Self-Storage Crunch Reflects Renters In Flux

The line is backed up for spots at local self-storage centers — thanks primarily to college students leaving town for the summer, but also to rising rents and monopolization of the low-income real estate market.

That was the word from customers and staffers interviewed at city storage sites, where it has become difficult to land a spot to store belongings.

Bonnie Zapata was one of those customers. She put on a fresh pair of socks while sitting in the front passenger seat of an SUV parked outside of a self-storage site on State Street.

While Zapata currently lives out of her car, and her four children are living with a friend, most of her and her family’s belongings — furniture, clothing, even jewelry — are parked in a self-storage unit roughly 20 miles away in Bridgeport.

“We don’t have three months up front for rent,” she said about the difficulty of putting together enough cash to cover security deposit and first month’s rent for an apartment in New Haven’s hot housing market. ​“I can’t afford it. How we gonna live?”

Zapata, who has been homeless for two years, told that story Tuesday while parked in the surface lot in front of the U‑Haul self-storage and truck rental location at 1175 State St.

This reporter spoke with Zapata and a handful of other customers, visitors, and staff at self-storage sites across the city in an attempt to understand how the recent end to the federal eviction moratorium (since re-extended) and the persistent backlog for state rental relief have impacted those businesses and the individuals and families who use them.

A staffer at StorQuest at the corner of Ferry Street and River Street said that three families did come by the Fair Haven self-storage site on Monday for the explicit purpose of housing their belongings in advance of likely evictions. But at this point, no one with whom the Independent spoke said that the local self-storage market has seen a spike in demand from what could be a coming tidal wave of evictions.

That doesn’t mean these storage units are currently sitting empty.

Quite the opposite.

Staffers at StorQuest, the U‑Haul site at 83 Water St., and the U‑Haul site on State Street said that nearly all of their respective self-storage units are currently rented out and full.

That’s not unusual for this time of year, they said, as college students who leave New Haven for the summer make up the lion’s share of their business at this point in the academic calendar cycle.

“We’re a busy location,” one employee at the State Street U‑Haul site said. ​“We’re all booked up.”

“We’re 97 percent occupied,” said an employee at StorQuest on River Street. ​“Mostly because of college students.”

Recent visits to these self-storage sites reveal more than just the demand among local college students for places to store their property while they’re out of town for the summer.

Interviews with customers and employees also offer an on-the-ground look at New Haven’s booming housing market from the perspective of renters in flux — those on the move, temporarily stashing their belongings at a secure spot separate from where they live, seeking to relocate and in some cases rebuild their lives somewhere new.

While the state eviction moratorium has ended, Gov. Ned Lamont’s Executive Order 12D—which extends through Sept. 30—requires that landlords first submit an application to the state’s UniteCT rental relief program before they file to evict a tenant for nonpayment of rent. That executive order also extends the time that a tenant has to vacate an apartment for nonpayment of rent or lapse of time on a lease from 3 days to 30 days after a landlord first serves a notice to quit.

The CDC’s federal eviction moratorium, meanwhile, expired on Saturday — and was subsequently revived on Tuesday. The current moratorium extends through Oct. 3, and applies to areas of the country that currently have ​“substantial” transmission of Covid-19, including New Haven County.

“How We Gonna Live?”

As a lanky man with braided hair spoke energetically on a cell phone while pacing around the SUV, and as a woman in her 30s sat with her eyes shut in the vehicle’s backseat, Zapata explained why the three friends were currently living out of a car that, at least for the afternoon, was parked outside of a self-storage site on State Street.

“We’re homeless,” she said. ​“We’re living off of one check. It don’t add up.”

She said that she gets a Social Security disability check once a month for around $775. That and the money she makes via panhandling is nowhere near enough to afford an apartment in most parts of New Haven, she said, particularly when many places she’s looked have asked for first month’s rent plus two months’ rent for a security deposit.

Zapata said that she and her four children, who are currently staying with a friend of hers so that they don’t have to live on the street, store most of their belongings at a self-storage site in Bridgeport.

That costs around $300 per month, she said. ​“It’s a waste,” because she can hardly afford that much — and is always on the brink of not being able to make the self-storage payment, and therefore losing her belongings while not even having a home.

She said being homeless during the pandemic has been particularly difficult. ​“Nobody lets us in to use the bathroom or the shower. We’re humiliated.” While the city relocated hundreds of homeless people to area hotels for much of the pandemic, Zapata said that she and her two friends have spent the entire time sleeping outside or in their car.

