Builder Seeks To Take Over Hill Coop

Another developer is looking to buy a New Haven housing cooperative and then rebuild it, this time in the Hill.

The complex is the Hill Central Community Cooperative, a 72-unit block of three- and four-bedroom homes on Button, Putnam, Portsea and Dewitt streets and Washington and Howard Avenues.

Founded in 1978, the cooperative currently houses around 60 families, one member said. Like other cooperatives in the New Haven area, Hill Central is technically owned by the people who live there.

Residents have been pursuing a deal to sell their complex to a Branford-based company called Westmount Management, which has been running the complex. Two residents who attended a recent meeting on the deal say Westmount proposes to pay $3.7 million.

While it won’t confirm details of the deal, Westmount says it plans to keep residents in place and rents affordable at the complex, where the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has an agreement to pay Section 8 rental subsidies on all the apartments through January 2019. Westmount has managed the property since about 2008, said Westmount representative Rick Ross III. 

It’s the latest case of a New Haven housing cooperative born in the 1970s either falling apart or potentially ending up in the hands of a management company that came in to run it. A different company is looking to buy, raze, and rebuild Antillean Manor in the Dwight neighborhood, for instance. Other Dwight coops that now belong to private outside companies include Dwight Gardens (formerly the Dwight Coops), Ethan Gardens and Trade Union Plaza.

Such sales can become complicated when original residents/coop members move on, the coop board dissolves, a management company steps in with varied financial motives (collecting managing dollars or taking ownership of valuable government-subsidized real estate), and HUD needs to sign off. It can be difficult even to locate coop members to authorize a sale, as at Antillean; or figure out who’s truly representing the interests of coop members.

At Hill Central, the coop board had failed to file reports with the state for five years. Then in 2016 Westmount stepped in; the coop’s mailing address is now also Westmount’s mailing address. Westmount formed a subsidiary to buy the property. Five years worth of annual reports were filed in January. The coop’s board is run by a woman who lives in West Haven, not at the coop. The agent listed in state records for the coop hasn’t been involved in it for decades.

Waiting On HUD

Members interviewed expressed support for the proposed sale. But two outside agencies still need to give their assents.

One is the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority (CHFA), which holds the remaining $433,945 mortgage on the property. The coop has asked CHFA to allow it to pay off the mortgage early as a condition of the proposed purchase in return for an agreement by Westmount to guarantee it would keep rents affordable for 30 more years. CHFA’s mortgage committee voted on Jan. 26 to OK the request. That process has not yet been completed, according to CHFA spokeswoman Lisa Kidder.

Even if it is, HUD still has to agree to continue providing Section 8 subsidies for the apartments. HUD spokesman Brian E. Sullivan said Friday that the agency knows about the pending sale. He said the complex’s Section 8 contract — which covers rents on all 72 apartments — expires in January 2019.

In general HUD likes to renew existing contracts, he said. ​“We support the concept of keeping affordable housing. Right now we’re in the middle of an affordable housing crisis in this country,” especially in the Northeast, he said. But HUD won’t decide about Hill Center until it receives a formal notice about the pending sale and then conducts a ​“very thorough review” of the prospective new owner and management company to ensure they have ​“the capacity to run a development like this.”

Three weeks after the CHFA meeting, Westmount presented the proposed $3.7 million purchase deal at a residents meeting.

According to two people who attended, Westmount proposed to pay $3.7 million to buy all 72 units, tear them down one at a time, and rebuild, allowing current members to stay and maintaining the complex’s Section 8 affordable housing status. Westmount told members that it intends to build one- and two-bedroom units to replace some of the original three- and four-bedroom apartments.

Because the complex is still a cooperative, current coop members will have to agree on the deal before Westmount can move ahead with it, said J. Michael Sulzbach, an attorney who helped the coop get off the ground in the late 1970s.

When asked for specifics on the sale, Westmount representative Rick Ross III declined comment. He called the deal ​“so fragile” with ​“a lot of twists and turns to it.” He also said that Westmount does not yet have a building or demolition plan in place; a statement cooperative members who attended the meeting said they understood otherwise. 

“I don’t want there to be any misinformation,” Ross said. ​“It’s been so far so good but I’m really not at liberty to talk about it.”

He did confirm that in the transaction currently being considered, the complex’s affordable housing status will be preserved, and ​“nobody has to move.”

Meghan Gallagher, the attorney representing the Hill Central Community Cooperative, was also tight-lipped on the deal.

“What we’d like to say is that the board came together and they’re considering a transaction for sale,” she said. ​“The critical piece is that they want to keep it affordable.”

Minnie Walton, who does not live in the cooperative but is listed as cooperative board president, referred all questions back to Gallagher. She was asked how she has retained her position as president while living in West Haven. ​“That is not a concern of yours,” she responded.

