Landlord Standoff Stops Short Inspections

A fatal-fire-inspired inspection of another one of Jianchao Xu’s potential rooming houses came to an abrupt end when the landlord confronted the city crew on his building’s front porch.

“Why did you come here? Because I’m a colored person? Why did you single me out?” Xu asked, his phone’s camera pointing at Livable City Initiative (LCI) Executive Director Liam Brennan. ​“This is not a communist country.”

That tense encounter between Xu, Brennan, and a handful of city housing code and fire safety inspectors took place Tuesday afternoon outside of 56 – 58 Avon St.

The standoff ended with Brennan telling Xu that he legally cannot forbid his tenants from allowing city inspectors into his properties. He also urged Xu to bring his apartment buildings into compliance with city law by registering them with New Haven’s residential rental licensing program.

“I hope you have a very good day,” Brennan said, bringing the conversation to a close, ​“and apply for a license” for 56 Avon.

The city crew included LCI’s Javier Ortiz, the fire department’s Steve Martin and John Martinez, and the building department’s Bob Dillon, along with Brennan. 

They showed up as part of an Elicker administration effort to inspect all 22 of Xu’s local rental properties after an Oct. 6 fatal fire at a Xu-owned house at 516 Elm St. left one dead and displaced nine others.

That Elm Street fire was one of at least four that have taken place at Xu’s New Haven apartment buildings over the past two years — including at 38 Bishop St. in January 2023, at 370 Mansfield St. (also known as 43 Division St.) in October 2023, and at 58 Avon St. in November 2023.

The central initial finding of Tuesday’s interrupted tour concerned a potential unlicensed rooming house at 56 – 58 Avon. Xu shouted at this reporter, but did not answer questions for this article. 

The inspectors were on the lookout Tuesday for smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors. They also sought to identify potential code violations and other housing safety concerns. ​“We’re doing a proactive outreach” to residents, Brennan said, especially given ​“the history of what the city has gone through” with this landlord. 

(An initial investigation has shown that 516 Elm St. did have smoke alarms in the vicinity of where 32-year-old New Havener Kenneth Mims was found dead. Click here to read about the history of code violations and missed inspections at that property. Click here and here to read about some of the Bethany-based landlord’s track record in New Haven.)

56 Avon St. was supposed to be the second of up to seven planned inspection stops on Tuesday. 

It wound up being the last of the day — in no small part because of the city workers’ interaction with Xu himself. Brennan later told the Independent that, after the inspectors left 56 Avon for another one of Xu’s properties, Xu appeared to follow them around in his Tesla. They drove across the city for a little bit, with Xu following them. They decided to hold off on any other inspections for the day — to give Xu some time to ​“cool down,” and to not have Xu’s presence potentially deter tenants from talking honestly with the city inspector crew at their various stops.

The inspectors’ first visit on Tuesday was to a zoned six-family apartment house at 50 Nash St. Ortiz and Brennan knocked on the building’s front doors. The only tenant to open, holding a pit bull on a leash, said they couldn’t come in.

“I was told from the landlord no one’s allowed in here,” he said.

Brennan made clear to the tenant, who asked to remain anonymous, that the landlord cannot dictate whether or not renters let city inspectors into their homes. The tenant said that he too did not want the inspectors to come in. 

So Brennan, Ortiz, Dillon, and the others resigned themselves to inspecting the property just from the sidewalk outside. Ortiz took notes on a broken ground-floor window. Dillon counted the number of mailboxes — six, in line with the number of dwelling units this property is legally zoned for.

Nothing else jumped out to the inspectors as of immediate concern — besides, as Brennan pointed out, that 50 Nash St. is not registered with the city’s residential rental licensing program.

Recent eviction cases, however, point towards this property potentially being rented out by the room, as the defendants’ addresses are listed in the respective cases as ​“50 Nash St., Apt. 2L, Room 3” and ​“50 Nash St., Apt. 2R, Room 3.” Eviction records implied the same for 516 Elm, even though neither the Nash nor Elm Street properties are legally permitted rooming houses. And the building department has cited Xu in the past on at least one occasion for an illegal rooming house conversion, on Bishop Street.

A man who lives next to 50 Nash, meanwhile, and who asked to be identified only as a neighbor, said that it is ​“terrible” living next door to Xu’s building. Why? ​“Drugs. Noise. Just the infighting” among residents, he said. He called for the city to do a better job of enforcing health, safety, and housing codes — including at 50 Nash.

The crew then drove a few blocks north to Avon Street, where they were invited inside one half of the zoned six-family dwelling by a tenant named RJ.