Zapata said she used to have an apartment on Chapel Street, but ultimately left because she couldn’t afford the rent.

Over the course of the interview, she punctuated nearly every other sentence with the same exclamation.

“How we gonna live?”

“You’re Almost Like A Therapist”

By the back office and parking lot at the U‑Haul self-storage and truck rental site on Water Street in Wooster Square, Tyffany Cirillo offered a similarly exasperated take on the challenges of finding a safe, affordable apartment in New Haven.

“Overall,” she said about the city’s low and middle-income rental housing market, ​“it’s shitty.”

Cirillo has a unique vantage on New Haven rental housing. She was born and raised in the East Shore, rented apartments across the city in her late teens and early 20s, and currently lives in Bridgeport after being priced out of her home city.

She also works as the site manager at the Wooster Square U‑Haul site— where she hears frequently from customers who are fed up with their living situations and need to vent in between moves.

“Being in this job, you’re almost like a therapist,” she said. Sometimes people really unload about their experiences renting in New Haven.

Some of the most frequent complaints she hears from self-storage and truck rental customers is that realtors market apartments as if they are in tip-top condition. When the renter arrives, sometimes from out of state, the actual living space is in a poor state of repair. Even though the prices sometimes push $1,400 for a one-bedroom.

“It seems like there’s a lot of scammers,” she said.

She also hears frequently from renters who say the city’s largest property management companies — such as Mandy Management and Pike International — do not keep up with repairs and are difficult to get in touch with. And when a renter wants to move, she said, these growing companies own enough of the market that it’s difficult to find an apartment they don’t control.

“These management companies keep buying and buying all of these properties,” she said. ​“And they’re putting 2021 prices” on properties that feel decades old. ​“They need to make sure prices match what’s being offered.”

Taylor Perry, who swung by the Water Street site to pick up a rental truck Tuesday, offered a similarly critical take on New Haven’s rental market.

“Overall, a terrible experience,” she said. She’s in the process of moving from a Pike-owned property on Trumbull Street to an Ocean-owned property on State Street.

Her rent is slated to go up by more than 150 percent, from $970 for her current studio apartment to $1,500 for a one-bedroom. She said she was willing to swallow the dramatic price increase that comes with this move because she was impressed with the quality of her new apartment, and because she needed to get out of her old place after one too many disagreements over maintenance with her former landlord.

“My limit was $1,300,” Perry said about how much she was looking for in rent at a new apartment. But then when searching for a new place to live, she couldn’t find any apartment she would be happy moving into at that price — and so stretched for the higher $1,500 amount so that she could live in a place with all new appliances.

Cirillo also said she’s currently looking for apartments in New Haven, hoping to move back to her home city from Bridgeport. But first, she said, she has to find a place she can afford.

On The Move, To New Jersey

Meanwhile, out at the StorQuest site on River Street, Angel Carraco and Mireya Fernandez visited their newly rented self-storage site for one of the last times before they leave New Haven for good and try to find a new place to live, and work, in New Jersey.

Carraco and Fernandez said that they’ve lived in the same Ocean Management-owned apartment on Quinnipiac Avenue for two years.

Ultimately, rent proved too expensive and they got in enough disputes with management over maintenance — such as who was responsible for shoveling the driveway and sidewalk during snowstorms — that they’ve decided to leave.

Carraco, an auto mechanic, said he hopes to find a new gig fixing cars in New Jersey. Fernandez currently works in the Amazon warehouse in North Haven, and has managed to secure a relocation to a New Jersey warehouse so that she can keep her job even as the couple moves.

When asked for their thoughts on the expiration of the federal eviction moratorium, Fernandez said that — while she and Carraco are not currently, directly impacted — they do know a few people who are now on the brink of homelessness for being behind on rent.

Those include several of Fernandez’s colleagues at Amazon, Fernandez said, as well as her own mother-in-law.

“I feel like it’s pretty messed up,” Carraco said. ​“We’re trying to make $500 a week, but we still can’t find an an apartment. And if you can’t, you have to spend all your money on hotels.”

They said they’re not sure when they’ll be able to pick up their belongings from their newly rented storage unit on River Street. But, they said, they knew they had to get everything out of their former Quinnipiac Avenue apartment as quickly as possible so as not to incur another month’s rent, even after they had moved out.

Inside StorQuest, an employee confirmed for the Independent that, while many of the crowded facility’s customers are college students who have gone away for the summer, three families did indeed come by on Monday to store their belongings in anticipation of potential evictions.

“They said that, before they got evicted, they wanted to put their things away,” she said.