Hartford News - Southside Media

01/16/2025

|Welcome Home!
After more than 5 months overshadowed by the threat of homelessness, the intrepid displaced tenants of Hartford’s Concord Hills apartments are now safe and secure again.
BY ANNE GOSHDIGIAN
It all began on August 10th, 2024, when a fire—the third in less than 2 months—caused the immediate evacuation of 50 households and 100 people from their Sherbrooke Avenue apartment building. Allowed no time to take any of their possessions with them, outside it was a chaotic scene. The Red Cross showed up with water and some snacks, but later the “Angel of Edgewood”, Jendayi Scott-Miller, took over by providing meals and other necessities for them. By State statute, those displaced by a fire or other catastrophe must be housed temporarily until they can return to their homes. Unfortunately, the city placed them in low-end hotels/motels in Hartford and East Hartford where conditions were undesirable including mold on the walls, vermin, excessive noise and fighting from some unsavory characters living or hanging out there, and no cooking facilities This was especially difficult for those with children (including a newborn), the elderly, the disabled, and those with medical issues. To add to that, on August 29th tenants were allowed 15 minutes to return to their apartments to see what they could salvage, only were stunned to find that the property management had given master keys to men they’d hired to assess the damages but had instead robbed and vandalized the vacated apartments of tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of belongings.
In October, the city administration was forced to take action after a public outcry regarding the dreadful temporary housing had brought bad publicity to the city, and the most vulnerable tenants were then moved to better hotels/motels. By that time, the Concord Hills tenants had already created their own union, and supported by the CT Tenants Union had started a campaign in September to get back into their apartments that the Concord Hills owner—The GreyHill group out of New York—had not even begun to make repairs. So they made signs, showed up to speak at City Council, held rallies, protests, and press conferences in front of City Hall more than a dozen times in all. They had meetings with the mayor that went nowhere. They were stonewalled and dismissed, yet they persevered and did so with dignity. The mayor declared that the temporary housing would be cut off on December 10th, but again after more pushback from the residents and the public, it was extended to January 10th, 2025. After reneging on his promise to have the city go in to do the repair work, the mayor then enacted a lawsuit against GreyHill.
But something happened about 3 weeks ago that changed the course of the tenants’ shaky situation. GreyHill got busy with the repairs (perhaps because of the pending litigation). As of today, the ransacked and vandalized apartments, now fully repaired, have brought several of the tenants back home to Sherbrooke Avenue. Others have found alternate housing, and no one is homeless. The Hartford News interviewed some of them to express their feelings about their ordeal and also the happy outcome.
Mayra Melendez: |A black cloud illuminated us under a fire on August 10, 2024. Since then, 100 tenants were evacuated and relocated to various motels that were in unfit conditions for re-housing. The struggle was against the system, as the mayor, in his statement, claimed to be unaware of the magnitude of the fire 20 days later. The city of Hartford, the mayor, and all departments were, and still are, unprepared to handle cases that require importance and urgent solutions. Emergency aid stood with us, the marginalized tenants. The priority is to make a difference, and we tenants demonstrated that through our daily fight. A good vision is to support those affected, including babies, children, people with disabilities, pregnant mothers, individuals with medical conditions, etc. Over these five months, I have learned that no matter your status, you must make your voice heard and not feel intimidated by those who claim to be superior. The fight ends with your head held high, with dignity and respect. On January 10th, 2025, we were evicted from temporary housing by the mayor. GreyHill stepped in, directly contacting each tenant, and relocating us to proper apartments. GreyHill took responsibility, something the mayor never cared to do. The negotiations were made by us, the tenants. Today, we can say thank you—it was worth the fight. GreyHill has lifted the black cloud, and now we can turn on the light in our homes.
Marisol Navarro: Well, finally, most of us are in permanent housing. Most of us have our apartments. Thank God and to the GreyHill management, that in the last few weeks worked so hard with us finding us places to live whether it was their own buildings or other properties that they reached out to. As we all know, the mayor did not want to do an extension for those families. We're happy--at least I am happy-- to be back at Sherbrooke, which is what I wanted from the beginning But it doesn't stop here. Are we gonna continue to work and help other people, other families that go through the same thing we went through and are not aware of their rights? It's been a rough ride, but we're getting there.
Dave Richardson, Vice President of the Concord Hills tenant Union: GreyHill did more in less than a month than the city did in 5 months. The tenant union rescued us from becoming homeless. The mayor’s office was not coordinating with other relevant city departments such as Health and Human Services even though they met with them on a weekly basis. We had a tenant meeting with the mayor every 2 weeks. It all lasted so long. Secrecy is not a good thing.
Esther Fesale: An activist and advocate aligned with the CT Tenant Union who got involved because it is a “just cause”, feels Grey Hill was finally willing to help because it will “look good in court”. Right now she is working with the one Concord Hills displaced family that has not yet been re-housed. Their situation is dire as the mother is disabled and wheelchair-bound with a 3-month-old baby. They are not settled yet and are still temporarily housed by the city in a hotel but will be evicted by Friday January 17th and may become homeless. They apparently did not understand the time frame for relocating and Esther along with Sarah from the CT Tenant Union will be sitting down with them this week and try to help them find a place. When the mayor was asked to give them a little more time to cover the cost of a few more days in the hotel, he replied “Get it from GreyHill”.
I want to thank the large number of people from Hartford and several surrounding towns who followed the Hartford News coverage of this story since the beginning. They showed compassion and support for the situation these tenants were in, and I relayed it to the tenants who were grateful to know that so many cared about them. Also, big thanks go to Steve Goode from the CT Insider for also staying on top of this story in that publication.

