Roots Planted In Newhallville

Andres Concha-Brito spends his days installing carpets in Fairfield County mansions. Anneisha Haye spends her days overseeing housekeeping at a Whalley Avenue hotel.

Both can now return from a hard day’s work to homes of their own. They’re among the city’s latest property purchasers, thanks to a decades-old nonprofit that helps working class New Haveners become first-time homeowners.

Concha-Brito and Haye both bought rehabilitated homes in Newhallville with the help of the local affordable housing nonprofit Neighborhood Housing Services of New Haven (NHS), which has spent the past four decades buying, gutting, and rehabilitating derelict properties and selling them — and providing advice about maintaining them —to low-income working families. NHS has focused efforts in recent years to make an impact on clustered stretches of Newhallville.

According to city land records, Concha-Brito purchased the one-and-three-quarter-story, single-family house at 436 Huntington St. from NHS for $145,000 on Nov. 16. On that same day and a few blocks west, Haye purchased the two-and-a-quarter-story, single-family house at 335 W. Division St. from NHS for $153,000.

“I’m still nervous,” Haye said during an interview this week in her new house’s first-floor kitchen. ​“I’m in shock. I want to cry.” She still can’t believe, she said, that she and her children now own a house of their own.

Haye, 35, works as the housekeeping manager at the Marriott hotel on Whalley Avenue. A native of Kingston, Jamaica, she and her mother moved to the United States 20 years ago, first to Virginia, then to New York City, then to New Haven.

She and her four biological children and two step-children were renting an apartment on Brownell Street before they moved into the NHS-renovated house at 335 W. Division in mid-November.

“The brick caught me,” Haye said about the house’s stately red brick front porch and stairwell. In a neighborhood composed primarily of wood and concrete, she said, the red-brick entryway reminded her of her old neighborhood in Canarsie.

Cable TV Revelation

Haye said that a friend referred her to NHS five years ago. She didn’t wind up taking NHS’s homebuyer and financial literacy classes until last year. After completing those courses, she said, she learned ​“how to survive, how to budget for what’s really important,” even before she moved into a house of her own.

After completing her financial literacy class, she went home, took a good look at how much she was paying per month for cable television vs. how much her children actually watched TV. She decided to end her monthly subscription. Her kids didn’t even notice. All they care about is internet access, she said. Thanks to the NHS class’s instruction on financial priorities, she now has an extra $200 each month to devote to more essential household bills.

Her family loves to cook. Her kids love to play outside. During the summer, she said, she and her family plan on setting up a grill in their West Division Street house’s backyard and hosting family and friends for cookouts. Her eyes grew red as she fought back tears, still in disbelief that she and her family now own their own house.

NHS has found ways to raise outside money to fix up old homes to high standards while keeping sale prices affordable for working families. Jim Paley, the founder and executive director of NHS, said that the nonprofit invested $368,131 in the restoration of the West Division Street house. State housing tax credits made up $112,000 of that funding, he said; state historic homes rehabilitation tax credits added $30,000; city lead hazard abatement funds added $8,000; other state funds made up another $20,000; and NHS wrote off $45,131.

According to city land records, NHS picked up the house and four other Newhallville properties from the city for a combined sum of $50,000 in 2007.

From Darien Mansions To Huntington Street Colonial

Concha-Brito, 56, works for a carpet installation company in Shelton. Most of his work brings him to palatial mansions in Greenwich, Darien, Westport, and New Canaan.

As of a few weeks ago, Concha-Brito can lay out carpet on floors of his own at his new NHS-rehabbed house at 436 Huntington St.

Concha-Brito, who hails from Viña del Mar, Chile, and spent five years working in a textile factory in Tel Aviv, Israel, moved from the Middle East to Stamford in 1995. After getting his green card, he landed a job at a carpet installation company in Shelton. He has been working for the same company ever since.

“A lot of homes of rich people,” he said with a smile about where his job usually takes him. He said one particularly complicated job brought him to a mansion in Darien that he said is worth $87 million. The owner wanted the carpet installation crew to make one continuous carpet across multiple rooms on the second floor.

“You go inside,” he said, raising his arms high, ​“looks like a castle.”

