The three-family house at 14 Elliot.
A judge noted that he wouldn’t want to live in a rented room with a leaky ceiling, loose stairs, and a perennially clogged bathroom sink — and then OK’d the eviction of a tenant who cited those conditions when explaining why she stopped paying rent.
Superior Court Judge John Cirello issued that decision Tuesday in one of the half-dozen eviction case trials he presided over that morning in a crowded third-floor court room at the state courthouse at 121 Elm St.
This particular eviction case in front of Cirello’s bench on Tuesday was brought by North Haven-based landlord Dee Jay Peterson against a tenant who lives in a three-family house he owns at 14 Elliot St. in the Hill.
In a March 21 legal complaint, Peterson alleged that that tenant had failed to pay the $500 monthly rent she owed for her third-floor bedroom. The notice to quit that Peterson filed on March 14 ordered the tenant to leave by March 20 because of her nonpayment of rent.
Then, on March 28, the tenant filed a legal answer in which she wrote that she had paid her rent up through Feb. 1, “but they haven’t fix thing that need to be replace or fix.”
Cirello heard Tuesday’s case as eviction cases across the city, state, and country are on the rise as pandemic-era protections for tenants expire and the state’s UniteCT renter relief program has stopped accepting new applications, and as the state has set aside $5 million for new renter support programs, including an expanded “rent bank.”
After nearly two years of being entirely online, New Haven’s eviction court, as of early May, is now back in person.
Judge: "I Wouldn't Want To Live" Like That
14 Elliot St.
On Tuesday morning, landlord and tenant — both representing themselves pro se, or without the help of an attorney — appeared before Cirello to make their respective cases for why the eviction should or shouldn’t go through.
Cirello asked Peterson to go first. “Not because I like him any better than you,” he told the tenant. “But because he has the burden of proof” as the plaintiff in the case, who filed for the eviction.
Peterson said that the tenant had stopped paying rent in February. “She hasn’t paid since,” he said.
He said they had a verbal agreement whereby she paid $500 per month for a bedroom she rented on the third floor of the house.
“I haven’t heard any complaints of anything that needs to be fixed,” he told the judge.
The tenant looked to her landlord with surprise.
“You didn’t hear about the ceiling leaking?” she asked.
At the judge’s request, the tenant then ticked through the various complaints she has with her apartment that led her to stop paying rent.
The ceiling leaks, she said.
The tiles on the bathroom floor are pulling up.
“The bathroom sink’s been stopped since day one.”
Some of the steps in the stairwell are loose and, “if you step a certain way, the board leans.”
And there’s no lock for the third-floor apartment, meaning that anyone in the house can just walk on up as they please.
She told the judge that she first lodged these complaints with the building’s in-house maintenance man in December. That man subsequently died. Now there’s no one at the property to make repairs, she said. She also said that she told the landlord’s cousin about these problems, and that he should have relayed them to Peterson.
“I did have a maintenance guy in house who fixed everything that needed to be fixed,” the landlord acknowledged. “He did pass away.”
Peterson claimed he was never notified of the housing-condition complaints raised by the tenant in court on Tuesday.
Thomas Breen file photo
Judge Cirello.
How much is the tenant’s rental arrearage? Cirello asked the landlord.
Peterson said that the tenant is now four months behind on rent, since she didn’t pay in February, March, April or May. That means she owes a total of $2,000, he said.
Cirello then turned to the tenant as he formulated his order.
“I wouldn’t want to live in those conditions,” he said, referring to the list of issues the tenant raised about her rented room and the house more broadly.
But, the judge continued, those issues “don’t rise to the level of making the apartment uninhabitable.”
He said that the tenant could have filed a formal complaint with the city’s Health Department or the city’s housing-code enforcement agency, the Livable City Initiative (LCI). But she didn’t. She could have made sure that her landlord was aware of all of these issues. But she didn’t.
All the while, she stayed in the rented room without paying rent.
Cirello then issued a judgment in favor of the plaintiff — that is, he sided with the landlord, allowing the eviction to go through because of the tenant’s nonpayment of rent. The judge ordered the tenant to leave her Elliot Street rented room by May 31.
“You have to be out by the end of the month,” he said.
"Every House Needs Improvements"
The front porch of 14 Elliot...
... looking down the block, from Davenport towards Sylvan.
After Tuesday’s court hearing, Peterson told the Independent that he was happy with the judge’s decision.
“It’s been four months” since his third-floor tenant paid rent, he said.
What about all of the housing-condition issues that the tenant raised in court, like the leaky ceiling and loose stairs and stopped-up bathroom sink?
