Fair Process Qs Stall Fair Rent Hearing

Hamden’s Fair Rent Commission convened Thursday night to continue hearing its first slate of cases in four years — and wound up further postponing a determination on what constitutes fair rent to figure out how to hold a fair meeting.

Tenants of Mix Avenue apartment complex Seramonte Estates had testified mid-September to what they called unjust rent escalations. Then the hearing was continued. Management’s lawyers arrived Thursday night ready to cross-examine those same tenants and bring forward both the property’s manager and landlord … until a tenant union leader representing her neighbors declared the hearing itself biased and requested the proceedings be pushed out to October.

Thursday’s online session began with Kevin McEleney, a lawyer hired by Seramonte, questioning tenant Sameed Iqbal about why he felt his landlord’s move to raise rent by 75 percent is unjust. Iqbal and other tenants testified in front of the commission two weeks ago; read more about their experiences here.

Eleney first interviewed Iqbal, and later Seramonte’s property manager, Shannon McMunn, in an ostensible attempt to show that the rent increase was a justified move to align the apartment’s value with comparable, market-rate housing in town.

Iqbal, a 26-year-old who lives with his retired parents, brother, sister in-law and nephew, has paid $2,000 a month since 2020 to live in an apartment that he was told in late August would require $3,500 to afford beginning on October first. 

Before Iqbal’s family moved in, the apartment had already been converted from what were supposedly two separate units into just one. The only apartment of its kind in the Seramonte complex, it features five bedrooms, a single kitchen, two bathrooms, a living room and an in-unit washer and dryer. The landlord covers heating expenses.

“Two separate units for each bedroom, that’s effectively $1,000 each,” McEleney reasoned. He asked Iqbal whether he would agree that $1,000 per month for a two-bedroom unit in Hamden was well below the market rate.

“With just one kitchen, I’m not sure exactly,” Iqbal said.

What about $1,750? McEleney asked. The would be the cost per unit were the contested proposed rent increase enacted.

Iqbal said that would be ​“considered high for Hamden market value.” He said while searching for alternative apartments recently, he found two-bedrooms with a full kitchen and a full-plus half bath in Shelton, North Haven, and Wallingford.

He didn’t ​“bother” to look in Hamden, he said, following his poor experience with Seramonte.

He said he couldn’t understand how Seramonte could justify such a significant rent increase with less than two month’s notice.

“Wouldn’t one logical reason be to get to a place that’s comparable to the market?” McEleney asked.

“If the apartment was upgraded from the inside, sure,” Iqbal said, asserting that while property management had invested in some landscaping and external improvements to the complex, they had yet to better the interior of his apartment in any way since he’d moved there.

Then McEleney brought Shannon McMunn, the apartments’ property manager under Northpoint Management, as a witness.

McMunn has worked at Seramonte since January 2021, when Northpoint was first contracted by the property’s landlord. She said she has worked in the real estate industry for seven years, having previously managed Sutton Views and Aspen Glen apartments in Hamden.

“It’s important to my business to stay up with what other apartments are renting out for,” she stated.

McEleney pulled up a spreadsheet of nearby apartment complexes in Hamden and their rental prices. McMunn said she had put the list together by scraping information from apartments.com.

“Were you part of the discussion of raising the rent on this particular unit?” McEleney asked.

“Yes,” McMunn stated.

Two thousand dollars per month — ​“do you believe that’s even close to market?”

“No,” she said.

McMunn spoke of management replacing roofs, paving lots, renovating hallways and entryways, painting doors, repairing balconies.

She said management determines how to upgrade apartments after they are vacated. Over the past year, she said, carpets have been removed and replaced with vinyl flooring, appliances swapped to stainless steel, countertops turned to granite, and hardwood floors refinished.

Asked to pick the most comparable unit to Iqbal’s on the list she had presented, McMunn referred to Broadmoor’s two-bedroom units, which she said range from $1,900 to $1,950. Doubling those monthly costs to parallel the dimensions of Iqbal’s five-bedroom home, that would come to $3,800 a month. That’s $300 more than Iqbal was expected to pay in October.

Greta Blau, a Seramonte tenant who helped found a tenants union at the property last spring, spoke up. As a union representative, she asked to cross-examine the witness.

McEleney cautioned that it could be ​“an unauthorized practice of law” to allow a ​“layman” to represent the tenants.

“This is not a court of law,” Commissioner Peter Cunningham argued. He said Blau didn’t need to be an attorney to represent her neighbors.

In her capacity as a representative, Blau first argued that the commission was running the meeting unfairly — and giving her landlord an advantage.

When the landlord requested a continuance back in mid-September, she said, tenants still testified and opposing counsel was able to interject and question Iqbal sporadically.

This time around, the commission transitioned to a webinar format so they could mute individuals and try to control the discussion. So Blau was not able to jump in the conversation while McEleney interviewed Iqbal and McMunn.

“I needed to be able to interject just like the other lawyer was allowed to last time,” she insisted.

Commissioner Peter Cunningham said that the attorney’s disruptions during the previous meeting were ​“inappropriate,” and the commission intentionally changed the Zoom format to ​“keep that from happening again.”

It was also wrong, Blau continued, that Attorney McEleney’s face was visible on the screen alongside the commissioners but everyone else’s cameras were turned off. 

“I think that’s a fair point,” Town Attorney Tim Lee said, requesting that all witnesses turn their cameras on while it was their time to speak.

Briefly, Blau did cross-examine McMunn.

She pinpointed McMunn’s comparison of Seramonte Estates to the nearby Broadmoor Apartments.

“Does Seramonte have a fitness center?” she asked. An outdoor tennis court? An indoor basketball park? A picnic area with grills? A dog park?

Broadmoor has all of those amenities, Blau said. McMunn agreed that Seramonte did not.

So, Blau continued, ​“do you think it’s comparable to Seramonte? Do you?”

“No,” McMunn finally said.

“Did you tell a tenant we were going to have a gym built here?” Blau followed up.

McMunn said she had told tenants that management was hoping to accomplish that ​“down the road.”

“Did you tell them that’s why you were going to raise their rent?”

“I don’t recall that,” McMunn replied.

The cross-examination broke down when McEleney pitched in to clarify an aspect of an earlier exhibit he had presented – and Blau returned to arguing with the commission over what she described as double standards regarding who was allowed to speak during the meeting and when.

“I need you to mute his microphone,” she told the commission. ​“I was not allowed to do that; this isn’t right.”

Commissioners tried to speak. She cut them off. ​“Please, if this starts, we want a continuance right now. I wasn’t allowed to talk. Why is he allowed to talk?”

“If I can be frank, we’re new to this and we’re trying to work out the kinks of how this is gonna work going forward,” Cunningham stated. ​“We’re trying to do this as fairly and as orderly as possible. I think you’re right about some of the objections you’ve raised and we’re gonna try to do better moving forward.”

After more an hour of what Cunningham called unproductive ​“sniping back and forth,” the commission and Seramonte representatives agreed to continue the matter upon Blau’s request. That meant pushing a mounting number of complaints previously scheduled for early October hearings further out; the commission will next meet on Oct. 19, then Oct. 27, as well as the first two weeks of November, to try to address all of the complaints currently filed by Seramonte residents.

Blau said she wanted a continuance ​“to find out how this is actually supposed to be run.”

“There need to be rules,” she said.

“I’m sorry. I know I’m being a pain about this,” she apologized to the volunteer commissioners. 

“But I want it to be fair for the tenants — and it’s never fair for the tenants.”

Nora Grace-Flood’s reporting is supported in part by a grant from Report for America.