Hartford families spend weeks in hotels after HUD closes two North End apartment buildings

The city’s health and development services departments originally said the 29 households that relocated from Barbour Gardens on the night of June 5 would spend up to one week in local hotels while contractors worked to fix a plumbing failure that caused about a foot of sewage to back up into their buildings’ basements. Two more families were moved to temporary housing over other failing conditions in their units, like mold and broken appliances. But none of those families ever moved back to the Section 8 project, one of several publicly subsidized complexes in the North End being shuttered over severe disrepair.

And 50 days later, 23 households are still living out of the hotel rooms and suites, paid for by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, according to Rhonda Siciliano, a regional spokesperson for the agency. Another 15 families are still living in Barbour Gardens, five months after HUD started working to empty the buildings. Their deadline to move is Aug. 19, but the Christian Activities Council is pushing for an extension, according to Joshua Serrano, an organizer with the Hartford nonprofit.

The upheaval at Barbour Gardens is just one symptom of Hartford’s aging rental stock, much of it owned by out-of-town landlords and limited liability companies that can be difficult to reach and reluctant to spend money fixing unsafe, unsanitary conditions. Since spring 2018, HUD has cut ties with four landlords, saying they collectively neglected more than 300 units of affordable housing.

The city is developing a new housing code that would increase oversight by licensing apartment buildings and requiring regular inspections. Under the draft code, a property owner would also have to give their name, home address and photo ID to the city, preventing landlords from hiding behind murky limited liability companies and P.O. boxes.

The ownership of Barbour Gardens is so obscured that the state’s attorney’s office has struggled to hold anyone accountable for lacking fire alarm systems in two of the buildings. Criminal charges are pending against an elderly New York lawyer, Martin Rothman, but he’s refused to appear in Connecticut, insisting he owns less than 1 percent of ADAR Hartford Realty, the New York-based limited liability company that owns Barbour Gardens. HUD announced in February it was terminating its $750,000-a-year Section 8 contract with ADAR Hartford. But before HUD can cancel the monthly rental subsidies filling ADAR Hartford’s pockets, the agency has to relocate all 69 households that were living in the four-building complex.

https://www.courant.com/community/hartford/hc-news-hartford-barbour-gardens-20190725-w35vukylgjgyflrtv4cor2bwxu-story.html