An Eyesore Becomes Hope For Renewal

City plans to convert vacant Newhallville properties into affordable owner-occupied homes took another stride forward, as alders signed off on the public purchase of a long-blighted three-family house at the corner of Winchester Avenue and Starr Street.

Local legislators took that vote Tuesday night during the latest bimonthly meeting of the full Board of Alders. That meeting was held online via Zoom and YouTube Live.

Alders unanimously approved an order allowing the Livable City Initiative (LCI) — the city’s anti-blight, housing code enforcement, and neighborhood development agency — to purchase 558 Winchester Ave. from 558 Winchester Avenue LLC for $155,000.

LCI Acting Executive Director Arlevia Samuel told the Independent Wednesday that her agency plans to redevelop that property into a new income-restricted, owner-occupied residence.

She said LCI won’t know until city inspectors actually go inside the boarded-up, three-family property whether or not the current structure needs to be demolished and built up anew, or if perhaps it can be gut-rehabbed and left standing.

“If it can’t be rehabbed,” she said, ​“then we’ll knock it down.”

What she is confident about, however, is that the long-blighted eyesore at the corner of Winchester and Starr will soon become yet another affordable homeownership opportunity. That’s thanks to a broader city-led, publicly-funded neighborhood rebuilding initiative that has already seen nine new deed-restricted affordable homes sprout up atop vacant lots on Winchester Avenue and Thompson Street.

“We’re going to transform the place, one block at a time,” Samuel said. ​“We’re first looking at property we own, of course. But if there’s something right in the middle and we can acquire it and transform it along with the others, then all the better.”

She said the planned 558 Winchester Ave. project will be a part of the state- and federally-funded Thompson/Winchester Phase II Homeownership Project. Just as with the new two-family houses built as part of Phase I, the prospective new residence at Winchester and Starr would come with a 30-year deed restriction requiring occupancy by an owner making no more than 80 percent of the area median income (AMI).

The $155,000 to be used to buy the property will come from LCI’s annual acquisition fund, filled with federal dollars from the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program.

The city currently has $254,000 in that fund, according to Samuel. After the 558 Winchester purchase, it will have roughly $100,000 left for the fiscal year. (Click here to read the city’s full five-year consolidated plan, which includes a line-by-line breakdown for the allocation of this year’s CDBG funds.)

Newhallville Alder Delphine Clyburn encouraged her colleagues to vote in support of the acquisition Tuesday by praising the city-led revitalization effort in the working class African-American neighborhood, which once saw a high percentage of homeownership and has seen its housing stock fall in recent decades increasingly into the hands of absentee landlords.

“I’m just grateful that it’s our chance now for people in our neighborhood to be able to acquire and buy a house, and be happy when they leave and happy when they come home, and make sure our neighborhood is safe,” Clyburn said. ​“This is a very vital part for us.”

Newhallville native Nine Johnson (pictured at the top of the story) welcomed the news of the city’s planned redevelopment of 558 Winchester.

Standing near the corner of Winchester and Starr Wednesday morning, she recalled how that property used to be home to the Sweet Shop, a convenience store run by ​“Ms. Mildred” where she’d buy steak and cheese sandwiches and play the arcade game PAC-MAN as a kid. ​“It was a good spot,” she remembered. ​“They had excellent subs.”

When asked for her thoughts on the city’s affordable homeownership plans for the site, she said, ​“Anything to help us prosper, I’m for.”

“A lot of people are put out because they can’t afford rent,” she said. And to the city, she said, ​“Open some doors for us.” A little help could go a long way in helping residents make rent, or buy a home, or get a job and build a sustainable economic life. ​“It’s good for the neighborhood. We’ve got to upgrade.”

The 558 Winchester vote was one of a handful of approvals granted by the alders Tuesday night regarding currently vacant Newhallville properties. The alders also signed off on selling a vacant lot on Butler Street to Neighborhood Housing Services of New Haven to facilitate the development of a new two-family home. And they approved selling a sliver lot on Goodyear Street to two investment companies that own adjacent properties, with the understanding that those investors will build more off-street parking. See below for more on both of those transactions.

Long-Blighted, & Almost Sold To Investor

According to city land records and previous city inspector sweeps of the neighborhood, 558 Winchester has long been a blighted, investor-owned thorn in the side of the Newhallville neighborhood.

The property is currently owned by a holding company controlled by Yisroel Rabinowitz of Brooklyn.

According to the city land records database, Naomi Rabinowitz purchased the property in 2005 for $178,500. That same year, she quit the deed of the property to Yisroel.

In April 2012, LCI put a $1,499 lien on the property for the cost of the demolition of 558 Winchester’s front porch, which had been ​“rendered unsafe and in imminent danger of collapse.” Samuel said the porch was damaged due to a car crash.

LCI filed additional liens on the property — related to the cost of snow and ice removal and yard cleanup — in September 2012, January 2014, June 2014, December 2014, March 2015, February 2017, June 2017, and November 2017. All of the liens recorded on the city’s online land records database add up to nearly $5,100.

Then, starting in May 2018, LCI started filing anti-blight civil citations against the out-of-town landlords.