01/16/2025

Most joined Facebook to communicate with our friends and families. It morphed into an advertising, marketing platform. Many companies use it to promote their products and organizations have relied on it to share community information in a cost-effective way . Facebook is no longer meet-ing my needs. I rarely see my friends and family members posts. I have family that live all over the country and have family in Italy. It has been a real help for staying in touch with each other’s lives. Sharing posts for the Hartford News, View from the Parks and the C**t Park Friends and Foundation, now takes many more steps, For the past 8 years, bots have been highly disruptive. Bots began posting on an individual’s groups and pages. Many believed them to be real people making upsetting, crude, and vulgar posts. Their purpose was to spread misinformation, artificially inflating follower counts, spam comments, or engaging in other malicious activities, often with the goal of influencing public opinion or disrupting a platform’s functionality. They also created accounts to per-form these tasks which the real person’s involvement was difficult to ascertain. But I am not saying that there weren’t plenty of posts made by angry, confused, frustrat-ed people acting out. Since the November election, Facebook announced that its trust and safety and content moderation teams will be relocated from California to Texas. It has dramat-ically changed its policies. Facebook is replacing fact-check-ers with a “community notes” sys-tem similar to X .They are remov-ing restrictions on topics like immigration and gender. Enforcement of community stan-dards will be focused on using automated filters on illegal and high-severity violations, and requiring user reports for lower-severity violations. Those auto-mated filters are problematic. Who knows what they will do?Civic and political content will be covered under a “recommenda-tions” analytic. I do not trust them based upon my experiences. The user will be required to constantly t a il o r t h ei r c ontent profiles to remove unwanted content, effec-tively pushing out the posts con-necting me to what I do want to see, family and friends posts. They are working on reduced false pos-itives, which frankly looks to be incredibly convoluted. Last week one of Hartford’s Facebook neighborhood groups had a post by its admin question-ing how their community felt about social media. They commented that implosion of the use of AI, the bots issue, and little to no fact checking made Facebook useless. So, what do you do? Try another social media platform. I am hearing mixed reviews about BlueSky. I never plan to use social media for news. I am trying to use fact-based news outlets, Reuters and the Guardian for national and international updates, and a local news source, the Hartford News. Frankly, I feel that I was led astray by the New York Times and the Washington Post. Streaming news outlets are useless, except for local news. Garbage in, garbage out. PBS is a bit more balanced, but I will admit, I believe it to be lean-ing heavily to the left. And I mean left, not politically, but more open views to positive change, but that does skew the way the information is delivered. I plan to use private groups to keep in touch with family as many such ones already exist and won’t be impacted by these changes. But my profile’s ‘home’ view is a disaster. I don’t want to spend every day removing 1/3 of the posts I have no interest in. I realize that I am going to lose touch with many. So, I am hoping others will try BlueSky ee if it is a better alternative.What about using Facebook for advertising or marketing of com-munity issues and events? I don’t have a solution. I have used it to share community events and news for almost 20 years. My pages have over 2000 followers, and I share to 9 groups. But does anyone see it? Facebook at times has suppressed osts. And I only know because of a steep drop in viewers for posts. This happens around elections, and my posts rarely have anything to do with national elections. They also impose additional background information during these times, and I have complied every time, but the suppression continued. I feel like it’s a mess, and it’s only going to get worse. If you have any ideas or recommendations, please share them.

