Tenants Union Seeks To Buy Ocean Apts.

(Updated) Ocean Management is looking to sell a 70-unit Blake Street apartment building for nearly $14 million.

One of the property’s prospective buyers, if they can round up enough money in time, is that same building’s tenants union.

In a Tuesday afternoon press conference, members of the Blake Street Tenants Union — the first such renter collective to be legally recognized by City Hall — announced their hopes to buy the Elizabeth Apartments complex at 311 Blake St.

After first buying that property for $9.2 million in January 2022, an affiliate of the local megalandlord-property management company-real estate investment outfit recently put it up for sale for $13.95 million. One real estate listing on LoopNet identifies the property as ​“amidst a wave of gentrification” taking place in and around Westville. 

Vanguard Private Client Group, a New Haven-based brokerage firm, is working to sell the Elizabeth Apartments on behalf of Ocean Management. They’ve had ​“multiple interested parties,” Vanguard Vice President Andrew Stein said, including one that submitted a letter of intent, but the sale ultimately ​“didn’t work out.”

Ocean is open to selling to anyone, including the union, according to Stein. “[Vanguard] has been in discussion with the tenants union,” he said. ​“We’re willing to work with anyone, from private equity to non-profit” as long as the financing works and a sale gets done.

Elizabeth Apartments hits the market at a time when Ocean has sold dozens of its New Haven rental properties containing hundreds of different apartments over the past year and a half.

Members of the tenants union said on Tuesday they’ve been working toward forming a partnership with a local affordable housing nonprofit to try to buy and convert the property into a tenant-controlled co-op.

“To the potential buyer: you’re not buying some cushy investment,” Connecticut Tenants Union (CTTU) President Hannah Srajer said to the crowd of around 20 organizers and residents on Tuesday. ​“You’re committing to engage with the members of the Blake Street Tenants Union. We’re not a monthly check. We’re people with bodies, souls, and desires.” 

Jessica Stamp, whose role as steward of the Blake Street Tenants Union involves keeping track of incoming and outgoing tenants and doing logistical support for organizing efforts, is also a point person for coordinating response to health and safety problems. “[Ocean was] not doing anything” at first about ​“garbage cans overflowing in the laundry room, construction debris, exposed electrical wires, rusty nails,” Stamp recalled. ​“It wasn’t safe.” 

That is, until the tenants union formed. ​“Now we have rodents and cockroaches being treated,” Stamp said. Ocean also hired back one of the three superintendents it had dismissed when it bought the property, she said. There are still problems, including a lack of outlets in renovated bathrooms. In one case, poorly wired electricity in a newly redone apartment meant a tenant had to have her wall torn out. But now, the first line of defense is other tenants. As Srajer put it, when there’s a problem, first ​“you call Jessica.”

The tenants seemed happy about the way the union has changed their living situation. Nadine Jemmott had nothing but ​“positive things” to say about the tenants union, which welcomed her to the Elizabeth Apartments when she moved there from New York in mid-February. She now participates in door-to-door petitioning and canvassing with the union regularly. 

Sinclair McCutcheon, who’s lived at 311 Blake for four years, said union organizing has brought her closer to her neighbors. ​“We are better together,” she said in a speech at the press conference. ​“We’re gonna work together to make things happen.” 

The message to potential buyers from the Tenants Union? ​“Good luck trying to buy this place,” Srajer said. Then Sarah Giovanniello, vice president of the union at the Elizabeth Apartments, interjected, ​“Especially if you’re trying to raise the rent!”

Update: Neighborhood Housing Services of New Haven (NHS) Executive Director Jim Paley confirmed for the Independent on Wednesday that his affordable housing nonprofit had been working with the Blake Street Tenants Union, though it will not be able to put together a package with the tenants union to buy the Elizabeth Apartments at this time. He also said NHS looks forward to to working with CTTU on other similar housing deals in the future.