Aliyya Swaby Photo
DeLauro, Harp, Murphy at Tuesday’s press conference.
Spurred by revelvations about failures at New Haven’s Church Street South complex, a new federal bill might give the government more tools to police housing standards and penalize owners who don’t comply in subsidized apartments across the country.
U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy and U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro joined Mayor Toni Harp Tuesday morning to call on Congress to pass the bill to improve federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) housing inspections and living conditions at HUD-assisted housing, by adding new language to an appropriations bill to be presented to the House of Representatives if it passes in the Senate.
Pitched by Sen. Murphy, the bill passed the Senate Appropriations Committee April 21.
Local and federal officials are currently working on finding permanent new homes for the hundreds of families being moved out of untenable living situations at Church Street South, conditions that persisted as HUD sent millions of dollars of years to a private owner and giving that owner passing grades on inspections.
“The relocation is painstakingly underway,” Mayor Harp said Tuesday. She said the lessons learned in New Haven could prevent others nationwide from going through what Church Street South families underwent for years.
Murphy.
Murphy said Tuesday that there was “no excuse” for HUD to have taken so long to give those families other living options. The situation at the complex brought to light the “total inconsistency” of the HUD inspection process.
Although city agencies were repeatedly failing the complex, HUD inspectors gave it a passing score of 80 in 2014, meaning it would not have to return to the property to inspect it for another three years. Only after New Haven Legal Assistance filed suit and called for a reinspection did HUD return in 2015 and give Church Street South a failing score of 20.
“HUD inspectors were simply looking at units they were directed to by the owners of the property themselves,” Murphy said. “There’s no way this property should have been deemed habitable.”
The Senate Appropriations bill calls for three major changes:
• HUD should take prompt action when violations are found at housing units like Church Street South, so families don’t have to withstand long delays. At the end of 90 days, after a violation, HUD has to decide whether to request another developer, levy sanctions against the current owners, and/or remove tenants from the units.
• HUD must add to its inspection criteria problems including lead, asbestos and black mold — which are not currently an adequate part of the process for determining whether a unit is safe.
• HUD must look at all of the units, not just ones chosen by the developer.
Murphy said he has gone to HUD Secretary Julian Castro about the proposal. But having Congress on record telling the federal agency to change its inspection process will make the process of change go faster, Murphy said.
Rep. DeLauro said Connecticut has some of oldest housing stock in the country, which needs to be kept safe and livable for families. The House is working to add that language to its HUD funding bill, which has not yet been completed, she said.
HUD should also have more ways to penalize owners with numerous violations in multi-family housing projects, DeLauro said. That could include replacing project managers, imposing civil penalties, stop Section 8 contracts or transfer them to another project.
Though HUD was able to use some of those penalties in the past, it often used them as a last resort, she said. This would prompt the federal agency to take action earlier in the process. “We’re going to make sure they know they have the authority and to move quickly,” she said.
Murphy, Marx.
New Haven Legal Assistance lawyer Amy Marx, who represents more than 100 Church Street South families and filed the suit that prompted government action, said she is “delighted that the problem is being addressed at the highest levels.”
The proposed national reform is a “great first step,” she said. But she would urge lawmakers to require that the inspection process also include tenant participation. Without checking with tenants, federal inspectors would have no way of getting “accurate information” about the units they see. Tenants can speak to longstanding, recurring issues with the apartments — preventing a “patch and paint” approach toward fixing deeper structural problems.
One of Marx’s first clients, Laynette Del Hoyo, had severe water damage and mold in her apartment. Yet an early HUD inspection only noted a mild presence of mold and mildew and it was deemed safe. A July 8 local anti-blight agency Livable City Initiative inspection found 22 violations that needed to be fixed.
Laura Maloney, Murphy’s spokesperson, said the provisions do address tenant input, by directing HUD to get comments from stakeholders such as tenants to figure out how to improve oversight.