Just recently, he said, he finished working on installing carpets at another mansion owned by the same Darien homeowner, but this one in Alexandria, Virginia. That home, he said, had two curving stairwells in its front atrium and gold inlay in the ceiling.

At his new house on Huntington Street, Concha-Brito doesn’t have two stairwells or gold ceilings. But he does have two stretches of lush wool carpet, one in his living room and one in his bedroom, both leftover materials from work that employees can take home for cheap if a project they’re working on has extra carpet leftover.

Concha-Brito said that his monthly mortgage for the three-bedroom house is a little over $900. That is $200 more than he was paying each month in rent for his last, much smaller apartment in Bridgeport.

“I feel like sleeping,” he said with another smile as he surveyed boxes filled with records, clothing, and kitchen appliances still waiting to be unpacked. ​“It’s very fast.”

NHS’s Paley said that the nonprofit picked up the foreclosed colonial Huntington Street house for free from Bank of America back in 2013. Bank of America had bought the home from the Bank of New York for $20,310 in 2013, and then donated it and several other properties to the local nonprofit to divest itself of some of the derelict foreclosed properties it was sitting on in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

“While the actual construction didn’t take all that long,” Paley wrote in an email message, ​“assembling the necessary subsidies for this property did take a long time. Because 436 Huntington St. is located in the Winchester Repeating Arms Company National Historic District and because all of our houses are energy-efficient, we needed to make sure that we complied with energy efficiency standards as well as historic restoration standards in the renovation of this house.”

He said NHS ultimately invested $367,500 into the restoration of the Huntington Street property. State housing tax credits provided $172,500 in subsidies for the project, and historic home rehabilitation tax credits provided another $50,000 in subsidies. He said the construction was a collaboration between NHS and EMERGE Connecticut which participated in a Youth Build program and provided some of the manual labor for getting the house completed.

Mandy Mgmt. Picks Up 3 Eastside Condos

In other recent property sale news, a local mega-landlord added three eastside condos to its New Haven real estate empire.

According to city land records, entities allied with Mandy Management, a property management company owned by Menachem Gurevitch and funded by a real estate private equity firm, most recently purchased two condominiums in the Annex, one condominium in Quinnipiac Meadows, and one three-family house in Newhallville.

All four purchases were made by a third-party buyer who then quit the property claims to a Mandy-owned shell company for $1 a piece.

On Nov. 9, Menahem Edelkopf purchased three condominiums from Edward Taddei and Elaine Banas. Edelkopf bought a two-story Quinnipiac Meadows condo at 233 Barnes Ave., #12 for $48,000. The condo last sold for $34,100 in 2013. The city last appraised the property at $50,100 in 2017.

He also bought a two-story Annex condo at 30 Chamberlain St., #A from Taddei and Banas for $40,000. The condo last sold for $26,000 in 2013. The city last appraised the property at $53,000 in 2017.

And he bought another two-story Annex condo at 28 Chamberlain St., #C from Taddei and Banas for $42,000. The property last sold for $15,250 in 2011. The city last appraised the property at $53,000 in 2017.

On Nov. 26, Edelkopf quit all three condos to Gur New Haven II, LLC, a holding company owned by Mandy’s Menahem Gurevitch, for $1.

Mandy already owns two other units in the late-1980s era, 50-plus unit Chamberlain Court condo complex tucked away off of Rt. 1 on the Annex side of the Pearl Harbor Memorial Bridge.

Edelkopf purchased the foreclosed two-story condo at 12 Chamberlain St., #4 for $54,501 from the Federal Home Loan Corporation in 2013. He then quit his claim to the property to Mandy’s Gur Real Estate LLC right after he bought it. Mandy then transferred ownership of the condo to another holding company it owns called E&F Real Estate LLC later that year.

And in 2012, Edelkopf purchased the foreclosed two-story condo at 17 Chamberlain Pl. for $35,000 from the Federal Home Loan Corporation. He then quit the claim to the property to the Mandy’s owned Netz-Te LLC soon after buying it.

At Chamberlain Court on one recent afternoon, current tenants offered mixed views on having the local mega-landlord owning units next door.

Rosa Ayala, 37, said that she has been living in Chamberlain Court for nine years with her four children, and that she has never had any problems with any of her neighbors.

