<body><div><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=1V57iw_1Go5BCpF00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=1V57iw_1Go5BCpF00" width="861" height="646" ><figcaption>Cynthia Bowser of the Stamford NAACP speaks at the September 22 rally as Luke Melonakos of the Connecticut Tenants Union, left, holds the megaphone. In the background, center, is Phil Sfraga of New Neighborhoods, in the blue blazer, with Hannah Srajer, president of the Connecticut Tenants Union, to the right. (Credit: David Michel)</figcaption></figure>Note: This is the last of three pieces (here and here) on Friendship House, the apartment building at 28 Perry Street owned by New Neighborhoods, a Stamford nonprofit. In addition to 28 Perry Street in Stamford, New Neighborhoods also owns Victory Gardens in Newington, 74 apartments for veterans on land owned by the Veterans Affairs hospital. Tenants there formed a union in June 2024 and, according to Connecticut Public, negotiated for months before the company left the table without signing an agreement.On September 22, the tenants of Friendship House announced a union of their own, led by Cindy Pharr and Verdell Johnson. With two buildings organized, 21 percent of the New Neighborhoods portfolio is now unionized, according to the Connecticut Tenants Union, the statewide organization both buildings’ unions belong to.Federal money helps pay the rent at Friendship House, where New Neighborhoods’ rental application lists 66 apartments under HUD’s Section 8 program.Federal rules also give tenants in many subsidized buildings a voice. Under HUD’s tenant participation rule, owners of buildings with project-based Section 8 assistance, among others, must “recognize legitimate tenant organizations” and “give reasonable consideration to concerns raised by legitimate tenant organizations.” On September 23, I asked New Neighborhoods whether it recognizes the Friendship House union and, if the rule covers the building, how it is meeting its obligations. The company did not answer.‘Decent, Safe, and Sanitary’At the September 22 rally, State Senator Patricia Billie Miller, a Stamford Democrat, read from a list of complaints about the building that she said the city had given her, covering only the past year. “That’s a HUD mandate,” she said. “Housing is decent, safe, and sanitary.”“You wouldn’t need unions if management did what they were supposed to do,” she said.“This is a civil rights issue that we’re dealing with,” Cynthia Bowser, a West Side resident and member of the Stamford branch of the NAACP, told the crowd.“If you can’t live a mile or a day in their shoes, get out of the way,” State Representative Corey Paris, also a Stamford Democrat, told the crowd. He said later that he noticed some people standing off to the side laughing while tenants shared their stories.<figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=2ouCCd_1Go5BCpF00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=2ouCCd_1Go5BCpF00" width="861" height="646" ><figcaption>State Representative Corey Paris speaks at the September 22 rally. (Credit: David Michel)</figcaption></figure>Asked afterward what the state could do, Paris wrote that Connecticut’s protections against retaliation and for habitable housing fall short.“New York presumes retaliation for a full year, Minnesota guarantees tenants the right to organize in their buildings, and Maryland lets tenants pursue habitability claims together with their legal fees covered,” he wrote. “Connecticut should do the same, and I will keep pressing for it in Hartford.”Miller did not respond to questions emailed October 8.What the Law SaysConditions. Federal physical condition standards, 24 CFR 5.703, open with one sentence: “HUD housing must be decent, safe, sanitary and in good repair.”Retaliation. Connecticut law, Section 47a-20, generally prohibits landlords from pursuing eviction, demanding a rent increase or decreasing services within six months after good-faith requests for repairs, efforts to remedy housing or health code violations, or organizing or joining a tenants’ union. The law provides exceptions.‘Only Verbal Commitments’The union delivered a letter to New Neighborhoods’ home office on September 22 asking for a meeting. Jackie Ramos, the company’s chief human resources officer, first scheduled one for October 2, then moved it to October 7 so Jamey Healy, the president and chief executive, could attend, said Luke Melonakos, vice president of the Connecticut Tenants Union.<figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=1PcFsv_1Go5BCpF00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=1PcFsv_1Go5BCpF00" width="861" height="646" ><figcaption>The Progress Park building at 76 Progress Drive in Stamford, where New Neighborhoods has its main office. (Credit: David Michel)</figcaption></figure>On October 7, Healy sat down with the union’s bargaining committee, joined by Ramos, Jerome Floyd, the operations director, and Phil Sfraga, a regional manager.The meeting lasted less than half an hour. The tenants had elected a bargaining committee and written a proposal, which the committee handed to Healy. In a letter to the New Neighborhoods board the next morning, the union said the proposal describes “a pattern of slow or neglected maintenance, deferred investment in the building, poor communication, disregard for privacy and dignity, fear of retaliation, financial disputes, eviction pressure, and serious safety concerns.”The committee opened with a statement listing plumbing failures, mold, serious safety problems and lights out inside and outside the building. A young child in the building, the statement said, is suffering from respiratory problems because of mold in an apartment. Then the committee turned to the first items on its list, maintenance response times, Melonakos said.Saray Chappell Figueroa, co-vice president of the Victory Gardens Tenant Union and secretary treasurer of the Connecticut Tenants Union, sat with the Friendship House committee to support the new union. She told Healy what Victory Gardens tenants had been through: months of negotiations and hours of preparation, promises that were not kept, and in the end no signed agreement.Healy answered that he shared their concern for a clean and healthy building. When tenants have a problem, he said, the process is to file a work order. The building is 50 years old, he said, and its structural problems will take time and money to fix, but many small repairs cost little, and the company wants to make them. He said he would look into every item on the committee’s list. He would not put that commitment in writing.Mold came up when a Friendship House tenant raised complaints that had gone on for months, Chappell Figueroa said. Healy replied that he could not act on a report of “mold in the building,” only on work orders tied to specific apartments, Melonakos said. Chappell Figueroa, Pharr and Hannah Srajer, president of the Connecticut Tenants Union, described his answer the same way.The union’s letter also says Healy “told the room that NNI had no knowledge of the serious issues occurring in the building.” Apart from introductions, Floyd, Sfraga and Ramos stayed silent, Melonakos said.According to the letter, Healy “declined to commit to a genuine conversation that would result in tangible, written agreements.” The committee ended the meeting, the letter says, when it became clear New Neighborhoods would treat it like two residents’ meetings in August, “which had resulted only in verbal commitments without follow-through.” Members, it says, “felt disrespected and belittled by Mr. Healy and Mr. Floyd.”Tenants came to the meeting looking for Healy “to take accountability in his role as CEO, and not pass the buck or wave problems away,” Melonakos said. “Instead, they were met with more of the same: a disrespectful attitude, a lack of accountability, and Mr. Healy’s refusal to agree with the obvious, namely that any commitments made must be put into writing in order to ‘matter.'”‘Stirring the Pot’On October 24, Christopher Adams, a Friendship House tenant who had come home about two months earlier from a combat deployment, emailed New Neighborhoods’ leadership about his apartment. While he was away, he wrote, work orders his mother put in took months to complete, including a ceiling repair in his son’s room. His door would not close properly. And he came home to roaches.He sent the email again on October 26, to Healy and Floyd. That morning, Healy wrote a note about him that also reached Adams, who shared the exchange with me.“How did he happen to have both your and my email addresses and names?” Healy wrote. “We are not hiding them from anyone, but it’s interesting he sent to both of us now (with unions stirring the pot).”After Sfraga’s visit, Healy wrote, “YOU should give him a call to let him know ‘we care’ and have our ‘best people’ on it… so to speak.”