01/10/2025

Is Hartford Truly a “College Town”?
A push by the city to convert a downtown building to UConn student housing might have a hidden agenda that would benefit a notorious developer.
COMMENTARY BY ANNE GOSHDIGIAN
Back in September 2024, the mayor was quoted in a Hartford Courant article. “Our message to college students: this is your college town,” Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam said, at an announcement on downtown Hartford’s Pratt Street. “Don’t go to New Haven. Don’t go into West Hartford. Don’t go to Middletown. Hartford’s got it, and this is the place to be.” Those are some bold words. Was he telling us that Ivy League Yale, Southern Connecticut State University, and Albertus Magnus College are inferior schools in the state’s most vibrant city? How about Middletown, home to Wesleyan University and its nationally revered film school? A city that also boasts a booming downtown.
And then there’s Hartford, who’s once amazing downtown has continued to become more of a wasteland, save for a string of niche businesses on Pratt Street. The city’s gung-ho approach to the “college town” initiative does not mention this. The University of Hartford is in West Hartford, and so is the main campus of the University of St. Joseph. Trinity College is in the Behind the Rocks area. Trinity students and staff tend to be a self-sustained community. UConn's Downtown Branch is mostly a majority of freshmen and sophomores under age 21. Some are part-time students who either did not get into the UConn Storrs campus or could not afford the tuition and fees. Some will transfer to Storrs or another school after 2 years at the branch. Many live at home with their families in the suburbs and commute to the branch, and might also work part-time. Capital Community College on Main Street is an all-commuter school with the same issues as the branch such as tuition costs, attending part time while working, and possibly also living in the suburbs with family. The UConn School of Social Work downtown is where many are working toward a Masters in Social Work (MSW) Some of these students are older, and may be married with a family and live in the suburbs.

Yet in view of this, a plan is in place with the blessing of the University of Connecticut and a $5000,000 injection of funds from Travelers to turn a downtown multi-story building at Pratt and Trumbull Streets into dormitory-style student housing with a 2026 opening date. Their expectation is that students—many of them part-time-- will flock to that housing and then eat, drink, and be merry at downtown establishments thus invigorating the Hartford scene and propping up businesses that are wavering.

In my view, Hartford is not a "college town". I think this whole brouhaha about how these commuter students will want to live on Pratt & Trumbull in student housing is bull. It's more about LAZ/Shelbourne & company benefiting. As you should all be aware, that developer has a very poor record of being in arrears on loans of other city buildings it owns, and a history of not paying city property taxes. .When the UConn branch opened here 8 years ago, a lot of development popped up in the Front Street area, like the lofts for rent, the restaurants there, the movie theater (now closed—the “entertainment district. Guess what? It's been a giant bust. Nothing is going on down there. But for Shelbourne, the student housing will become a bonanza, as the $500,000 will be used by the developer to renovate the building in their usual way—using other people’s money—and possibly getting a cut of the housing rent. And if the project is another bust and a large number of students choose not to live there, then Shelbourne has a shiny new renovated building that it can easily convert to upscale apartments at high rents. I feel strongly that this entire initiative’s agenda is all about catering developers and businesses. It's more like a Chamber of Commerce thing and really has little to do with higher education.