“That was the best decision I ever made,” Ayala said about moving from a busy and what she described as dangerous section of Chapel Street in Fair Haven to the relatively quiet and family-occupied Annex condo complex. Ayala said she has had no trouble with the condominium association that runs Chamberlain Court either…because she doesn’t have to deal with them at all. She’s on the federal Section 8 rental subsidy program, and deals only with the Housing Authority of New Haven/Elm City Communities, which covers most of her monthly rent. Whenever she has a problem with maintenance or lighting, she reaches out to the housing authority.

Other tenants at the complex, who do not receive Section subsidies, were less sanguine about life at Chamberlain Court, and about the prospect of having Mandy own more units in the complex.

Shelly, a Yale-New Haven Hospital employee who has lived at the condo complex for 25 years, accused Mandy of buying up foreclosed condos in the complex at dirt cheap prices and then putting little to no money into maintenance.

“They suck,” she said succinctly about what she has heard about the mega-landlord’s reputation through her own experience and through conversations she’s had with Mandy tenants she meets at the hospital.

“Our tenants are our top priority,” Mandy property manager Yudi Gurevitch responded in an emailed statement sent to the Independent. “[E]very maintenance need is taken very seriously and we have an amazing team of staff ready and able to take care of every maintenance request.”

(In response to last week’s article about a city Health Department lead abatement order Mandy received for one of its James Street properties, Gurevitch also said that Mandy is working on a scope of work for the remediation of the toxic levels of lead paint in the apartment. He said Mandy will relocate the tenants to a lead-safe apartment at the end of the week.)

Shelly’s neighbor Ivette said that she has been living at the complex for eight years. She said she is frustrated with the association that runs the condominium complex. In early October, she said, a representative from the association sent out an order that tenants can no longer have any cats, dogs, birds, or any other pets in their condos. Both Ivette and Shelly said their respective families love their dogs, and have no plans to get rid of them just because the association now says they have to.

“The kids were crying,” Ivette said about when her children found out about the new order.

And Jose, a 14-year veteran of the condo complex, bristled at the new rule that condo members can’t use charcoal or gas grills on their back patios.

A representative from the condo association could not be reached for comment for this article.

The fourth recent Mandy property purchase came in Newhallville, where Edelkopf bought a three-family home at 267 West Hazel St. from the Bank of New York Mellon for $178,500. The two-and-a-half-story house last sold for $263,150 in 2007. The city last appraised the property at the property at $149,100 in 2017.

Other Sales

In other local property sale news, Alison Wittenberg purchased the one-story Downtown condo at 116 Crown St., Unit 3B from Sokchan Choun and Kelli-Ann Choun for $368,000 on Nov. 20. The condo last sold for $365,000 in 2009. The city last appraised the property at $235,000 in 2017.

In Newhallville, Natalie Fasano purchased a three-family home at 258 Huntington St. on Nov. 26 from Harbor Road LLC, a holding company owned by Mark Fasano, for $344,000. The two-and-a-half-story property last sold for $130,000 in 2009. The city last appraised the property at $218,000 in 2017.

In West River, Richard Yonkers purchased the two-family house at 16 Downes St. from the federal Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for $79,900 on Nov. 28. The two-story house last sold for $169,900 in 2007. The city last appraised the property at $113,900 in 2017.

In the Hill, Ana Pena purchased a mixed residential-commercial complex at 251 – 253 Davenport Ave. from JP Morgan Chase Bank, National Association for $205,000 on Oct. 5. The three-and-a-quarter-story, three-unit complex last sold for $305,000 in 2007. The city last appraised the property at $269,600 in 2017.

And in Westville, Gerald Garcia and Magdalena Garcia purchased a two-family home at 47 Westwood Rd. from 47 Westwood Road LLC, a holding company owned by Colin McManus, for $320,000 on Nov. 20. The two-and-a-half-story building last sold for $362,500 in 2005. The city appraised the property at $279,200 in 2017.

Previous property sale coverage:

• Latest Sales: Mandy Buying Spree Continues
• Latest Sales: Mandy Expands In City Point
• Latest Sales: East Rock Home Buy Tops $1M
• Latest Deals: Beulah’s 5th Rehab On Block
• Latest Sales: NHR Sheds Small To Focus Big
• Latest Sales: Mandy Buys In Heights
• Home Sale Price Doubles In 13 Years