When an Exchange Street tenant stayed past the end of her lease, her landlord filed an eviction — even though federal Section 8 vouchers still covered her full monthly rent. Now a judge has given the tenant and her family three extra months to find a new place to live.
The judge, Walter Spader, who was filling in for state housing court Judge John Cirello, heard the Exchange Street case on Thursday morning. He issued a stay of execution allowing the tenant to remain in her home until March 31st, providing her with more time to search for alternative apartments.
The tenant in question said she has rented her apartment in the sand-colored two-family home on Exchange Street since 2008. When she first moved in, a small landlord owned the house. On Jan. 21, 2021, an East Haven-based real estate company called Lionheart Holdings Group purchased the property and soon transferred it to an affiliated limited liability corporation called MML Investments.
Later that year, after the tenant’s lease expired, MML Investments declined to renew the rental agreement — and instead moved to evict the tenant in mid-August of 2021.
MML Investments’ primary claim against the tenant is not that she wasn’t paying full rent, but that she overstayed her lease. The original complaint also alleged that four unauthorized tenants were living in the apartment as of August. Since then, the case has been amended to suggest that only one additional person was living in the apartment.
The tenant did not wish to speak more about her experience when contacted after the hearing.
The tenant said in court that she hopes to find a three-bedroom so her daughter and grandchildren can live there as well. “I’ve been through the [rental search] sites … I just need a little more time.”
“It might be easier to look for a one-bedroom,” the judge observed, noting that the tenant’s daughter could search for a separate place for herself and her children.
Ian Gottlieb, the attorney representing MML Investments, questioned whether the tenant had made an earnest effort to search for a new place to live. “My concern is the dragging of the feet … We’re going on quite some time” since the first eviction notice was posted in August, he said.
When asked by the judge, the tenant stressed that she has been searching for an apartment since August. The apartment search has been difficult due to multiple chronic illnesses, including lupus and fibromyalgia, she said, which pose a higher risk for serious Covid-19 infections. She said she has been in and out of the hospital since the eviction process first started.
“I don’t want to be in a place where I’m not wanted,” she said.
Lapse-Of-Time Evictions Rising
Why would a landlord seek to evict a tenant whose full rent is guaranteed each month by a federal program?
Thursday’s hearing offered little insight into MML Investments’ decision not to renew the lease for the house’s longtime tenant, and Menahem Lebenhartz, who runs Lionheart and MML Investments, did not respond to requests for comment.
Shelley White, a housing attorney with the New Haven Legal Assistance Association who frequently works on eviction cases, said that “lapse-of-time” evictions — in which a landlord decides not to renew a tenant’s lease and requires them to leave — might happen for a number of reasons.
Since late June, the state has allowed lapse-of-time evictions during the pandemic to go through as long as landlords notify tenants 30 days in advance, per Gov. Ned Lamont’s Executive Order 12D.
“We’ve seen more and more landlords that are doing this,” White said. She surmised that some landlords pursuing lapse-of-time cases might be attempting to leave the Section 8 voucher rental-subsidy program. “That’s a deep concern because that is source-of-income discrimination.”
Many landlords like renting to Section 8 tenants whose full rent is covered, since they can rely on a guaranteed stream of monthly rent, White said. But Section 8 also requires a twice-yearly inspection of the home, adding quality-of-life enforcement that some landlords might not want to handle.
The landlord might also want to raise the rent. White said she has noticed a trend of lapse-of-time evictions that occur when landlords purchase new properties, inherit tenants receiving Section 8 vouchers, and believe they can raise the rent significantly more than what the Section 8 program might approve.
According to the Connecticut Fair Housing Center, lapse-of-time eviction filings between August and November 2021 increased by 106 percent, compared to the same months in 2019.