Below is a list of the largest college towns/cities in the United States and their number of students, and the city’s exaggeration of its “college town” potential is way overblown.

New York, 1,057;28Los Angeles, 974,013; Chicago, 502,189; Boston, 346,157; Philadelphia, 342,994; Miami, 308,348; Dallas, 302,572; Washington, D.C., 293,391; San Francisco, 279,887; Houston, 270,350.

01/08/2025

12/19/2024

When Weak Was Stronger Than Strong
A look back at some late 20th-century Hartford mayors

COMMENTARY BY ANNE GOSHDIGIAN

Those who are new to the history of Hartford’s mayors may not be aware that throughout nearly the entire 20th century, they served for a term of 2 years, not 4. The election process was very different than the current “strong mayor” system of city government that began in January 2004. Before that time, candidates ran for City Council, and the one who received the most votes became the mayor, and the candidate who received the second-highest number earned the title of “Deputy Mayor”—the equivalent of what is now called “Council President”. Often referred to as the era of the “weak mayor” system, the mayor was, in fact, a figurehead—the public face of city leadership—but behind the scenes there was also a “City Manager”. That was the administration official who was knowledgeable and experienced in several areas of city government who contributed heavily to setting city policy, freeing up the mayor to be out among the people and accessible to them, to listen to them and have open dialogues with residents. It was, in effect, a ceremonial position. From 1967-2003, there were 5 “weak” mayors who were all re-elected to multiple 2-year terms, and were—in fact—not weak in their governance. They were:

*Antonia P. Uc***lo, Republican, 12/5/1967 - 4/12/1971, the first woman mayor in Connecticut and Hartford’s last Republican mayor.

*George A. Athanson, Democrat, 4/12/1971 - 12/1/1981

*Thirman L. Milner, Democrat, 12/1/1981 - 12/1/1987, the first elected Black mayor in New England.

*Carrie Saxon Perry, Democrat, 12/1/1987 - 12/7/1993, the first Black woman to be elected mayor of a major New England city.

*Michael P. Peters, Democrat, 12/7/1993 - 12/4/2001.

All of the above were popular with the majority of Hartford voters. In the 1993 election, Peters, a Hartford firefighter, lost the Democratic primary to Perry who was running for a 4th term, but won the general election that November—the last time that happened in Hartford. Uc***lo was in power during the 1968 riots in Hartford after the assassination of Martin Luther King, and handled the crisis well, working with the Black community to bring positive change and healing. Milner was a city icon who was supported by civil rights activists both locally and nationally, and his terms in office had the focus of bringing to light and working to end racism in Hartford.

I remember Athanson, who served 5 terms as mayor, as a colorful character. George was a highly-educated and wise individual, very outspoken, and some would say a bit rough around the edges. But he spent much of his time in office trying to bring the city together, racially and ethnically into a true “One Hartford”. I may be one of the few Hartfordites who remembers his week-long festival from 1972. George Athanson came up with idea of celebrating the city's beautiful diversity and created the “All-Americans” festival. More than 30 ethnic groups/nationalities participated. and thousands of people attended--some came multiple times during that October week. It was a beautiful and memorable event, filled with the foods, music, dance, costumes, and the arts and crafts of the many cultures dwelling in the capital city.. I wish this could happen again: One event that brings the entire city together, and that I'm sure would draw visitors from all over Connecticut. No divisiveness, but instead an opportunity to enjoy and appreciate our own heritage and that of others. As George said, we are all Americans, no matter from where our families originated.

The bottom line here is that the strong mayor system has brought about the election of 4 Hartford mayors in the past 19 years, and in this woman’s opinion, it’s been a bust all around. Where is the positive change in our city over those years? Why are the citizens still not being heard? The endemic issues facing the city have not been alleviated, and the numbers of voters going to the polls are the lowest they’ve ever been in the 21st century. Here’s hoping that come November2027, the people will have a wake-up call and get out the increased vote that Hartford needs and deserves.

