Paul Bass Photo
Church Street South: Headed for wrecking ball.
(Updated Tuesday 3:50 p.m. with a comment from Premiere)
First it was mold and leaking water and crumbling staircases.
Now it’s a swarm of incoming parents of Yale undergraduates that is sending up to 30 Church Street South families packing and headed for yet another temporary place to live.
The families have been staying at Premiere Hotel & Suites on Long Wharf since the city condemned their apartments at Church Street South, the crumbling 301-unit subsidized apartment complex across form the train station. They and other families temporarily housed in hotels have struggled to get their kids to school, shop, and make doctor’s appointments while they remain in limbo and officials seek long-term new housing for them.
Church Street South’s Massachusett-sbased owner, Northland Investment Corp., is paying for their hotel rooms by order of the city.
On Monday the families at Premiere learned that they have to ship out on Thursday for hotel rooms in Hamden. Because dozens of out-of-towners had previously reserved the rooms through Sunday — for Yale Family Weekend.
The news upset tenants like Luz DeJesus.
“I’m a sick person, and my son’s sick,” said DeJesus, who is on dialysis. “I can barely move around here. My daughter’s school’s here. My son’s school’s here. It took us a week and a half for the school system to get the buses here. What are we going to do with the kids? I don’t [have] trasnportation. It’s going to be hard for a lot of parents.”
“We just got our kids’ transportation here. We don’t have cars. We can’t get to Hamden back and forth. The bus is not going to come all the way out there to pick them up,“ remarked fellow Church Street ex-tenant Diane Turner. Turner said the families heard that as many as 13 might have to stay in Hamden.
Northland Chairman Larry Gottesdiener (pictured) called the move “very disruptive and unfortunate.” He said Northland learned of the prior Yale reservations only this week and was caught by surprise.
He called the situation “unavoidable.”
“Most or all will come back” on Sunday, Gottesdiener said of the families. “Northland will handle all transportation.”
A staffer at Premiere late Thussday afternoon said the manager had gone home for the evening. The staffer stressed that the Yale parents had booked the rooms long before the arrival of the Church Street South families.
Any thought given to asking the Yale parents to find other hotel rooms given the emergency?
“One thing about Yale parent weekend,” the staffer responded. ” Once they book these suites, they don’t give them up easily.”
The company emailed a statement to the Independent Tuesday afternoon. It read:
“Premiere Hotel and Village Suites is thrilled to have been able to accommodate these families after they were unfortunately and permanently displaced from their homes.
“Ideally, we would love to be able to accommodate all current and incoming residents this weekend. Given our volume of advance and prepaid bookings at the hotel, we are pleased to have found alternate housing for these families locally, and we are looking forward to welcoming them back on Monday. The entire team at Premiere Hotel and Village Suites remains committed to helping these families find permanent homes within our community.”
A spokesperson said, when contacted by phone, that she expects all families to be back at Premiere SUnday or Monday.
Previous coverage of Church Street South:
• Church Street South Getting Cleared Out
• 200 Apartments Identified For Church Street South Families
• Northland Asks Housing Authority For Help
• Welcome Home
• Shoddy Repairs Raise Alarm — & Northland Offer
• Northland Gets Default Order — & A New Offer
• HUD, Pike Step In
• Northland Ordered To Fix Another 17 Roofs
• Church Street South Evacuees Crammed In Hotel
• Church Street South Endgame: Raze, Rebuild
• Harp Blasts Northland, HUD
• Flooding Plagues Once-Condemned Apartment
• Church Street South Hit With 30 New Orders
• Complaints Mount Against Church Street South
• City Cracks Down On Church Street South, Again
• Complex Flunks Fed Inspection, Rakes In Fed $$
• Welcome Home — To Frozen Pipes
• City Spotted Deadly Dangers; Feds Gave OK
• No One Called 911 | “Hero” Didn’t Hesitate
• “New” Church Street South Goes Nowhere Fast
• Church Street South Tenants Organize