A week after moving in downstairs, a Section 8 tenant and her children woke up to find a big foreclosure sign on the lawn. Upstairs, the Giargentis (pictured) are digging in their heels to hold their ground in the only place in America they’ve called home.
The two families are renters thrown into flux by landlords’ woes as a foreclosure crisis sweeps across the city and the nation. They live at 1062 Townsend Ave., one of over 50 New Haven properties that New Haven’s Foreclosure King, controversial landlord Anthony Perrotti, is letting fall back to the bank. A bank moved a step closer Monday to taking over the house, leaving tenants facing the prospect of eviction.
An estimated 788 New Haven homes are currently in various states of foreclosure, as communities across the state and country are feeing ripples of a mortgage and sub-prime lending crisis. The number of legal proceedings filed against residential homeowners jumped 85.1 percent, from 121 in the second quarter of 2006 to 224 in the second quarter of 2007, according to The Warren Group. The Independent is telling the stories behind those statistics.
Una Casa Nuova
Fifteen years ago, Enza Giargenti (pictured above at right, with her daughter, Eva Maria Soliz) and her family left behind the wild operatic streets of Naples, Italy, to meet her grandfather in a far-off town called New Haven.
The family — three daughters, a mother and father — piled into Enza’s grandfather’s house for a couple months before settling down at Townsend Avenue in New Haven’s East Shore neighborhood, where many a bocci ball game and red, white, and green flag can be found.
They filled a sunroom with plants, bought a large wood cabinet to hold dinner dishes, and painted the kitchen with a fresh coat of paint. When a baby came on the way, they put in great oak-paneled dividers to cordon off a quiet nook for the newest mother and child.
Cousin Alfanso bought the home, renting it to family. Footsteps scampered between the second and first floor, where Enza’s aunt and five cousins lived. After seven years, Alfanso couldn’t make the mortgage payments any more. Anthony Perrotti could. He was was building an empire of 240 apartments in the greater New Haven and Bridgeport area through Ottowa Enterprises.
Perrotti bought the home from the family in 2004. He jacked up the rent from $700 a month to $1,375 — a figure the family fought in court, arguing it down only to $1,300.
The new landlord crammed two more apartments into the three-family home, renting out living spaces in a newly converted basement and garage. Men who worked for Perrotti’s company moved in, according to the Giargentis.
Unlike Cousin Alfanso, Perrotti and his men weren’t around to fix the gaping hole in the screen window or reset the switch on the fuse box.
“We had a hole this big!” said Maria Giargenti, Enza’s mom, holding her hands up to show a circle the size of a child’s face. Windows went unfixed.
“Every time we ask them to fix something, they don’t do it,” said Enza, throwing in a few words in Napoletano across the kitchen table to her mother. “We call and they never come.”
Reached for comment Monday, Perrotti said he would call right back but never did. He failed to respond to questions for a previous story, as well.
A Surprise
Maria’s sister, who lived on the first floor with her five kids, got evicted over a fight with Perrotti over a light bill. A new tenant moved in, new to the neighborhood, fresh with hope.
Marsha Haynes, a Section 8 tenant on medical leave from her job as a nursing assistant, looked forward to the opportunity to have her son attend the Nathan Hale School. They moved in mid-August to the first-floor apartment, putting down a security deposit and at least a month’s rent.
A week later, she woke up to find a big sign in the yard: FORECLOSURE BY SALE. Her new landlord hadn’t told her the home would be changing hands, that he had been long overdue on his mortgage payments, that her future would be up to a new landlord.
Instead of setting up all the living room furniture in her new home, Haynes decided to leave some of it in storage.
“I’m scared to bring it home because we might have to move,” she said Monday afternoon, standing in the doorway with her hair tied back, tending to two kids just laying backpacks down from school. “We’re still in the dark, still waiting to see what’s going on.”
Door Slammed
Monday, the home came one step closer to turning over to HSBC Bank. The bank, the sole bidder, offered $290,000 on the home, which is worth $312,000, according to Attorney Americo Carchia, who supervised the Aug. 25 sale. That bid will be enough to cover the $264,000 Perrotti owes to the bank and the few thousand he owes in back taxes and water bills, Carchia said.
Carchia, who crisscrosses the city on Saturdays supervising foreclosure sales on peoples’ front lawns, said he’s seeing investors like Perrotti letting go of more and more homes lately. Many bought up properties in the last cycle of foreclosures in the early 1990s. As equity climbed, they took out second mortgages, freeing up money to buy more homes. They counted on that rising value for cash flow.
When the property values stopped rising, boom — “It slams the door” on the landlord’s plans, said Carchia. Landlords like Perrotti, who Carchia said appeared “overextended,” stopped being able to afford mortgage payments.
The rent on a home like 1068 Townsend Ave. was no longer enough to pay the bills.
“When it [the house] is not making any money,” reckoned Carchia, “they just walk away.”
A final deed was presented to a foreclosure judge Monday in New Haven Superior Court, with approval due to fall in another week.
“I’m Not Going To Move”
Upstairs at 1068 Townsend, the Giargentis said they’ve been given orders by both the bank and Perrotti to leave. In the last weeks of Perrotti’s tenure as landlord, he and the family and are fighting in housing court over the final months’ rent. Upstairs, the attic apartment lies empty, reeking of urine, the front lock broken.
Despite their being asked to leave, the Giargentis’ neat two-bedroom apartment showed no signs of change this week. A pot of fresh pasta sat on the stove, everything in its place.
“We’ve always lived here,” said Enza. “We fix everything, we keep it nice. Now they’re going to kick us out like we’re dogs?”
“This house means a lot to me,” said Maria Giargenti, wiping tears from her eyes. She looked around the room at the only home she’s known since she came to America. “I’m not going to move.”
Read previous Independent coverage of New Haven’s foreclosure crisis:
‚Ä¢ She’s One Of 1,150 In The Foreclosure Mill
‚Ä¢ Foreclosures Threaten Perrotti’s Empire
‚Ä¢“I’m Not Going To Lay Down And Let Them Take My House”
The following links are to various materials and brochures designed to help homeowners avoid foreclosure.
How to prepare a complaint to the Department of Banking; Department of Banking Online Assistance Form; Connecticut Department of Banking, Avoiding Foreclosure; FDIC Consumer News; Statewide Legal Services of Connecticut, Inc; Connecticut Bar Association Lawyer Referral Service.
For lawyer referral services in New Haven, call 562‑5750 or visit this website. For the Department of Social Services (DSS) Eviction Foreclosure Prevention Program (EFPP), call 211 to see which community-based organization in the state serves your town.
Click here for information on foreclosure prevention efforts from Empower New Haven.