12/18/2024

LOTS OF RECREATIONAL PROGRAMMING BEING OFFERED! Hartford Sports and Recreation CITY https://www.facebook.com/activecityhartford

12/18/2024

This is an update on progress in Pope Park, now in its 129th year in Hartford. With your support, we continue to make meaningful improvements to the park.
We are carefully tending the 94 different trees we have planted since 2021 and they are thriving. They include lindens, willows, shagbark hickories, oaks, ginkgoes, Kentucky coffees, river birch, honey locusts, sweet gums, dawn redwoods, sycamores, and hornbeams. This selection of trees will add shade throughout the park and replace older trees that age out. Many of the mature, century-old oaks are at the end of their life span.
We are on track to plant the 333 trees identified in our 2020 Tree Master Plan. This will ensure the park’s tree canopy remains continuous throughout the next hundred years with a diversity of species to combat the threats diseases and pests and to adapt to the warming climate.
The Pope Hartford Designated Fund (PHDF) was created in 2002 with a mission to support the revitalization of Hartford’s Pope Park. We continue to work to fulfill the vision of Colonel Albert Pope of the park as a connection to nature and its health benefits for Hartford residents.
PHDF works in partnership with the city of Hartford and the Friends of Pope Park on revitalization projects. This year the Bankside Grove Recreational Trail design is complete and awaiting approvals from the Army Corps of Engineers so that it can go to bid for construction. This will provide the connecting link in the park from North to South. Plans for expanded walking paths in Pope Park North (Baby Pope) will be part of the construction bid package. Plans for upgrades to Pope Park West are moving forward. Current plans for these projects are on the Pope Park website, www.popepark.org.
Funds for the next projects in the park are now available through a state bonding allocation spear-headed by Rep. Minnie Gonzalez and Sen. John Fonfara. The Friends of Pope Park and PHDF are working with the city to create terraced seating and landscaping on the hill at Park Terrace that overlooks the soccer field.The work to sustain the park could not take place without your ongoing support and encouragement. Please join our efforts with a donation to PHDF. All funds raised this year will support planting and caring for more trees. You can donate by mail or online at www.popepark.org/donations. Thank you for your support and contributions to making Hartford a healthier, more beautiful place!

12/18/2024

On Monday, December 16, Mayor Arunan Arulampalam directed the City of Hartford’s Licensing and Inspections Division to prepare a referral to the State’s Attorney’s Office for prosecution of the GreyHill Group. The referral cites violations of housing ordinances under Chapter 18 of Hartford’s Municipal Code and the Municipal Powers Act. Following the referral’s submis-sion, GreyHill Group will remain under current obligations to pro-vide necessary repairs to their Sherbrooke property. The referral names Moshe Bloorian of Great Neck, NY, Jacob Herskowitz of Englewood, NJ, Yeshaya Cohen of Lakewood, NJ, and Hillel Tropper of Brooklyn, NY. In addition to the referral, Mayor Arunan Arulampalam announced a list of the top three problem landlords in Hartford. Identifying these problem landlords is the Mayor's ongoing com-mitment to holding landlords accountable for their actions and shedding a light on their continued failure to address tenant concerns, maintain safe housing conditions, and comply with city regulations. “Over the last several months, a working group consisting of officials from development services, public health and public safety have met regularly to develop this list of problem landlords,” said Mayor Arulampalam. “We will continue to focus our energy, our personnel and our resources on holding bad landlords accountable and paving the way for good land-lords to make meaningful investments in our neighborhoods. If you’re not willing to shape up, it’s time to ship out.” The list of landlords and the extent of code enforcement violations is as follows:

• PAXE properties – Aron Puretz, Principal - NY: 24 buildings totaling 357 residen-tial units. Purchased Sept. 2021– August 2022. Over 50 Notices of violation issued by Housing Code/Blight Remediation/Building Dept. Multiple properties vacated for unsafe conditions. City of Hartford made emergency repairs in multiple properties. Liens for relocations and repairs have been filed. 13 of the buildings are now in fore-closure and/or receivership due to enforcement by City of Hartford Blight, Housing Code and Building divisions.

