Most days, Betty Wadley has to run the water in her shower for 20 or 30 minutes until it’s warm enough to pull back the curtain and step inside.
That’s when the Hartford native confronts the worst neglect of the two-bedroom apartment where she’s lived the past seven years — the burst bubble of paint and plaster spreading across her bathroom ceiling like an open sore, revealing so many attempts to cover up water damage and mold.
Inspected by U.S. Housing and Urban Development in October, the Barbour Gardens apartment complex scored a 9 out of 100 for its faulty plumbing, rodent infestations, broken doors and windows, and other issues. But as conditions have worsened inside the North End apartment complex, the New York-based owner has continued to collect federal subsidies – about $2.25 million over the last three years to supplement the rent of 84 units, according to the U.S. Housing and Urban Development department.
On Wednesday, HUD announced plans to terminate its Section 8 contract for the grim, 1960s-era development after relocating residents, citing the same “major threats to health and safety” that forced HUD to shutter another Hartford complex, Clay Arsenal Renaissance, and begin the process with a second, Infill I, earlier this month.
Over the last year HUD, after repeated complaints from tenants and failed inspections, has moved to terminate the contracts of two other landlords in Hartford.
HUD’s oversight of the city’s affordable housing has tenants demanding answers. As they wait for relocation vouchers to seek safe, decent homes outside of Hartford, they’re also calling for accountability, and asking the government why it took so long to intervene.
“It’s disgusting, it really is,” Wadley said Tuesday at her Barbour Street apartment. “I used to wash my ceiling so the brown spots wouldn’t show up but now I’m afraid to touch it. It’s really pathetic that they think it’s OK for us to remain this way.”
“It’s a big cover-up here. That’s it.”
Barbour Gardens, a collection of brick, U-shaped buildings near Keney Park, is owned by ADAR Hartford Realty LLC in Suffern, N.Y., a real estate company managed by Manhattan attorney Aaron Seligson, according to property and business records. Seligson did not respond to a message left with his assistant Monday.
HUD entered into its contract with the company in 2004. The agency last renewed its contract in May, for just six months, and sent the owners a notice of default in October, warning they had 60 days to fix deficiencies noted by Hartford inspectors.
On Feb. 1, HUD moved to terminate another Section 8 contract with residents of the Infill 1 apartment complex, 52 units of affordable housing also owned by an out-of-state landlord, Blima Isaacson of Brooklyn. Those early-1970s apartments failed two HUD inspections.
And last spring, HUD began the process of ending its contract with Emmanuel Ku, owner of 26 North End apartment buildings called Clay Arsenal Renaissance. Just recently, the agency finished relocating the last of his tenants from the 150-unit complex.
Residents of all three complexes organized with the help of the Christian Activities Council, a Hartford nonprofit which had planned a news conference for Thursday morning to demand HUD address the squalid conditions of Barbour Gardens.
Last fall, HUD agreed to relocate residents with documented health issues, something at least one family has done since, according to spokeswoman Rhonda Siciliano.
But others remain, like the family of 8-year-old Kwan’Asia Levine. Four times a day, she takes medication for the severe asthma she developed after two years living in Barbour Gardens. When she visits friends, Kwan’Asia carries a red backpack filled with her pills, liquid steroids, inhalers and portable nebulizer.
“My baby is a walking pharmacist right now,” her mom, 44-year-old Tasha Jordan, said Tuesday. As she talked, she folded neat piles of clothes on her bed, which fills most of the living room of their two-bedroom apartment.
In the last month, Jordan once again scoured her unit for mouse-made holes, and stuffed them with steel wool pads and rodenticide insulating foam. She pried sprayed the white stuff in her kitchen, in her bathroom, in her daughter’s room where water leaking through the walls had formed an inch-wide gap between floor and wall.
“When they said (the property) passed inspection, I said, ‘Well where the hell were they at?'” Jordan said. “I didn’t understand how we was passing inspection and we’re living in the conditions we’re living in.”
The Christian Activities Council is going forward with its news conference, and planning to call attention to problems with the process of relocating residents to safe, decent apartments. The group is asking HUD to select a regional entity to administer the relocation voucher program, offer residents 180 days to find new housing and provide comprehensive mobility counseling.
“We also call on HUD to join with the City of Hartford and Hartford residents to address the destruction left behind by handing over people’s lives and homes to owners seeking profit over people,” Mackey said.
Mackey called HUD’s action a “tremendous victory” for residents, but said HUD’s actions in Hartford are part of a “pattern of racist housing policy,” and violate the agency’s obligations to foster integration.
The vast majority of current and former tenants of Barbour Gardens, Infill and Clay Arsenal Renaissance are black and Hispanic or Latino, as are most residents of Hartford’s economically-challenged neighborhoods.
“It tells a very stark story,” Mackey said. “Over 40 buildings and 286 units of affordable housing in the North End were put in the hands of slumlords and many of those buildings are now heading toward blight.”
It was not clear Wednesday how many code violations Barbour Gardens and Infill have been cited with in recent months or whether there is adequate affordable housing available in the city to accommodate residents leaving those complexes. The city of Hartford did not respond to a request for that information.
In a statement Wednesday, HUD New England Regional Administrator acknowledged that the owners of Barbour Gardens had “broken faith” with residents by failing to provide decent, safe and sanitary living conditions.
The development was flagged with more than 200 city code violations in September, despite passing a HUD inspection last February with a score of 81. After an outcry from tenants, activists and lawmakers, HUD inspected the properties again, resulting in October’s score of 9 out of 100.
In November, the owners were in early talks to sell the project, which would have brought substantial repairs and renovations, HUD spokeswoman Rhonda Siciliano said at the time. For the past few months, HUD has been working with the city and current owner to preserve Barbour Gardens as affordable housing, Tille said Wednesday, but they weren’t able to agree on a plan that satisfied all parties.
To Wadley, the complex seems beyond repair. She thinks her whole building has shifted on its foundation, explaining her slanted kitchen floor and the crack between her front door and its frame.
“If you don’t start under the ground, how are you gonna fix the problem?” she asked.
Rebecca Lurye can be reached at rlurye@courant.com.
