Aliyya Swaby Photo
Lorenzana with her son Marrero.
Erika Lorenzana watched her bathroom walls and ceiling crumble to the touch and reveal a severe mold infestation — moments after contractors supposedly finished repairing them.
As a result, a possible breakthrough emerged hours later in the festering and fast-moving housing crisis at the Church Street South housing complex.
Lorenzana is one of several tenants in the crumbling subsidized 301-apartment complex across from the train station who charge landlord Northland Investment Corp. is continuing to carry out much-needed repairs shoddily and illegally — even while pitching the city to raze and rebuild the development as a mixed-use building.
The city Wednesday night condemned a tenth apartment at the complex, meaning a tenth family is huddled in temporary quarters at La Quinta Inn & Suites on Sargent Drive. The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) this week threatened to take away some of the $3 million in annual rent subsidies from Northland if it doesn’t make major repairs, fast. Dozens more families may be out of apartments soon because of daily discoveries of extensive mold and water damage and broken roofs at the complex.
Thursday afternoon the head of New Haven government’s neighborhoods anti-blight agency, the Livable City Initiative (LCI), said the city might issue a new set of stop-work orders against Northland — for sloppily and dangerous “rushing” to patch up severe problems in response to 40-plus emergency repair orders.
“We are looking at issuing stop-work order notices because of the way they are doing repairs,” LCI chief Serena Neal-Sanjurjo said. “We are going to require them to think about the safety of the people in the apartments when they do the work.” She also said she worries about the release of mold in the apartments, and the general patchwork approach to repairs.
In the week of these developments, Northland has made two decisions, according to company Chairman Lawrence Gottesdiener:
• “Starting today, we will immediately coordinate repairs to all the legal aid units through their attorney, Amy Marx,” Gottesdiener reported in an email message to the Independent.
• The company will inform HUD that it will sign off having 50 of its rental subsidies transferred to other landlords — not as temporary “pass-throughs” with the plant hat families would return to repaired apartments, as first proposed, but as long-term “portable” vouchers.
“It is not clear that the condemned units can be made safe in a reasonable time frame, if ever. Northland will accept a long-term reassignment of the subsidies to other landlords,” Gottesdiener stated. Northland and HUD and city officials agree that much of Church Street South may be “obsolete” and beyond the ability to repair.
The questions are what to do in the short term for families both remaining there and moving out; and then who will rebuild the complex, and how. Gottesdiener this week pitched Mayor Toni Harp on letting Northland dust off a plan to build an 800 to 1,000-unit mixed-income, mixed-use complex there; Harp said she wants to Northland deal with the current crisis at Church Street South before entertaining such conversations.
The fallen section of wall in the downstairs bathroom.
Northland started the latest round of repairs at Lorenzana apartment’s last Friday, continuing to send workers throughout the next week.
The company is cutting corners in that process, said Lorenzana, who has been living at the complex for nine years. Instead of clearing out the mold, “lo cubren nada mas por encima,” she said. “They just cover it on top.” Her 18-year-old son Antony Marrerro is asthmatic and has developed an allergic reaction to the mold. She also has a 12-year-old daughter living with her.
Attorney Marx of New Haven Legal Assistance Association went to meet with Lorenzana Thursday to get a copy of her children’s medical documents, to try to get the family moved to a hotel. She arrived as workers were in the middle of repairs.
“We were totally taken aback by what we saw,” Marx said. “Work was being done to cover a substantial crack in the ceiling. They were preparing to spackle and paint over the crack to hide it.”
And in the downstairs bathroom, workers had just finished painting over drywall in one corner. There was a “four or five-inch gap at the base of the wall” in the other corner, the inside of which was “full of black crud” and wet with mildew, Marx said.
Lorenzana shows the ceiling gap, wet and full of mold.
She and Lorenzana poked the new construction material. It immediately crumbled, revealing “a rotted and mildewed bathroom wall,” Marx said. The ceiling, too, “fell apart to the touch,” she said.
Northland did not get permission from Lorenzana before sending workers over. It sent her an “open-ended letter” requesting to enter her apartment over a period of several weeks at any hour of the day.
Lorenzana and Marx said it was clear workers were rushing to get the work done before the next inspection.HUD plans to reinspect the entire complex in mid-September.
HUD sent Northland CEO Steven Rosenthal a letter of default this week, ordering the company to repair the condemned apartments, show that they are in “decent, safe and sanitary condition” and come up with a plan to fix structural “deficiencies” identified by the city. The city has ordered Northland to repair or replace 17 of the complex’s 19 roofs, among widespread other emergency fixes.
Marx said the work done on Lorenzana’s apartment was “detrimental to my client’s health.” She called over a work supervisor and “insisted he stop work and produce a written notice saying my client consented.” Marx said he refused to provide it, but said he had it.
Northland “inadequately” followed procedure and protocol, she said. If they find mold and mildew, workers are supposed to stop work, “isolate the area with plastic protective barrier,” in order to get the family out and safe, and come up with a plan to “remediate” the mold. Air quality in the apartment should be tested before the families return.
Instead, workers found mold in the wall and immediately patched over it while Lorenzana and her family were in the house.
Lorenzana said she hopes to be able to leave for a hotel as soon as possible. “No human being deserves to live like this,” Lorenzana said. “It’s not livable.”
Previous coverage of Church Street South:
• 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