“This one ‘feels’ like it is not independent of everything else going on,” he wrote. “It’s worth a call.”Four days earlier, a city inspector had warned a New Neighborhoods manager that the Health Department would condemn a tenant’s apartment if its heat was not restored.Adams answered on October 26. “With all due respect I’m going to make myself clear here, I speak for myself,” he wrote. “It’s not hard to look on the website and look at executive staff or the more important people to actually address concerns with.”Floyd replied, copying Healy. “I understand your concerns and I’m sorry for any inconvenience you are having,” he wrote. “I also want to thank you for your service.”On September 29, Healy had written to me: “I have always made myself available to our tenants whenever they reach out to me.”The BoardThe Friendship House Tenant Union has asked the New Neighborhoods board to meet with its leadership by October 15.Questions emailed to the chairman and members of the board on October 7 and October 8, including whether the board would meet with the Friendship House union, drew no response by the October 9 deadline.As of October 21, the board had not agreed to meet, Melonakos said. “The members of this union are committed to a systemic change in their living conditions and a new relationship with their landlord, and they plan to continue fighting for that.”On October 28, the union led tenants, reporters and Bridget Fox, chief of staff to Mayor Caroline Simmons, through the building, from the laundry room to apartments on several floors.<figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=1a2XBW_1Go5BCpF00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=1a2XBW_1Go5BCpF00" width="860" height="645" ><figcaption>Paint bubbling on a bathroom ceiling above a shower in a Friendship House apartment, photographed during the October 28 walkthrough. Tenants pointed out signs of water leaks on several floors. (Credit: David Michel)</figcaption></figure>At the end of the walkthrough, Johnson spoke directly to the New Neighborhoods board. “We’re asking that the board meet with the tenants union because we’ve tried unsuccessfully, time after time, to meet with the New Neighborhoods management staff,” she said. “We’ve had no results. We’ve run into a brick wall. We cannot accept that anymore.”“So we’re inviting the board to sit with us, talk with us, and listen to our concerns.”A Repeat“He never signed an agreement with our chapter, which is Victory Gardens,” Chappell Figueroa said, “and we’re seeing a repeat again at Friendship House.”At Victory Gardens, Chappell Figueroa said, Healy would speak with tenant representatives but not with the union. “He stays away from even acknowledging that there’s a union in the community,” she said.The Victory Gardens union did win something. Because tenants formed a union, Chappell Figueroa said, “we were able to organize ourselves as a community and stand together to negotiate with the property management company” to remove a property manager tenants said had harassed them. The new manager is respectful, she said, but problems remain. Ramps that Healy said would be installed have not been, she said, and the new manager has given no update.Asked what might be different at Friendship House, Melonakos answered in two words: “We’ve grown!”What New Neighborhoods saidBeyond a statement from Ramos and two emails from Healy on September 29, New Neighborhoods has not answered my questions.“New Neighborhoods is committed to our residents and to providing safe, quality, affordable housing,” the statement reads. “We value our residents, take their concerns seriously.”In an email on September 29, Healy wrote that meeting with residents “is one of my highest priorities.” Later that afternoon, asked when he would meet with tenants, he added: “Having not had any communications with any of them, it would be premature for me to make any further statements beyond my initial response.”New Neighborhoods did not answer whether it recognizes the Friendship House union. Healy did not respond to questions emailed October 8.—David Michel is a former three-term state representative from Stamford. In the legislature he was the lead proponent of Connecticut’s Right to Counsel law for tenants facing eviction.</div></body>

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Note: This is the last of three pieces (here and here) on Friendship House, the apartment building at 28 Perry Street owned by New Neighborhoods, a Stamford nonprofit. In addition to 28 Perry Street in Stamford, New Neighborhoods also owns Victory Gardens in Newington, 74 apartments for veterans on land owned by the Veterans Affairs hospital. Tenants there formed a union in June 2024 and, according to Connecticut Public, negotiated for months before the company left the table without signing an agreement.

‘We Care,’ So to Speak

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Note: This is the last of three pieces (here and here) on Friendship House, the apartment building at 28 Perry Street owned by New Neighborhoods, a Stamfor

‘We Care,’ So to Speak

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