Peterson pledged to fix all of those problems as soon as he can find a new maintenance person to hire to replace the former in-house employee who passed away. He said he’s currently looking for such a worker. He said he plans on having everything fixed up by the time he rents out the apartment again to a new tenant.
Does he rent out 14 Elliot St. as a rooming house?
No, Peterson claimed.
Well, he said, he has rented out a few rooms by the room at the request of certain tenants. That’s what those tenants needed, he said, and so that’s what he’s provided.
State court records show that, in addition to his eviction case against the building’s third-floor tenant, Peterson currently has two eviction cases pending against two different tenants who rent rooms on the Elliot Street building’s second floor. He told the Independent that said that, after these eviction cases are complete, he plans on renting out the three-family home’s dwelling units as full apartments, and no longer as just rented rooms.
The tenant at the center of Tuesday’s eviction case did not respond to requests for comment by the publication time of this article. Two other tenants hanging out outside of 14 Elliot St. Tuesday afternoon did speak briefly with this reporter.
“Every house needs improvements,” said one tenant named Steve. With 14 Elliot St., he said, “I’ve got no complaints. It’s livable.”
When this reporter told him about the eviction cases pending against his various housemates, Steve said, “If a place is so unbearable, why stay?”
The owner of a nearby home, meanwhile, told the Independent that she’s less enthusiastic about having 14 Elliot St. as her neighbor.
“People drink outside. I don’t like it,” she said.
Legal Aid: Paying Rent Into Court Is An Option
Madison Hawamy file photo
What about that legal standard of “habitability” that Cirello referenced during Tuesday’s court hearing? The judge found that the various problems described by the tenant — a leaking ceiling, loose steps, a clogged bathroom sink — didn’t render the property uninhabitable, or at least not uninhabitable enough to warrant her not paying her monthly rent.
So what would?
“It’s a hazy standard,” New Haven Legal Assistance Association (NHLAA) Attorney Elizabeth Rosenthal told the Independent in a Tuesday afternoon phone interview.
It doesn’t necessarily mean that the premises have to be “literally uninhabitable” — or that, immediately upon inspection, LCI would condemn the property and move all residents out.
Rather, “for the tenant to be relieved from the obligation to pay rent, the conditions that the tenant is raising have to go the health and safety of the premises.”
“Landlords do have reciprocal obligations under the terms of the lease to keep the premises habitable,” she continued. “There’s the implied warranty of habitability that landlords have an obligation to uphold.”
Without commenting on the specifics of this Elliot Street tenant’s case, Rosenthal said backed-up plumbing sounds “unsanitary, unsafe,” A rodent infestation is another such example. A lack of smoke detectors is yet another example, specifically called out in state law, that relieves the tenant of the obligation to pay rent.
Rosenthal also said that tenants are not legally required to reach out to LCI or the city Health Department in order to successfully argue in court that their residence is uninhabitable and that they therefore should not have to pay rent.
What if a landlord refuses to make repairs, and a tenant does think they shouldn’t have to pay rent because of how unlivable their apartment is?
Legal aid agencies from throughout the state have put together a guide for those circumstances here.
In such cases, Rosenthal said, first, a tenant should tell their landlord about the maintenance issues. “Given them the opportunity to fix” the problem, she said. “Best to make that in writing,” Rosenthal said, to preserve a written record of that request.
If the landlord doesn’t do a good job or respond in a timely manner, she said, then tenants should reach out to the city’s housing-code enforcement agency, which in New Haven’s case is LCI.
Within 21 days of reaching out to LCi, Rosenthal added, tenants in those situations can also file a “payment into court” or “housing code enforcement” action — that is, a lawsuit against their landlord, whereby the tenant pays rent into an escrow account held by the state court system.
Then, a state judge will hold a hearing and determine how much if any of the rent to distribute to the landlord and how much to return to the tenant, based on whether or not the problems with the property have been fixed in a timely manner.
Other recent stories about New Haven eviction cases working their way through housing court so far in 2022.
• Though Sympathetic, Judge Blocks Eviction
• Family Feuds Fill Eviction Court
• Rent Help Winds Down. What’s Next?
• Eviction Withdrawn After Rent Catch-up
• Hill Landlord Prevails In“Lapse” Eviction
• Landlord Thwarted 2nd Time On Eviction
• Church Evicting Parishioner
• Hard-Luck Tenant Hustles To Stay Put
• Eviction Of Hospitalized Tenant, 74, Upheld
• Judge Pauses Eviction Amid Rent-Relief Qs
• Amid Rise In“Lapse-of-Time” Evictions, Tenant Wins 3‑Month Stay
• Leaky Ceiling, Rent Dispute Spark Eviction Case
Apparently the terrible conditions are bearable when one does not pay rent....