Thomas Breen photo
Hearing officer Megna, with LCI attorney Bedosky: "That's a big fine for a two-family home."
A Queens-based landlord is on the hook for $25,500 in fines — after missing a City Hall hearing he said he didn’t know about, that concerned two LCI inspections he was surprised to learn he’d skipped.
That financial penalty, and landlord confusion, resulted from the latest quasi-judicial proceedings of a Livable City Initiative (LCI) volunteer hearing officer.
For two hours in a second-floor meeting room at City Hall on Wednesday, hearing officer Robert Megna heard case after case presented by LCI attorney Jonathan Bedosky involving landlords who have violated the city’s residential rental business licensing program.
Besides Monsey, N.Y.-based Barnett Brodie, no other landlords were present for Wednesday’s hearings. That’s because no other landlords on the the agenda for Wednesday had specifically requested to meet in person before a hearing officer so that they could dispute LCI’s findings.
Bedosky and Megna — supported by LCI director Liam Brennan, licensing program director Marta Arroyo, LCI attorney Sinclair Williams, and fellow LCI staffer Taylor Lambert-Perry — cruised through more than a dozen such “uncontested” cases, mostly involving landlords who had failed to register their rental properties with the city’s licensing program.
All of this marked the most recent effort by LCI, under Brennan’s leadership, to elevate the prominence of the city’s two-decade-old rental licensing program — by stepping up public communication about how it works, and by trying to enforce compliance through fines sanctioned by third-party, mayoral-appointed hearing officers. The program, first launched in 2006, requires landlords to register their multi-family rental properties and subject those properties to regular LCI housing code inspections — or else face potential fines.
By far the largest fine approved by Megna during Wednesday’s hearing went to Queens-based landlord Guo Hung Ho for a two-family rental property at 365 Poplar St.
Bedosky requested a $25,500 fine for Ho — equal to $100 per day for each day that has elapsed since LCI sent a civil citation to the landlord in mid-March. That civil citation concerned various “no-show, no-entry” missed inspection appointments from December and January.
Unlike most of the landlords who were fined on Wednesday, Ho does have a rental business license for his property at 365 Poplar.
Therefore, LCI sought fines to be levied against Ho not for his property being unlicensed, but instead because he hadn’t shown up to required LCI inspections. Because of those no-shows, Brennan told the Independent, LCI was not able to see if the landlord had addressed various “substantive” code violations found at this property — including a missing smoke detector in the rear hallway, an inoperable shower drain, a non-functioning lock on a rear exterior door, and a missing carbon monoxide detector in a first-floor rental unit.
Bedosky said Ho’s first inspection no-show was on Dec. 5, 2023; the second no-show was on Jan. 18.
LCI then sent Ho a civil citation on March 4, letting him know he’d be fined $100 per day. In a follow-up interview on Thursday, Brennan stressed that Ho received the civil citation via certified mail on March 15 — as indicated by a return receipt, which he said was signed by Ho.
The landlord “had knowledge all along that this could be coming?” Megna asked on Wednesday about the $25,500 fine requested by LCI.
Yes, said LCI’s Taylor Perry-Lambert. The text about $100-per-day fines is clear spelled out in the civil citation letter mailed to, and received by, Ho.
And so, Megna signed off on the requested $25,500 fine. “That’s a big fine for a two-family home,” he said.
Ho now has 30 days to pay this fine, or else LCI could seek a civil judgment in state court or place a lien on the property. LCI would also consider waiving the fine if Ho reached out to the agency and brought his property into compliance with the city’s residential licensing program, Brennan said. The goal of these hearings, Brennan stressed, is compliance with city health and safety codes.
Reached by phone on Thursday morning, Ho was startled to learn that he had been fined $25,500 by LCI on Wednesday at a hearing he claimed to know nothing about.
“That’s ridiculous,” he said about the fine amount. “We can’t pay that. Of course we [will] reach out to LCI” to figure out how to resolve this matter without having to pay such a hefty chunk of money.
He lamented that he was not alerted by email or phone in advance of Wednesday’s hearing. He also said he didn’t know that LCI believed he had missed two scheduled inspections in December and January for 365 Poplar. “Twice we didn’t show up? That’s doesn’t sound [right],” he said. “I don’t know what’s going on.” He did not recall receiving or signing for any civil citation in March.
Ho said he owns seven rental properties in New Haven, mostly two- and three-family buildings. “We have no problem with LCI. Once there is a violation, we always [fix] it as soon as possible,” he said. When “we know that they’re coming, we try our best” to comply with what LCI asks him to do. “We have a very good reputation with LCI.”
He criticized the agency for relying too much on print mail, when they have his email address and phone number readily at hand. “I know they’re doing their job. It’s good to enforce the safety, security [of] the apartments. We understand.” But still, they “should have done better to get the notification” to him — about the missed inspections in December and January, and about the hearing on Wednesday.
On Thursday, Brennan responded to those concerns by emphasizing that, once a civil citation is issued, “fines may be assessed without further notice.” That civil citation — which LCI mailed by certified mail, even though state law only requires them to use first-class mail — was received and signed for by Ho on March 15. “The citation is essentially the ticket,” Brennan said. “It is now on them to do anything else” — namely, to request an in-person hearing if they want to contest the civil citation. Otherwise, LCI is empowered to bring the matter before a hearing officer for a functionally procedural review of whether or not the agency followed all relevant laws when pursuing a fine.
Brennan agreed with Ho that LCI should do better about emailing civil citations to landlords, even though the law does not require it. He said LCI is working on getting up to speed with emailing and mailing such citations at the same time. That’s a “top priority.”
But, he said, the communication methods required by the law are what LCI followed. Ho should have been at the scheduled inspections, and he should have known about the potential for fines given the civil citation sent in March.
14 Others Fined At $1,500 Apiece
LCI in the house for Wednesday's uncontested hearings: Sinclair Williams, Marta Arroyo, Taylor Perry-Lambert, and director Liam Brennan.
The 14 other fines that Megna approved on Wednesday were all $1,500 apiece, and were handed out to landlords of unlicensed rental properties — that is, properties for which landlords hadn’t registered with the city’s residential rental business licensing program.
Those unlicensed rental properties consisted of two‑, three‑, and four-family rental homes located all over the city — from East Rock to the East Shore, from Fair Haven to Newhallville.
For each of those 14 uncontested cases involving unlicensed properties, Bedosky presented the same sets of facts to Megna before requesting a $1,500 fine.
Bedosky detailed when the first notice and set of exemption instructions were sent by LCI to the landlord, and then when the second notice and exemption instructions were sent, and then when the civil citation was issued.
He identified how long the current landlord had owned the property, and pointed out if and when that property had last been registered with the city’s licensing program.
He concluded each presentation by saying to Megna: “We would ask, if you agree, that you hold them [the unlicensed landlord] in default and impose the recommended fine.”
Megna then signed and dated a piece of paper for each of those 14 uncontested cases, approving $1,500 fines for each.
Some of those 14 landlords who were fined on Wednesday included Margaret Spillane, for the three-family house at 634 Orange St.; William Orjuela, for the two-family house at 97 Cedar St.; Simon Williams, for the three-family house at 269 Chatham St.; and Ronal Cotrina, for the two-family house at 178 Beacon Ave.