• Moshe Grossbard, Principal– NY: Principal of the follow-ing: 1080 Broad Street LLC, B• rick Realty LLC, Hartford Brick LLC, 27 Edgewood LLC, 44-46 Edgewood LLC, Kenyon Realty LLC, Martin Condos LLC, 353 Sigourney LLC, Standish Realty LLC, 221 Ward LLC. Notices of Violations for Housing and Building Codes, including work without permits /issued citations and liens filed for unpaid fines on multiple properties for non-compliance .

• Whitehead Estates LLC –Lamor Whitehead, Principal– NJ: 150-160 and 170-180 Earle Street (48 residential units). Condemnation of 24 units with relocation by the City of Hartford due to no heat or water. Bank in process of foreclosure since 2022 due to two filings of bankruptcy by the owner, both of which have been dismissed. Receiver in place by court order on behalf of the bank Lomar Whitehead is serving a 9-year sentence in NJ Federal system after conviction on multiple counts of fraud .
The City of Hartford Blight, Housing Code and Building divisions will continue to conduct the appropriate oversight over the identified properties and landlords. The City will provide ongoing updates so tenants can make informed decisions regarding the conditions of they live. We encourage Hartford tenants to contact Hartford 311 to report any unsanitary, unhealthy or neglected living conditions.

12/18/2024

Columnist’s Note: Longing for the past is probably Hartford’s most popular pastime. “I wish Foxes didn’t close...” or “I wish the Whalers had stayed in town!” Well, they’re both gone and they’re not coming back. But there is at least one piece of Hartford’s fabled past that’s still going strong: WTIC. As we prefer to support what we have instead of crying in our collective beers over what is gone, we’d like to devote this week’s column to an Op-Ed from WTIC about the vital role they continue to play in the community.

October 2012. Superstorm Sandy whacked Connecticut, leaving nearly half of the state’s power utility cus-tomers in the dark—some for upwards ten days.As residents sought food being distributed in military distribution lines and demanded emergency relief efforts from the Government, there was one dependable around-the-clock resource for that information: WTIC News/Talk 1080 in Hartford.A signal powerful enough to blanket Connecticut and parts of the surrounding states with multiple layers of redundancy, WTIC did what FM and TV stations across the state failed to do: continue broadcasting vital survival information.That’s the mission the Travelers Insurance Corporation (T-I-C) set in place when it launched WTIC with its first broadcast on February 10, 1925.We are proud that remains our goal to this day, not only on our terrestrial broadcast but also with online streaming and podcasting.Longevity—and the experience it brings—has been key to our success.Our former morning host, Bob Steele, spent a collective 66 years with the station, 55 of those years full-time. Ray Dunaway, Arnold Dean, Joe D’Ambrosio, Dick Bertel, Angela Dias, Bryant Thomas, and many other identifiable voices had careers on WTIC spanning decades, as well. Public leaders trust our local news team, whether we’re talking with Governor Ned Lamont in 2025 or Governor John Harper Trumbull in 1925.Sports fans turn to us for play-by-play of the Red Sox (a partnership that began nearly 70 years ago), the Patriots, and the local Hartford Yard Goats.WTIC is a proven supporter of community initiatives. Reference the $224,500 raised in December of 2023 alone for The Salvation Army during the annual "Holiday Store" benefit. Or, look back on the $500,000 generated for juvenile diabetes research in the 1990’s during Hartford’s “Haunted Happenings” and “Winter Wonderland” events, which included promotional support from WTIC.There’s more to our story, but we hope that helps explain why we’ve survived 100 years and why we’re poised to embark on another century of public service.The same mission. The same station. That’s an accomplishment.