Members Weigh In

In an interview at the complex, Stanley McLellan said he and his mom, Mary, have thought of the cooperative as a welcoming home for over three decades. Member meetings every few months keep them in the loop, the two said.

An assistant property manager said the board generally schedules four meetings per year.

Mary McLellan moved into the coop in 1979; she’s been in the same unit on Putnam Street for 38 years. Her son Stanley lives with her part of the time. On Wednesday afternoon, he sat on their front steps smoking a cigarette. Resting one hand on a white chef’s smock, he recalled growing up on Putnam Street and making friends with neighbors who stopped on the street to chat and saw each other at coop member meetings every few months. He and his mother said they have never had a problem with the way the place is managed, he said. When something breaks, maintenance helps them fix it promptly. They like their unit. His mother declined to comment on whether or not she plans to vote in favor of the sale.

Another member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, expressed enthusiasm for Westmount’s proposal. Having lived in the cooperative for three years, he said that that ​“management is good and the neighbors are great.” He recalled that Westmount representatives, who came bearing snacks for coop families and their kids at the meeting, seemed genuinely keen on member input. He said he hopes that fellow coop members will be on board with negotiations as they move forward.

“It’s going to be beneficial for the people who live here,” he said. He said Westmount promised to increase handicap accessibility (almost all of the homes have front steps outside and stairs inside) and to bring the complex ​“up to current standards.” 

Member Annie Richardson, an Alabama transplant who moved into her Portsea Street unit in 1979 to be closer to family in New Haven, said she too favors the deal.

Down Washington Avenue, one family expressed concerns about being kicked out of the coop. José Santiago and his brother lost their mother to illness in February; the occupancy agreement, which she signed in 1979, is in her name only. Her sons have lived there for their entire lives; family portraits crowd the off-white walls of the living room, humming fridge and upstairs bedrooms. The neat linoleum floors, not replaced for decades, still greet visitors who walk through the door. And one brother and his wife are still paying the $48 monthly fees for a three-bedroom unit.

Management has listed the unit as vacant, and informed Santiago’s brother, wife and kids that they’ll need to leave.

“They’re [Westmount] being biased toward us,” said Santiago’s brother, who asked the Independent not to use his name. He recalled growing up in the unit, and watching as the neighborhood changed — sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse — around them. There used to be a church across Washington Avenue, he said; now there’s just an old chainlink fence there, sagging a little over its lot. Behind the unit, the brothers watched as the original homes of their alma maters, Hill Central and Roberto Clemente schools, were torn down to make way for new buildings, bright new playground equipment, and new sports fields. 

“We grew up in this house,” he said. ​“It was always home, and now we’re looking for a place to live. Do you know how hard this will be not to have this as my home?”

“You can’t just expect people to get up and go,” added his wife, noting that she loves the coop because of its safety for her kids, who play outside after school.

Despite Westmount’s assurance it will not ask members to leave, she said she remains concerned. She said the occupancy agreement, which she didn’t immediately have on hand, entitles her and her husband to continue living in the unit as next of kin.

When contacted for a response, Ross stressed that ​“no one will have to leave” and declined to comment further on the situation.

Mavern Lindo, an immigrant from Jamaica who has lived on Portsea Street with her mother and family members since 2009, said she is ​“feeling positive about” the proposal that was presented at last month’s meeting and hopes ​“that their promises come through.”

As she took a break from preparing packages of dry goods to send back to Jamaica, she said that she is fairly certain her unit ​“isn’t up to code.” The problem is the toilet, she said: every time she uses it, she feels as though she might ​“fall through” the ceiling to the floor below. She declined to show the Independent the toilet, but said that she thinks the unstable feeling is due to repeated toilet flooding incidents and untreated water damage. 

Attorney Sulzbach, who served as the agent for Hill Central Community Cooperative Inc. from the late 1970s through the early to mid 1980s (and is still listed in state records as the agent), questioned how this proposed sale would fit into the vision that launched coops like this one.

The goal was to promote equity ownership for individual units that members could own and sell, not to have the complex cease being owned and run by its residents.

“The way it was managed early on, there was no effort to let members understand what that meant,” he said. He said that members have all but forgotten what makes it a coop — that they get a vote, and occupy a unit pursuant to an occupancy agreement, which is not the same thing as a lease.

“They lost track of everything except paying rent,” he added. ​“They live there for darn close to free. There weren’t a lot of incentives to do anything other than just enjoy it.”

He pointed to New Haven’s Liberty Square, also in the Hill, and Florence Virtue homes in Dixwell as successful coops in the city, noting that the latter ​“sort of brought itself back from the dead at the end of the millennium.” In Hill Central, a different scenario is in the cards.

Paul Bass contributed reporting.