RJ, a 71-year-old retiree who used to work in manufacturing, said that he rents just his own room — as opposed to a full apartment — at 56 Avon. He said that the other tenants also rent by the room. He said he’d never heard of this building referred to as a ​“rooming house,” but he figured that was an appropriate designation.

Another tenant, named Virgil Hoheb, was getting ready to make lunch — fried chicken, white rice and beans, vegetables — when the inspectors walked into the kitchen. Hoheb said he too rents just his individual room. He said he has no complaints with the landlord or the property.

The inspectors walked down the narrow first-floor hallway. Dillon tapped his fingers on the walls, talking with Brennan about a new plywood installation. That might be an indicator of more living spaces than allowed, he said. Dillon called his office to ask a colleague to check if 56 Avon St. has a rooming house permit.

56 Avon does not appear on a list of legally permitted rooming houses that the Independent obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request in July. Brennan also said that 56 Avon is not registered through the city’s residential rental licensing program.

The inspectors then walked down to the building’s basement, where Ortiz and Brennan said there is a furnace that might have been installed without the proper permits. That would require further city investigation, as well.

Otherwise, Ortiz said, the building appeared to have proper, working smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors.

RJ, one of the tenants at 56 Avon, said that the building used to be all full with tenants — until a November 2023 fire displaced some renters, leaving the 58 Avon half of the building unoccupied and under repair.

City building permit records show that the Xu-affiliated company that owns 56 – 58 Avon has pulled permits for a variety of electrical and residential rehab work since last November. An electrician on the front porch of the building on Tuesday said he had done some work at the site — and said that the owner, Xu, was inside the property at that very moment.

Sure enough, Xu emerged from the 58 Avon side of the property, confronting city inspectors for entering his property without his permission.

He pulled out his phone and challenged the inspectors on why, in his estimation, they were unfairly targeting him. ​“I escaped from a communist country” 30 years ago, he said. (Xu, who is also a doctor who has worked for Yale, has also been an outspoken critic of forced organ harvesting in China.)

Xu then looked past the inspectors, gestured towards this reporter, and accused me of ​“exploiting” his child. He yelled at this reporter, leading Brennan to make clear that whatever Xu was talking about in regards to me had nothing to do with Tuesday’s inspection.

A brief digression: Xu was referring to interactions I had with him while reporting a 2020 Independent article about how he refinanced a number of his local rental properties, years after he had sold off most of his apartments to Ocean Management.

For that 2020 article, I had tried to get in touch with Xu — but the phone number I called wound up being answered by a different family member of his. I tried several times to arrange a meetup at Xu’s Nash Street property with the person I thought was Xu, and printed in the initial version of the article that Xu had said he would come to such an interview, but never showed. 

After publishing that article, I was able to get in touch with Xu, who told me that I had been speaking not with him, but with his son, who is ​“mentally disabled.” 

Ever since, Xu — who employs a convicted sex offender as one of his company’s lead property managers — has accused me of trying to ​“exploit” his child. I have told him I was trying to do no such thing. He instead yells and threatens me with legal action.

On the sidewalk outside of 56 Avon on Tuesday, as the city inspectors huddled a few dozen feet away by one of their cars, debriefing on the visit and the tense interaction with Xu, this reporter asked Xu if he had any comment about the Oct. 6 fatal fire on Elm Street.

Xu turned around, his camera pointing at me, and shouted, ​“Fuck off!”

So, after all that, what was LCI’s takeaway from the day — and what comes next?

During a phone interview Tuesday night, Brennan ticked through a few follow-up items.

First, he said, LCI and the fire inspectors do plan on visiting Xu’s other New Haven rental properties soon, notwithstanding their calling off the rest of Tuesday’s visits when they found out Xu was following them.

As for 56 Avon, ​“obviously there was the potential rooming house situation,” Brennan said, which requires further investigation. Also, there is no residential rental program license for the property. And ​“there were additional construction items which we are looking further” into — such as the potentially unpermitted basement heating system.

A hearing officer is also scheduled to hold an uncontested hearing this Friday about a civil citation that LCI issued Xu earlier this year for failing to show up to two residential rental licensing program inspections at 516 Elm St. If approved by the hearing officer, that citation could result in fines worth $100 per day.

Tuesday’s outing ​“underscores the importance of doing inspections, and of our licensing program,” and making sure that program has ​“real consequences for landlords,” Brennan said. ​“The fact that there are these preemptive inspections that have to occur” through the residential rental licensing program ​“prevents some of the problems that we have seen.”