a member of Emerson Apartments LLC. 

Kolokotronis and Blau first learned about these pre-eviction notices last Thursday when a neighbor of theirs texted them pictures of the documents taped to their front doors. They weren’t in the Orange Street apartment building themselves at the time because they’re currently living in hotels — Blau on Long Wharf, Kolokotronis in Southington — stemming from a February flood in their respective apartments’ bathrooms and long-standing repair work that has yet to be finished.

In late February, Kolokotronis and Blau collected enough signatures from their neighbors to form the Emerson Tenants Union, the fifth such tenants union officially recognized by City Hall, in a bid to put some pressure on their landlord to get the bathroom repair work finished so that they can finally return to the apartments that each has called home for years.

In the intervening weeks, they’ve led protests outside the Orange Street apartment building over their continued displacement from their homes, even securing a letter of support from State Sen. President Pro Tem Martin Looney calling for the church to negotiate with the union. The city’s housing code enforcement agency, the Livable City Initiative (LCI), subsequently condemned both apartments on the grounds that they present ​“a serious hazard to the health and safety of the occupant.”

After what the two tenants described as weeks of no communication from their landlord or property manager, the two tenants union organizers have now been slapped with these pre-eviction notices — ordering them to move out of apartments they want to return to, but haven’t been able to live in for months.

Blau said they received ​“no warning of this whatsoever.” The last he had communicated with Sola was a month prior, he said, when the property manager sought to have the two tenants move their remaining belongings out of the condemned apartments. The tenants replied that they wanted to first find a solution to all of the dust coating their belongings stemming from the bathroom repair work.

“It’s kind of like adding insult to injury, or like adding additional injury to a previous injury,” said Blau. ​“Our bathrooms wouldn’t have been destroyed if they had” kept the building in good repair, and acted more promptly in early February to fix the bathroom leaks. ​“They have not been doing right by us by any definition.”

“I felt shock,” added Kolokotronis about receiving the move-out orders. ​“I’m still in shock.” They both said they have valid leases still in place, and that no one else lives in their apartments (except for, occasionally, Blau’s son, whom Blau has shared custody over and who has been living with his mom for the past few months). They also said they’re the only residents of the Emerson Apartments building to receive these pre-eviction notices.

Both said that these notices to quit and potential eviction lawsuits to follow could be acts of retaliation for their work organizing the Emerson Tenants Union. 

The tenants’ lawyer, James Bhandary-Alexander, said he and his clients are asking themselves that very question as they figure out what to do next.

“The apartments were in such horrible condition. They were condemned. For the landlord to send them notices to quit and threaten to stop paying for one of the tenants’ hotels all of a sudden appears to us to be retaliatory and probably illegal,” he said.

Bhandary-Alexander was referencing the sole communication that Blau said he has received from Sola in recent weeks — an email sent this past Saturday. That email let Blau know that ​“Emerson Apartments LLC will no longer be paying for your hotel” on Long Wharf as of Friday. (Koloktronis’ hotel stay in Southington is currently being covered by his renter’s insurance. Blau said his renter’s insurance has subsequently run out because he’s been displaced from his Orange Street apartment for so long.)

“Displaced tenants have rights under the law, and these tenants are going to fight for their rights under the law,” Bhandary-Alexander added. 

Sola did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this article. Neither did the North Haven-based lawyers who had provided comments to the Independent for previous articles about the Emerson Apartments. 

On Sunday, meanwhile, Blau sent an email to LCI officials letting them know about the notices to quit that he and Kolokotronis had received and Sola’s communication that Emerson Apartments LLC would cover his hotel stay only through Friday. ​“As a result of these two actions, I am currently facing homelessness,” Blau wrote. ​“This is particularly egregious because I believe both of these actions are unjustified under the law (or indeed under common decency), and may have been undertaken in retaliation for my involvement in organizing the Emerson Tenants Union, and because I filed a Fair Rent Commission complaint against Mr. Sola back in February.”

On Monday, Blau received a call from Nilda Torres, LCI’s bilingual relocation specialist. According to a recording of the voicemail Torres left, the LCI worker said, ​“You need to start looking for another apartment, because this landlord is not going to do any repairs anytime soon.” She asked Blau to give her a call to talk more.

During a Tuesday tour of their unrepaired Orange Street apartments, Blau and Kolokotronis expressed frustration with their landlord for threatening eviction — and a sense of betrayal by the city for recommending that they look for new places to live instead of clamping down harder on their landlord to make their current homes livable.

City spokesperson Lenny Speiller told the Independent on Tuesday that LCI is reaching out to Blau to ​“clarify” Torres’s voicemail.

“Once LCI was alerted that the landlord informed Mr. Blau that they no longer intended to pay for his hotel costs, LCI proactively reached out to Mr. Blau to offer assistance and relocation services to ensure he had a place to stay,” Speiller wrote. ​“This assistance includes temporary lodging at an alternative location, which would be necessary given the current state of his apartment and that repairs have not been completed. It’s unfortunate that Mr. Blau and Mr. Kolokotronis interpreted this message differently and anything other than an offer of assistance. LCI’s outreach to assist Ms. Blau should in no way be interpreted as the city relenting on ensuring proper compliance by the landlord. The City is using all the tools in its enforcement toolkit to try to assist the Emerson Tenants Union on this matter and will continue to do so.”

Speiller added that the Fair Rent Commission has also ​“informed leaders of the Emerson Tenants Union about the option of filing a Retaliatory Complaint Form and, if filed, is prepared to investigate and review the matter (the Notices to Quit) accordingly.”