Rats! Rent Ordered Dropped To Zero

The city’s Fair Rent Commission reduced a Dixwell tenant’s monthly rent from $675 to $0 until his landlord, Mandy Management, addresses longstanding problems with a studio apartment’s leaky roof and rodent infestation.

The commissioners unanimously voted to issue that rent reduction order during a public hearing held Tuesday night on the second floor of City Hall.

The commission, which is charged with reviewing complaints from city tenants about extreme rent increases and unsafe rental living conditions, made the decision after hearing from both tenant Henry Pizzaro and Mandy Management property manager David Schwartzberg about conditions at Pizarro’s studio apartment in the two-story, seven-unit building at 324 Goffe St. / 401 Sherman Ave.

Schwartzberg and Mandy attorney Shanique Fenlator provided three separate pest control invoices for work done at the apartment dating back to May 2018. Still, the commissioners remained convinced that the landlord has plenty of work to do.

That’s because Pizzaro himself and an April 26 Livable City Initiative (LCI) order described the apartment as still suffering from a collapsing roof, moldy walls, peeling paint, broken appliances, and rats running everywhere.

“After three extermination attempts,” Commissioner Doug Losty said, ​“they’re clearly not using the right technique.”

The commission’s rent reduction order goes into place starting June 1, and would be lifted as soon as a follow-up LCI inspection clears Mandy of all outstanding housing code violations.

Fair Rent Commission Executive Director Otis Johnson said that Pizarro first filed a complaint against the local megalandlord on April 10 of this year.

LCI’s file on the property, Johnson said, shows that the anti-blight agency first inspected the apartment in October 2018, then issued an order to Mandy to ​“abate the apartment of a rodent infestation, provide documentation of treatment, and plan for a licensed exterminator” within three days of the issuing of the notice. LCI also ordered Mandy to fix conditions causing a damp ceiling in the apartment within 21 days of the issuing of the notice.

LCI’s follow-up inspection at the property came on April 10, 2019. After that inspection, the department issued a housing code compliance order on April 26 that identified a number of outstanding problems: a broken bathroom fan and window; a persistent rodent infestation throughout the apartment; a damp and collapsing living room ceiling; and damp and moldy walls rife with peeling paint.

Pizarro has been living in the apartment for roughly three years and pays $675 per month in rent.

The commissioners asked Pizzaro if he had anything to add on top of the LCI notice.

“They sealed the holes, but the rats make new ones,” he said. ​“There are still holes in places they can’t reach.”

Roughly a month ago, he said, pest control employees came by the apartment, sealed a few holes, and dropped two bags of rat poison and two rat traps.

Last Friday, he said, a Mandy maintenance person came by the apartment to install a new oven and seal several more holes in the bathroom. Within days, he said, he could hear rats running through the walls again. Then he saw a few scurrying inside the new oven.

The roof is still falling apart, he said, and the walls are cracking. He hasn’t had a working smoke detector in years, he said. He struggles to make repairs himself because of physical and mental health issues.

“I been complaining about this every year,” he said. When he made his deposit three years ago, he said, Mandy promised to fix the roof. ​“They never did it.”

Schwartzberg and Fenlator provided the commissioners with the three pest control invoices from May 2018, April 4, 2019, and April 19, 2019.

Schwartzberg pointed out that Mandy pulled a building permit on May 16 to fix the roof. He said that work should be completed by next week now that a dispute with the roofers has been resolved.

What kind of dispute? Commissioner Elizabeth McCrea said.

A payment dispute, Schwartzberg clarified. The roofers were waiting to get paid by Mandy for other work completed. ​“At this point that situation has been resolved.”

As for the rodent infestation, Fenlator said that Mandy conducts routine inspections of its many properties to assess and address rat concerns, and that those inspections were done on top of the three specific pest control visits cited on Tuesday.

She asked Schwartzberg to elaborate on how frequently Mandy inspects its buildings for rat infestations. He shrugged and said he isn’t sure.

“Have you thought about doing the whole house?” Commissioner Howard Boyd asked. ​“Have you thought about treating the whole building from the basement up?”

“If this is something that’s going to be a continuous issue,” Schwartzberg said, ​“it’s obviously something we’ll have to address” For now, he said, Mandy is just looking to address the problems with Pizzaro’s apartment.

That likely isn’t good enough, Boyd said, because when a building has a rat infestation, targeting traps and poison in one apartment likely won’t get rid of the problem. The rats simply move to the basement, or some other cold and dark place, and hide out until the path is clear to return to Pizarro’s apartment or somewhere else where there may be food, moisture, and holes to scurry about through.

“You’re fighting one problem, but it’s being caused by another problem,” he said.

“I think that there’s more work that needs to be done as far as addressing the rodent infestation,” Fenlator conceded. That may include conducting a building-wide inspection and extermination.

“This is not something that’s going to be dragged out any longer or any further.”

After Pizarro, Schwartzberg, and Fenlator had finished offering testimony and had left the meeting, the commissioners briefly deliberated on what, if any, rent reduction order to issue for the case.

The deliberations didn’t last long. All four commissioners said they are confident that, based on Pizarro’s testimony, LCI’s inspections, and even the pest control invoices, all parties involved have known about a persistent rodent infestation and roof problems dating back at least a year.

They unanimously voted to reduce Pizzaro’s rent to $0 starting June 1 until the city finds Mandy to be in compliance with its April 26 housing code order.

“This is a year that this gentleman has been living under these conditions,” Commission Chair Albert Wise said. ​“Repairs were made, but not adequate repairs so as not to have this [infestation] continue.”