Few New Details For Left Behind Tenants

Families who have been, or will be, displaced from Church Street South for health reasons will be moved first, and then everybody else.

Officials don’t know how long it will take to get the 200-plus families moved out who are still living in the apartment complex, but when they leave, they won’t be coming back. And the entire complex will be demolished.

That’s the message that officials tried to relay to tenants Monday night at a meeting so packed that they had to hold it in two waves.

Tenants such as Amber Ruiz (pictured) lined the steps outside leading up to a community room at Church Street South where the meetings were held, hoping to find out the fate of her family at the 301-unit subsidized apartment complex across from the train station. Ruiz, who first began living in the complex nine years ago with her mother, got locked out of the first meeting because the room was too full.

Ruiz’s mother no longer lives at Church Street South, and for the last three years, she has lived there with her seven-year-old daughter and five-year-old son in a two-bedroom apartment. She’s had some minor problems, such as water leaks and some mold in her bathroom. Neither she nor her children have any health problems such as asthma. But she sees the neighborhood as a threat to the health and safety of her and her children and wants to move.

“I want my kids to be in a safer environment,” she said. ​“This needs to be shut down. From the stairs to the parking lot and the apartments. HUD needs to close this place down. It’s not safe for the kids. The neighborhood, maintenance, the apartments — everything’s bad.”

That Church Street South will eventually be demolished was one of the few definitive answers that the owners of the complex, the Massachusetts-based Northland Development Corp., could give tenants Monday night.

But when that will happen, Vice President Peter Standish (pictured at right) from Northland said, is a detail that will have to be worked out with the city and the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the agency that recently declared Northland in default on the contract on which it receives over $3 million a year in Section 8 rent subsidizes.

In the meantime, Standish said, Northland had hired an independent management company to help its management team deal with ongoing problems at Church Street South. He asked residents to try to work through Northland’s management team to get maintenance issues solved, but he also told them it was their right to contact the city’s anti-blight agency, the Livable City Initiative (LCI), and New Haven Legal Assistance Association if they remained dissatisfied with management’s handling of the problems. He asked tenants for a chance to let that process work, since the new management structure just got in place this week.

Several tenants met Standish’s suggestion with a healthy skepticism, born of years of dealing with management teams that have been less than responsive. Even HUD had looked the other way for years as the complex fell apart.

This summer New Haven Legal Assistance Association — which now represents over 60 families from Church Street South — took Northland to court over conditions there. The Harp administration followed with repeated inspections, condemnations and emergency orders. As the depth of decay at the complex emerged, along with stories of asthmatic children suffering, HUD’s hand was forced. Now, in hopes of resurrecting its reputation (and possibly winning City Hall’s approval to rebuild the complex), Northland has worked with HUD, the city, and legal aid to try to help the families previously trapped in squalor to move as quickly as possible into safe quarters.

Monday’s night meeting was the third of three that officials have held with Church Street South tenants about the plans for their future. The first took place last Thursday night at two hotels where some families are temporarily staying. (Read about that here.)

“Stop Saying You Understand”

Shakwella Payne (pictured at right in the photo) left Monday’s night meeting pretty fed up. The mother of four children has lived in Church Street South for 13 years, and she was going back to a five-bedroom apartment with no heat or hot water. She hasn’t had either since last Wednesday, and has repeatedly called management to no avail. Like so many others, she’s ready to leave the complex for good, but in the meantime she’d like some hot water and heat.

“When I called maintenance on Friday,” she said, ​“they said that they would see if someone could come out. No one showed up on Friday. I called again Saturday morning. They said, ​‘Maybe we can get someone out there today. If not you’ll have to wait.’” When someone from maintenance finally came Saturday he told her that her boiler was no longer any good, but she would have to wait until Monday because Church Street South would have to approve any repair or replacement to the boiler. She’s been boiling water so she and her children could take a bath and wash dishes.

“Today is Monday,” she said. ​“You hear me complaining. Why? Because I still don’t have heat or hot water.” She said she was told maybe Tuesday. ​“Here I am boiling water for me and my children to take a bath another night. The guy said, ​‘Is your gas on?’” He was insinuating that her heat was out because she hadn’t paid her bill. ​“I pay my rent, on time, every month,” she said.

Payne drew applause from her fellow tenants Monday night when she told the owners of Northland to stop saying they understood the tenants’ frustrations. ​“You’re not living in our shoes,” she said. ​“They gave me two heaters. I’m in a five-bedroom unit with two heaters. It’s ridiculous. They’re not living like this and I don’t feel like we should be made to live this way because we’re getting help to pay our rent from HUD. I just don’t agree with it.”

A lack of hot water and heat was an issue that came up for several other tenants, including Angel Rich (pictured above in orange), who said she’s been dealing with the problem off and on for the past two months. The mother of two has one child with cerebral palsy and has lived in the Church Street South complex for five years. She said maintenance just comes to reset her boiler instead of replacing it.

