Eighteen Mexican immigrants sharing a rundown Elm Street house have called in activist John Jairo Lugo (pictured with them in bottom photo) to stand up to their landlord about code violations (like hanging wires from a missing ceiling, above). The landlord — an immigrant herself — says she was trying to help them and now feels burned enough to rent to Yalies instead.
“No es un departamento, es una cueva!” Lugo declared during a visit. “This isn’t an apartment; it’s a cave!”
He was referring to the Dwight house’s basement — a dank, low, unfinished space with a wire-strung ceiling, chunks of exposed wall, and heating appliances marked flammable interspersed with the few pieces of worn furniture. The dim apartment is a home to six.
“This is illegal, and so is this,” said John Lugo, taking notes on what he said were flagrant violations of housing code — like the apartment’s lack of an independent entrance, and the toxic and fire hazards associated with its unfinished state. “Just look at this!” he said, drawing back a curtain in the wall to reveal a makeshift sleeping quarters. “This woman is taking advantage of people’s need,” he said.
Lugo, an organizer with the immigrant rights group Unidad Latina en Acci√ɬ≥n, is often called upon to give legal advice to New Haven’s non-citizen Latino populations. In this case, he had been contacted by the top-floor tenants of the Elm Street house, on complaints of no heating, no hot water, and no straight answers from their landlord.
“We called her about the heating and she said she would fix it, but she never did,” said a young resident who introduced himself as Carlos.
Together with his three apartment-mates — whom Lugo playfully nicknamed Pepito, Juancito, and Panchito, for the sake of their privacy — Carlos pays a monthly $1,100 in rent. They had understood from an original spoken contract (“contrato de palabra”) that the rate would include all utilities, but now they say they are paying for gas and electricity — without always getting them.
To Lugo’s question whether the utilities were in their names, Carlos answered, “No, she charges us. She won’t show us the bill.”
The four presented themselves as an example of how hard it is to get a fair deal in a new country and over a language barrier. After living in the apartment for two years, they knew only a first name for their landlady — who also continued to use her own keys to enter the house unannounced, they said. ‘Pepito’ said he knew she wasn’t supposed to do that, “But when you don’t speak any English — ¬¶”
The landlady, who asked to be called just Kay, had a different story. She said her upstairs tenants had known from the start that their rent didn’t include expenses, that they were failing their obligation to refill the oil tank, and that their unpaid electricity bills were running up her bad credit.
“No I didn’t give them a contract. How could I give them a contract? They had no ID,” said Kay. “I begged them to put the lights in their name, but they don’t have social security numbers. They kept saying they’d do it, but the lights were on my credit!” She pointed out on a recently-copied lease, produced for the electric company before they would switch the billing names, where it said the renters were responsible for heat and electricity. “You know what? I’m going to copy this and give it to them,” said Kay.
About the basement, she said she’d given friends of her downstairs tenants permission to fix it up, and agreed to 15 days rent-free. “I said I’d buy the sheet-rock, and then you’re on your own. They took sheet rock and made two rooms. Like my basement, which I’m fixing up, too,” said Kay. “[People in the neighborhood] were mad at me, in the first place that I had nine guys living upstairs, and then the others. But they had nowhere to stay. Everybody needs a break!”
An immigrant herself from Jamaica, she said she was trustful by nature and as a result she was being taken advantage of. “In Jamaica, we’re like that. In Jamaica, you have a piece of yarn, you still give it to your neighbor.” She remembered shared barbecues and friendly relations when “the boys” first moved in, and said that for four months a sister of one of them lived in a room in her own house, for $100 a month. “But they switch on you. They come here and get Americanized and they’re switching on you. They think they’re shrewd,” said Kay.
“I work too hard for this,” she said. “I’m going to rent the house out to Yale students. I don’t want to be taken to court, not at my age.” She said she would be willing to talk to a mediator, but threatened to call her lawyer if the renters weren’t up front about whether they were staying or leaving, and if they didn’t take responsibility for bills. “I don’t need trouble. I work too hard. And they’re complaining? You know what, I’m going to put the house up for sale, I’m moving to Florida,” said Kay.
As unsatisfactory as it was to its tenants, the Elm Street house was far from the worst Lugo had seen. “Some of the houses in Fair Haven, whew!” he said, citing mold-darkened walls and cockroach infestation.
“They think you’re scared, and they take advantage of you,” said Lugo, lumping higher authorities in with landlords, in some cases. “The police come, abuse you, and you don’t know your rights.” He extended an invitation to the Elm Street tenants to come to the Monday meetings of Unidad Latina, where he said the community was getting educated and organized. “We’re immigrants working with immigrants, claiming our rights,” he said.
Before his visit was over, John Jairo Lugo arranged to intervene on the tenants’ behalf, giving the landlady another chance to address the problems before going to the housing court. “She’s been violating the laws all over the place, and she still wants to threaten them,” said Lugo. He recognized that she could kick Carlos, Pepito, Juancito and Panchito out if she chose, but “there would be trouble for her, too.”
As of Monday morning, Lugo still hadn’t reached Kay. Kay said the upstairs electricity had been switched into the renters’ names just that day, but said she thought she still might tell them to leave by the end of the month. “I might want them all out. I was an immigrant to this country, too. I don’t want to be bothered by this.”
The truth, Lugo said, was that he didn’t want the case to go to court either, “because they’ll do inspections, and find out about the circumstances of all the people living there.”