Emily Hays Photo
Dara Rose outside court.
Dara Rose has a month to move out of her Mandy Management-owned apartment in Newhallville — and she is happy about that, after fighting her eviction in court.
Rose spent all of Tuesday morning in New Haven housing court at the state Superior Court building at 121 Elm St, waiting and worrying about what would happen to her.
“I don’t understand what’s happening. It’s spiraling out of control,” she said, listening for her name to be called.
Rose currently lives in an apartment building on Thompson Street off Dixwell Avenue. New Haven-based mega-landlord Mandy Management took over the building in November.
The complaint against Rose was that she stopped paying rent shortly after the switch in ownership and did not resume within the grace period.
In written answers to the court, she argued that she stopped paying rent because she was not getting heat or hot water at certain times of day. She also argued that the unwritten month-to-month lease with her new landlords was not legal.
Rose described having steady employment at Yale New Haven Hospital until last year, when she lost her job. She has been looking for a new one since. She said that she qualifies for government aid because of a mental health disability but has had trouble securing that income support.
She said that she wanted to stabilize her living situation and then move somewhere else — not because of Mandy, but because of disputes with family members that have led to harassment at her current address.
Like most tenants in housing court, Rose was representing herself on Tuesday. She looked over the balcony on the third floor of the court’s neoclassical building while other tenants and the lawyers assigned to various landlords headed into private rooms with the court’s trained mediators.
Since the 1990s, the state has appointed mediators to help housing courts run more smoothly. Mediation allows both sides more flexible solutions and compromises than they would have before a judge, who has to focus on the evidence in front of her, clerk Michele Nichols said.
“Ninety-plus percent of cases are able to find a common ground in mediation,” Nichols said. “It’s to the benefit of both landlords and tenants.” Legal aid lawyers, meanwhile, caution that without a defense attorney present, a tenant in mediation may not know to press for important protections like having final judgments drop nonpayment acknowledgements that make it harder to rent apartments in the future.
No Wiggle Room
Google Maps
Orchard Place.
Judge Claudia Baio handed down only one final decision from her bench on Tuesday morning.
A tenant named Cheryl Bell faced down her landlord, Peter Gadsby, and his lawyer Jeff Mastrianni of the Landlord Law Firm. They all agreed that Bell had not paid her rent in apartment off Goffe Street since November and that they had been unable to work out a solution through mediation.
When the judge asked Bell whether she had anything she wanted to add, Bell said no. The judge announced then that the landlord had won the case.
As Gadsby and Mastrianni began to leave, Bell asked what had just happened. Baio directed her down one floor to get more details from the housing office.
Because Gadsby won the case, Bell has five days to leave her housing unless she applies to delay her eviction for up to three months and pays $6,600 in back rents and fees.
Gadsby said that Bell had a Section 8 voucher until November, when the payments stopped. After that, it seemed that Bell did not try to provide the right information to get her Section 8 voucher back or start paying for her rent herself. (Bell had disappeared by the time the conversation ended.)
“We do not take legal action lightly. When a tenant doesn’t pay for six months, we have no wiggle room,” said Gadsby, who lives nearby.
An Agreement
At first, it seemed Rose’s case could also end up needing a judge’s referee call. Rose and a lawyer representing Mandy Management were unable to reach an agreement.
Then, just before Rose was about to be sworn in before the judge, a new Mandy lawyer arrived and asked if they could try again.
When Rose and Kevin Lynch of Weisman Law Firm emerged from the private room, Rose had a new glow and a quicker smile. Lynch declined to comment. They submitted a form detailing their compromise, then left the court.
Under the agreement, Rose can stay in her apartment until March 8 and does not need to pay for the three months since she stopped paying rent. Lynch also gave her a list of resources for financial assistance and other guidance.
“I’m happy,” Rose said. “We’ll see how it goes.”