Anthia Christian just wanted to talk to the zoning board about parking spaces at 920 Elm St. The conversation turned to a shooting in front of the house, empty crack bags in the gutter, and a dirty diaper on the lawn.
Christian (pictured) came before the Board of Zoning Appeals on Tuesday night looking for permission to convert her two-family property at 920 Elm into a three-family house.
Several neighbors also showed up, to speak out against her request. The house has been a source of parties, drug abuse, and trouble, they said.
Christian countered that the complaints are the result of friction between two different groups of local residents — homeowners and renters subsidized under the federal Section 8 program.
Christian’s proposal requires permission to have zero parking spaces where one is required. Since parking is an issue, the matter was not voted on by the board and instead referred to the City Plan Commission. The BZA will vote on it next month.
Christian, who lives in Orange, has said that she owns 21 properties in New Haven. The building in question is one of three contiguous properties that she owns on Elm Street. The house was damaged in a February fire that led to a confrontation between Christian and representatives of the Livable City Initiative (LCI). It has been unoccupied ever since.
Prior to the fire, LCI cited Christian repeatedly for a number of offenses, including illegally operating three apartments in a two-family house. Christian said at the time of the fire that the third floor was sometimes used by “friends,” but never by “tenants.”
Christian’s attorney, Philip Ball (at left in photo), told the BZA that Christian purchased 920 Elm through foreclosure in February of 2007 for $262,000, “with what she thought were three approved units.”
Christian has been fixing the property up since the fire and now “wants to bring everything into compliance… clean up the loose ends on the property,” Ball said. That means getting permission to have three units.
Ball argued that there is plenty of on-street parking to accommodate Christian’s tenants.
But the opposition didn’t want to talk about parking.
Edgewood Alderwoman Liz McCormack was the first to speak out against Christian’s request. She said that there have been “numerous problems” at 920 Elm, including “a shooting at that address.” The police have been called for noise, McCormack went on, LCI has been called numerous times, and there have been “crack cocaine bags in the gutter on a regular basis.”
Christian “cannot handle what she has now,” McCormack said. She urged the board not to allow Christian to take on more tenants.
“It’s not evident that the house is being fixed up,” said Carla Horowitz, who lives nearby at 60 Hobart St. She said that Christian’s three Elm Street houses are “going to rack and ruin.”
“The idea that there’s crack cocaine bags found in the gutter has no implication for this property,” Ball responded when it was his turn to speak. He conceded that LCI has had complaints about the property but said that they were baseless. He mentioned LCI’s citation for ice on the sidewalk, saying that the ice was a result of water used from firefighters extinguishing the fire.
Another LCI complaint, Ball went on, was that there was a dirty diaper on the lawn. “No one in the building had a child of that age,” he said.
Christian had also been written up for “not having good enough grass,” Ball said, drawing a chuckle from the audience. The attorney explained that he hadn’t meant that kind of grass.
Christian, who had been seated in the audience, stood up at this point to protest that the shooting had taken place not in front of her house, but across the street.
“I consider myself an asset to New Haven,” Christian said. “I’m not a flipper.”
She went on that the real problem was that her house is located in a “transitional neighborhood,” where residential homeownership meets Section 8 housing, causing “constant friction and schism.”
“She’s used that argument before and it doesn’t hold water,” McCormack said after the meeting.
“It’s a mixed neighborhood,” said Horowitz. She said that her neighbors are Chinese, black, and Jewish. “We’ve all lived there perfectly happy.”
Since Christian has owned the house, there’s been “a lot of traffic, a lot of activity,” Horowitz said. “A lot of parties… people going in and out…using foul language.”
“They’re not taking care of the house,” she said.