Slumlord Doc Bails, Profits

Prominent nephrologist Jianchao Xu is dumping his rundown New Haven rental properties, and almost doubling the money he shelled out to buy them.

Xu, who lives in Bethany and has spoken out publicly against organ-harvesting in China, came to the attention of city housing inspectors for the dangerous conditions at some of the New Haven properties he bought in recent years. Of the dozens he has purchased, many were rented out to low-income tenants under the federal Section 8 subsidy program.

After this Independent article revealed the problems at his properties last November, Xu promised in an interview to do better.

Instead, in recent weeks, he has sold much of his portfolio to a partnership run out of a growing New Haven poverty-landlord outfit called Ocean Management.

Ocean has been negotiating with Xu to buy around 25 of his properties, Danielle Trivers, a manager at the company, said in a conversation at its 50 Fitch St. offices. They haven’t yet closed on some of the properties, she added.

City land records list at least 19 sales of properties owned by various partnerships formed by Xu — partnerships with names like 56 Avon St. LLP, Nash Street New Haven LLP, 38 – 42 Bishop LLP — to entities run by Ocean Management, entities with names like Adama Real Estate Holdings LLC, Shadmit LLC, Panorama Real Estate, Super Zen LLC, and GZL Estates.

Xu’s companies bought those properties, in some cases out of foreclosure or probate, late last month for a total of $1.957 million.

He sold them for $3.7 million, based on calculations of conveyance taxes listed on warranty deeds in the land records. (The deeds don’t list the actual sales prices straight out.)

Xu promised to improve conditions at the properties, many of them already crumbling from past owners’ neglect, while he shoveled in Section 8 rents on an estimated 60 – 70 percent of his units.

Instead, neighbors kept complaining to their alder, Richard Furlow, and city inspectors, who found rotted porches, overflowing garbage, broken windows, a padlocked window, and rodent infestation.

Xu did not return calls for comment for this story.

“What We Do”

The main partner in the Ocean Management enterprise, Mendy Katz, is currently out of the country for the Passover holiday, according to manager Trivers. He did not return a request left for a call for comment. The main partner of the investment companies that purchased the properties and manages them through Ocean is listed as in land records Shmuel Aizenberg of Brooklyn, New York.

Trivers said the company intends to fix up the trashed properties.

“This is what we do. We want to clean it up,” she said. Crews ​“cleared up five or six Dumpsters full of garbage” already on some of the premises, she said. They’re preparing to put new siding up at 16 of the buildings. They’re also starting to tackle eight violations listed at the properties ranging from mice and roach infestation to holes in walls and problems with fire alarms and electrical outlets.

She said Ocean is responsible for ​“probably 200 properties.”

Tenants on Blake Street, where Ocean just took over three battered Xu-owned multi-families, welcomed the doctor’s departure as their landlord.

“I’m surprised anybody would buy” the houses, said Ruth Jackson, 90, who lives at 56 – 8 Blake, which Xu bought in 2012 for $134,000 and sold for $225,454.

“No matter what we had to get done, I had to get my sons to do it,” Jackson said. Complaints about roaches, leaking bathroom ceilings, broken tiles produced no results with the landlord, Jackson said.

“Look at this— I fixed this two times it leaks from upstairs,” her son David said, pointing to stains and peeling paint in the bathroom ceiling.

The grouting was shot in the bathtub, which is too dangerous for an elderly woman to bathe in, David and Ruth Jackson said. So she doesn’t.

“He just wanted the money,” Shanitha Davis, who rents a two-bedroom apartment for $1,060 a month in another Xu-to-Ocean building on the same Blake Street block. ​“He would always say, ​‘I’ll send somebody.’ Nobody every came.”

“I hope whoever the new owners are,” Davis said, ​“they try to do some repairs.”

On The Radar

The city’s building official, Jim Turcio, plans to keep watch.

His office issued a stop work order against Ocean last September for work done without a permit at 336 Legion Ave. It issued a violation order against the company after finding an illegal dwelling unit, with unsafe conditions, occupied there.

“We’re chasing him on every permit — when he pulls one,” Turcio said. ​“He’s very much on my radar right now.”

The office issued a cease and desist order against Ocean after finding an illegal auto repair business operating in the rear of 112 Sherland Ave. That was last September.

This week the office was back at 112 Sherland. So was the fire department.

A fire broke out on the first floor there at 11:44 p.m. Monday, and spread to the attic, according to Assistant Fire Chief Matt Marcarelli. The first floor was unoccupied. Three children and an adult living upstairs were displaced.

Fire investigators haven’t yet determined the cause of the fire, Marcarelli said. ​“We’re focusing on the electrical system.”

Turcio’s department has sealed off the property and declared it unsafe for human habitation.