“I’m like her,” she said gesturing toward Payne. ​“We work, we pay our bills, what’s the problem?”

Sherelle Allen has what would seem like a golden ticket out of Church Street South — a note from her doctor saying that it’s not safe for her or her asthmatic seven-year-old daughter and five-month-old baby son to stay in their apartment. But because of the break-ins that other families have experienced, she’s afraid someone’s going to steal all her stuff if she leaves.

“They did my history and since I’ve been here, every year [my daughter has been] on a higher dose [of asthma medication],” she said. ​“I don’t want to go to the hotel because I don’t want nobody to break into my house, so I prefer to just stay home, but then again, I don’t want me or my children to get sick. I would love to move.”

An Unclear Future

How much longer Church Street South tenants will have to put up with their living conditions — if their health concerns don’t rise to a level where officials think they should be removed from the complex immediately — is anyone’s guess. The goal is a year, but officials say that’s ambitious.

Several residents were focused on how long any temporary assistance would last once they were moved. One tenant asked whether she and her seven children would be put out on the street after a year of temporary assistance. HUD officials assured her that would not be the case and that there was a process in place to allow for an extension of any temporary housing assistance.

But New Haven Legal Assistance attorney Amy Marx said she learned Monday night that Northland had contracted with the New Haven Housing Authority to work with only the 43 families who are currently staying in hotels, not the 200-plus families who are still left behind at Church Street South.

“We thought that there was a system in place to do a complete and thorough triage of the 300 families from Church Street South,” she said. ​“We thought that all families would be doing one-on-one assessment with the housing authority to determine the severity of the medical needs of these families, some of which have very sick family members. The only answers about serious concerns was to contact the property management. Northland created this problem. It can’t possibly be left responsible to supervise the management of the crisis when they have every incentive to minimize the extent of the problem.”

Marx said what she discovered Monday were tenants who have been trying to address their issues to the property’s managers to no avail, and didn’t know, until Marx shared the information with them, that they should next contact LCI.

“We think a significant number of families have never exercised any of their rights,” she said. ​“They haven’t told anyone how bad the conditions are in their homes. Families who have very little in life are often afraid to lose what little they have.”

Not only did Marx find Monday night’s meeting and meeting space inadequate; she said she is concerned that the agencies involved are woefully unprepared to address the immediate need to get each of the Church Street South families into a safe housing as quickly as possible.

If it were up to her, she said, she would insist on the housing authority being granted a larger contract to get sufficient funding to devote the staff and resources needed; that HUD have someone on site to supervise property management and document tenant concerns directly; and that LCI be provided resources to follow up on previously inspected homes and to continue checking all of the homes.

Though HUD is in the process of completing an inspection of every apartment in the complex, LCI has been the agency that has found many of the health and safety problems that led to apartments being condemned and families being moved. Because of the newfound spirit of cooperation among the owners of Northland and city and HUD officials, the company has been deemed compliant with LCI’s demands to fix the problems at the crumbling property as long as there is a process in place to move the family.

But Marx said the clients whom legal assistance represents have not seen any improvements in their living conditions by working through current management and what she learned Monday was that there is no definite process in place to get these families moved.

“Our office does not have the resources to work one-on-one to represent 300 families, nor should it be our role to do the job that Northland should be paying the housing authority to do completely and adequately,” Marx said. ​“Our goal is to set up a fair process whereby tenants’ needs and rights can be heard and respected but we’re unable to assess these clients individually.”

According to Northland, 288 families in all were living at the 301-unit complex when the current crisis began. Around 43 families have been living in temporary hotel rooms since the city either condemned or ordered emergency repairs to their mold- and water-filled apartments and deteriorating staircases in recent weeks. Officials promised that those families — plus about another ten still at Church Street South but suffering medical problems because of the conditions — will receive first priority for ​“pass-throughs” of the Church Street Section 8 contract, which Northland will give landlords elsewhere in Connecticut to house tenants pending a longer-term plan. The longer-term plan involves offering all families either portable Section 8 rental certificates to bring to landlords on their own, or ​“Section 8 (bb)” subsidies tied to clusters of subsidized housing.

Landlords from throughout the region have come forward with offers of potential apartments. The plan is eventually to move all 288 families to new apartments and most tear down Church Street South, replacing it with a mixed-income, mixed-use development across from the train station. HUD officials said that so far 210 housing units have been identified.

Rhonda Siciliano, spokeswoman for HUD’s New England Regional Office, said the agency is working to get people into stable housing as soon as possible.

“Everyone at HUD is working very hard to get as many of the tenants in safe, stable housing as possible,” she said. ​“At the same time, we have to recognize that this isn’t going to happen over night.”

Previous coverage of Church Street South:
• HUD: Help’s Here. Details To Follow
• Church St. South Families Displaced A 2nd Time — For Yale Family Weekend
• 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