Aliyya Swaby Photo
The owner of the crumbling Church Street South complex has agreed to move six more tenants and their families into hotel rooms because of dangerous model and water int heir apartments.
This time the owner — Northland Investment Corp. — acted in response not to a city order, but to complaints from the tenants’ attorney, Amy Marx of New Haven Legal Assistance Association. The tenants include Erika Lorenzana (pictured above with son Marrerro); click here for a story about her experiences this week.
Northland has also agreed to do air-quality testing in apartments.
Northland already has moved 10 households out in response to some of the 40-plus emergency repair orders it has received from the city in recent weeks. The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has also declared Northland in default of its contracts for Section 8 housing subsidies because of conditions.
Some 280 of the complex’s 301 apartments were occupied before the recent events began. HUD plans to return in mid-September to inspect the entire complex, which is across from the train station.
Meanwhile Northland, legal aid and the city are engaged in a complex dance — figuring out:
• how to protect right now the health of dozens (or more ) families who still live amid squalid conditions at the complex. Marx is seeking to have Northland give tenants more notice before entering their apartments, as required by law, and document repairs.
• and how to move most or all the families off the premises while the complex gets overhauled or, more likely, torn down to make way for a larger mixed-income, mixed-use development. Northland’s chairman told the Independent he’ll agree to have many of the complex’s rental subsidies to reassigned to other landlords so tenants can move out for good; he also pitched a wary Mayor Toni Harp on agreeing to have Northland rebuild the development.
Lorenzana shows her apartment’s ceiling gap, wet and full of mold.
Previous coverage of Church Street South:
• Shoddy Repairs Raise Alarm — & Northland Offer
• Northland Gets Default Order — & A New Offer
• HUD, Pike Step In
• Northland Ordered To Fix Another 17 Roofs
• Church Street South Evacuees Crammed In Hotel
• Church Street South Endgame: Raze, Rebuild
• Harp Blasts Northland, HUD
• Flooding Plagues Once-Condemned Apartment
• Church Street South Hit With 30 New Orders
• Complaints Mount Against Church Street South
• City Cracks Down On Church Street South, Again
• Complex Flunks Fed Inspection, Rakes In Fed $$
• Welcome Home — To Frozen Pipes
• City Spotted Deadly Dangers; Feds Gave OK
• No One Called 911 | “Hero” Didn’t Hesitate
• “New” Church Street South Goes Nowhere Fast
• Church Street South Tenants Organize