That first citation stated that 558 Winchester Ave. was home to a ​“dilapidated and decaying structure, exterior in blighted condition. Open to trespass throughout. Unauthorized storage or accumulation of junk, trash, rubbish, litter or refuse. Lack of property maintenance and repairs including but not limited to broken windows, overgrown vegetation and exterior of building. All leading to progressive deterioration of said property and the creation of blighted conditions.”

That citation came with a $100 fine for each day the violations continued.

In March 2019, LCI sent the same anti-blight civil citation to Rabinowitz, describing how the property was still in the same dilapidated condition and stating that the owner was still subject to $100 daily fines.

And in December 2020, LCI sent yet a third anti-blight civil citation to Rabinowitz, reiterating the blight violations and the $100 daily fine.

Meeting minutes from a Jan. 20 meeting of LCI’s Property Acquisition and Disposition (PAD) committee meeting show that these liens and citations may have helped in negotiations between the city and Rabinowitz over the sale of 558 Winchester.

“LCI does not want this property to be sold to an investor and kept as a rental / investment property,” the minutes read, paraphrasing comments made by LCI Acquisition and Disposition Coordinator Evan Trachten. ​“LCI leveraged an anti-blight action against this property to negotiate this acquisition.”

Samuel confirmed Wednesday morning that the citations and liens did appear to help with negotiations. She also said that Rabinowitz was in talks with a private investor interested in buying 558 Winchester ​“at a much higher rate.”

“After some conversations, it took some convincing,” the current landlord agreed to sell to the city, she said. ​“He was amenable to listening.”

The city and landlord settled on the $155,000 sale price after the city hired Esposito & Associates to conduct an appraisal of the property in January. That recent appraisal put the estimated value of 558 Winchester Ave. at $150,000. (That’s more than double the $71,000 appraisal that the city assessor currently values 558 Winchester Ave. at for local tax purposes.)

NHS Grows Into New Construction On Vacant Lots

Also on Tuesday night, the alders approved selling a 4,014 square-foot vacant lot at 83 Butler St. for $2,000 to Neighborhood Housing Services of New Haven, a nonprofit that has spent decades rehabbing derelict city homes and selling them at deed-restricted affordable rates to first-time homeowners.

The city sale requires NHS to build a new two-unit, owner-occupied house on the currently vacant lot.

NHS Executive Director James Paley told the Independent Wednesday that his nonprofit’s acquisition of 83 Butler St. is one of four recent vacant-lot purchases from the city.

NHS has also recently bought formerly city-owned lots in Newhallville at 260 West Hazel St., where it plans to build a new two-family house; at 98 Bassett St., where it plans to build a new two-family house; and at 44 Lilac St., where it plans to build a new one-family house.

All of these new-construction homes will be limited to families who have not owned a house in the past three years, he said, and whose incomes are at or below 80 percent AMI.

“NHS is transitioning into new construction for homeownership and away from the acquisition and rehabilitation of historic properties,” he said.

While NHS still has two remaining existing properties in the neighborhood to rehab and convert, they’re now focusing on new construction because ​“the cost of doing the restoration of these houses is astronomical, and the subsidies are no longer available to make it possible to break even on these properties.”

Paley said that NHS has lined up verbal commitments for state Department of Housing and city HOME funds for the construction of the new houses slated for lots on Butler, West Hazel, Bassett, and Lilac.

If all goes as planned, he said, NHS should begin construction on those sites by April 1.

“What we’re doing now is we’re focusing on the vacant lots for homeownership, because there is a real demand,” he said.

He also applauded LCI’s affordable home development work in the neighborhood. ​“Any development of affordable homeownership opportunities in Newhallville is laudable.”

And he said that NHS has already identified roughly six vacant parcels of land on Starr Street between Newhall Street and Shelton Avenue for the organization’s 2022 development pitch. Before going to the Board of Alders with requests to purchase those lots, he said, NHS plans to get shovels in the ground for the four vacant lots it recently acquired.

“I’m grateful that they have been in our neighborhood for a while and they have really brought the homes to look and be safe for our people,” Alder Clyburn said Tuesday night in support of NHS’s purchase of the Butler Street lot. ​“We still have problems with the investors who have properties around our homes. I’m just grateful for the work that Neighborhood Housing Services does for us in our neighborhood.”

Goodyear St. Sliver Lot Deal OK’d

The last LCI-related deal approved by the alders Tuesday night was the disposal of one-half of the vacant lot at 72 Goodyear St. to 66 Goodyear LLC for $2,286.76, and the disposal of the other half of that same vacant lot to Lionheart Holdings Group LLC for $2,286.75.

The PAD Committee documentation around this sale states that the neighboring landlords have agreed to convert this sliver lot into a driveway and a side-yard area for their tenants who currently live on either side of the property.

66 Goodyear LLC is a holding company controlled by the Canadian investment company JS Community Investment LP, while Lionheart Holdings Group LLC is controlled by the East Haven-based investor Menahem Lebenhartz.

Clyburn said yesterday that ​“we only said yes to the LLCs” because ​“we put a requirement that they make sure they put driveways there on the sliver lot.”

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