Around the corner from Wethersfield Avenue, tenants of an aging, L-shaped building stop in the hallways to talk — about the pipes that leak, and the doors that don’t lock and the heat that goes off at night.
When someone new moves in to 22 Elliott St., Walter May makes sure to mention the mice, since his new neighbors may go a few days or weeks before seeing the vermin that burrowed into his old oven and leave droppings behind his furniture. The city has cited the 98-unit Elliott Street Apartments several times over the past 12 months for rodents, and U.S. Housing and Urban Development — which insures the market-rate property — found evidence of mice when it inspected the building last October.
“You just moved in,” May, 63, tells new tenants. “They’ll find out you’re here.”
Over the last 10 months, a spotlight has landed on a few local cases of substandard housing where HUD took the extreme step of stripping Section 8 projects of their rental subsidies, and relocating residents from a total of 323 units, all in north Hartford.
In 2017, the agency gave $1 million in subsidies to the owner of Clay Arsenal Renaissance Apartments, and $500,000 in subsidies to the owner of Windsor on Main. Last year, HUD gave about $660,000 to the owner of Infill I, and $750,000 to the owner of Barbour Gardens.
Nationally, HUD has canceled no more than 17 of these these contracts per year over the past five years, according to spokesperson Jereon Brown, who said the agency does not have an exact count. Hartford’s four canceled contracts were the only ones in Connecticut this year.
But affordable housing issues rarely escalate into the actions HUD took against the owners of those complexes
Most of the time, problem apartments skate or struggle through HUD’s inspection system month after month, with owners making piecemeal attempts to fix mold, infestations and disrepair.
“(Owners) are only putting a Band-Aid over the wound without actually treating the wound and providing surgery on it,” Hartford City Councilman Thomas “T.J.” Clarke II said last week. “And the bleeding comes back.”
Some landlords can’t afford to fix recurring problems, particularly if their rents are too low to cover major renovations, like new roofs or plumbing. Others choose not to.
Either way, subpar apartments represent a significant portion of HUD’s portfolio, according to a November investigation by ProPublica and The Southern Illinoisan, which found HUD was “failing low-income families, seniors and people with disabilities” across the country “and undermining the agency’s oversight of billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded rental subsidies.”
HUD says canceling a contract is a last resort when rental subsidies are tied to a specific property. That’s because relocating residents to other apartments is a lengthy, expensive process and even more difficult in tight rental markets like Hartford.
There are other options for market-rate apartments that are only insured by HUD, like Elliott Street Apartments. If one of these landlords refuses to make needed repairs, HUD can suspend or ban them from participating in HUD and other federal programs, pursue a civil penalty, or take judicial action, like suing for breach of contract.
Most of the time, owners cooperate with HUD and maintain their properties or fix them up when problems arise, HUD spokesperson Rhonda Siciliano said earlier this month.
“HUD tries to get these owners to do their due diligence to make the corrections, and it tries to be as flexible if it can get them to come along and make the necessary repairs,” she said.
“Most of the time this works and the properties are in good condition,” she added. “There are occasions where things go wrong, such as the case in Hartford, and that process doesn’t have the effect we hope it will.”
But Elliott Street Apartments, which accepts Section 8 vouchers and other housing assistance, has received two failing scores from HUD inspections since Tarequl Ambia bought the building in June 2017, the first in October and the second last Wednesday. In that first inspection, when Elliott Street Apartments scored 56 out of 100, the inspector found mold and mildew, exposed wires, plumbing problems, a broken window and roaches in a broken fridge.
In November, May says, he also complained to Ambia that his window was detached from its frame, allowing cold air in. He reported it to the city on Feb. 1, an inspection record shows, but the window was still broken a month later. Management had covered it with a sheet of plastic and a layer of duct tape.
His window was finally replaced in mid-March, May says. But he’s frustrated the city and HUD could not speed the process up. And other issues are ongoing, like rodents, which tenants have reported to the city seven times since April, most recently on Feb. 28.
“When I was younger and there was a problem in the home, they gave you so many days and guess what? They come back to re-inspect,” he said. “(Inspectors) don’t do that. They take the owner at his word.”
“There’s a whole lot of broken promises around here.”
Two more housing violation cases remain open at 22 Elliott St., and HUD is continuing to work with Ambia, who has until May 20 to show that he’s addressed all issues at the property.
“HUD visited the site and suggested some improvement ideas, and the owner was extremely receptive and appreciated the feedback,” Siciliano said. “He is also exploring other financing options available to him.”
Reached at his office on March 6, Ambia said he was “working to do repairs.”
“We are new ownership,” he said. “The previous ownership didn’t maintain the property, and it’s a tough location. The building is in a rough area.”
Stephanie Belcher, a longtime resident of the building, said Ambia shouldn’t blame the conditions on its location in the Barry Square neighborhood, just off Wethersfield Avenue.
“There’s a lot of buildings in rough areas. This is where we live at. It’s in the ghetto,” Belcher, 58, said. “Some of the buildings are good, some of them are not good. That’s got nothing to do with it.”
‘Nothing is being done’
In the past 12 months, the city of Hartford has closed out 19 housing complaints against Elliott Street Apartments, citing violations — but assessing no fines — in eight cases, according to inspection records and city spokesman Vas Srivastava.
Three of them were for pests like bedbugs, roaches and mice, and two of them for lack of heat or hot water. The records, however, don’t make clear how each complaint was resolved, demonstrating that the city lacks a clear paper trail of housing violations.
In one complaint filed in December, a resident said there were roaches, bedbugs and mice in her unit and that her son, who is autistic, was diagnosed with scabies due to mice urine.
“Landlord is very much aware of what is going on and nothing is being done about the situation at all,” her complaint said.
On Jan. 2, the inspector added a note that she’d ask for the tenant’s contact information, to which the owner said he would reach out to the tenant himself. The owner also said he was not aware of any issues.
The case was closed on March 14, with no other notes added to the report. A day later, the city provided the inspection records to The Courant in response to a request the newspaper made two weeks before.
The inspector “confirmed there was no smell of urine on the carpet,” and that the owner is treating every unit for pests and bed bugs,” Srivastava said. Asked why the inspector closed the report on March 14, he said “that’s just when she updated the record.”
Erik Johnson, the city’s development services director, acknowledged there’s room to improve the inspection process, so it’s clear how each complaint is resolved.
“I think we always need to make sure there are improvements in our system so we can be transparent in terms of what’s happening in the lives of our residents that are looking for help,” he said. “If there’s violations, people should be able to look that up.”
In another December complaint, a different tenant said her children were not being allowed at school because of their bed bug bites. That case was also closed on March 14, with the inspector adding a note that the resident had moved to a different unit.
Srivastava said that’s when the inspector made contact with the tenant. It wasn’t clear why the inspector didn’t reach the tenant earlier.
Clarke said he was not aware that the inspection records were incomplete, and agreed they should detail repairs and followups.
“Maybe the inspection form needs to be changed so it can be more specific and detailed,” he said, “requiring the landlord or superintendent to provide specific dates and times of the inspections as well as the person who came out to do the work.”
The city sometimes asks for this information to make sure landlords are using licensed contractors for things like structural and HVAC issues, Johnson says.
But in most cases the city relies on visual inspections.
That may not be good enough, Clarke said, particularly with issues that can cause health problems for children and families.
“They become traumatized by living in these types of conditions, and again, no one should have to live like this,” Clarke said.
This story was updated to correctly attribute the last quote to Thomas “T.J.” Clarke II.
Rebecca Lurye can be reached at rlurye@courant.com.