Thank you for listening.Morgan CunninghamWTIC News Producer and Morning Drive News Anchor

12/18/2024

Hartford News December 19th Issue TOC
https://hartfordpublicationscom.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/hn1219finalx.pdf

WTICs Vital Role in the Community
A look back at some late 20th-century Hartford mayors
And Now There is Six
Mayor Announces Problem Landlords List
POPE PARK UPDATE
Active City Winter 2024 Recreational Programming
Yard Goats General Manager Named MiLB Executive of the Year
A Note to Our Readers
The Hartford News will not be published again this year due to the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. The next edition of the paper will be published on Monday, January 6, 2025. Thanks for all your support in 2024 and all the best in 2025!

12/11/2024

Miracle On 550 Main Street
An early Christmas gift from Hartford’s City Council has brought some new hope to the displaced tenants of Concord Hills apartments, but will their wish come true?

COMMENTARY BY ANNE GOSHDIGIAN

One of my all-time favorite Christmas movies is “Miracle on 34th Street” from 1946. In the film, a very young Natalie Wood does not believe in Santa Claus, but after getting to know the NYC department store Santa who claims to be the one and only Santa, she becomes a believer. Her fervent Christmas wish is that he will bring she and her single mother a home of their own for Christmas, and at the finale, he does. Another Hollywood happy ending.
But here in Hartford, the Concord Hills tenants are also seeking a home back in their fire-damaged apartments on Sherbrooke Avenue as soon as the repairs and renovations are completed. Problem is, the ownership GreyHill which has been saying for the past two months that they’ll have the work completed in two weeks. Instead, they’ve gone into slowdown mode and the building repair is nowhere near the finish line. Two weeks ago, Hartford’s mayor announced a one-month extension on their city-funded hotel stays that will end on January 10th, which the tenants appreciated after having feared they’d be out on the streets through the holiday season.

Last week, the mayor said that he would “cut the cord” on the tenants—no more hotel extensions—and urged them to make use of the $4,000 offered to each tenant through the State’s Uniform Relocation Assistance Act and use it to relocate to available apartments on a list the city provided them; no other options. That Act was put in place in 1971 at a time when $4,000 would cover about 9 months of rent on a 2-bedroom apartment. Today, the same $4,000 would last about 10 minutes if the tenant takes any apartment on that list, all of them charging an average of $1,500 a month rent, base. There goes the $4,000 by having to pay first month, last month, and security deposit before moving in. By 2024 standards (53 years later) the Relocation Act amount should be closer to $15,000.
This past Monday there was a public comment session at 6 p.m. prior to the regular City Council meeting where some spoke on the tenants’ concerns, including former 3-term city councilor Dr. Larry Deutsch who joined in on Zoom. The regular meeting began at 7p.m. where the council members discussed and then voted on the agenda resolutions. The last resolution was put forth by Working Families Party councilman Josh Michtom, who has brought forth several good resolutions that have always been voted down by the majority members in the Democratic party. But this time his co-sponsor of the resolution was John Gale of the Hartford Party. Th resolution reads “…to provide continued emergency housing for displaced tents and to make needed repairs.” During the discussion Michtom said “There is a procedure to take control of the building, that by law the city can take control of the building when the landlord is not doing what it said they would do. It’s called municipal receivership. The city has not taken control of that. They should just go in the building and fix the apartments.”
When it came time to call the vote on the resolution, the result was a surprise. Out of the 9 council members 5 voted Yes: Michtom, Gale, TJ Clarke, Maly Rosado, and Alex Thomas. Council President Shirley Surgeon, Marilyn Rosetti, Kelly Bilodeau, and Amilcar Hernandez voted No. The resolution passed. It remains to be seen if the mayor will take action, as the passing of a resolution is not a mandate. The mayor has three options: He can get the apartment work finished by January 10th, use his veto power to overturn the passed resolution, or ignore it altogether.
Please Santa, for the sake of helping these tenants who’ve been treated so shabbily, make their wish come true and help them come home. Now that would be a happy ending.