New London — The city's public housing policy is woefully outdated and an effort to move tenants from three crumbling, vermin-infested high-rise apartment buildings off Crystal Avenue and into the community will improve their lives and modernize municipal housing strategy, according to Mayor Michael Passero.

"You can't put the poorest of poor all in one location. The idea today is mixed-use development," the mayor said. "And it's been developing like that for a long period of time, but New London has not been participating. As far as modernizing housing policies and taking advantage of opportunities, New London hasn't done it. We are stuck with the '60s model, and we have never moved away from it."

New London's Housing Authority board of commissioners voted Nov. 8 to apply to the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development for a demolition disposition for the Thames River Apartments, which opened in 1967 and were problem-plagued and vandalized right from the start. If approved, and Passero is confident that it will be, the designation will re-assign so-called Section 8 vouchers from a specific property — in this case the high-rise apartments — to the tenants, allowing them to move into private-sector housing. The Crystal Avenue buildings then will be razed.

About 380 residents live in 124 apartments that have been afflicted for many years by cockroaches, mice, mold and other problems. From the start, bureaucrats realized that warehousing poor people in high-rise buildings accessed by hallways and elevators was a mistake. But in the case of the Crystal Avenue units, the city and its Housing Authority opted to make repairs and modifications rather than relocate tenants.

Now, prompted by the recent disclosure that a temporary boiler had been installed to provide heat and hot water to the entire complex, a newly re-organized authority sees a crisis looming. If the boiler fails, the city will be liable to relocate and house the high-rise tenants, the mayor said.

"HUD is basically telling us you are going to have a humanitarian crisis on your hands if those buildings fail this winter, and the responsibility is going to fall on you," Passero said. "So I need a professional opinion from someone who can tell me what to do if that boiler fails, or can we sustain it through the winter? Because we need to get that building through the winter."

The immediate worry is keeping the apartments warm and hot water running, but the mayor said it's well beyond the time when the city should have intervened to move tenants out of the high-rises and into more hospitable housing.

While New London has made patchwork repairs to the Thames River Apartments for decades, other communities like New Haven, Glastonbury and Wallingford have moved away from housing low-income people in so-called projects and instead helped integrate them into the community, Passero said. He cited New Haven, saying that over the past 15 years the Elm City has moved 2,000 tenants out of public projects and into neighborhoods.

Passero said he has visited those cities and met with their housing authorities to hear what they've done.

"I have done a lot of learning in the past few weeks, and there is a steep learning curve here," he said.

'There needs to be a plan'

Passero and Betsy Gibson, chairwoman of the city's Housing Authority board of commissioners, are confident that HUD will OK the city's application and move the vouchers from the buildings to the tenants, clearing the way to demolish the high-rises. But both cautioned the process could take six months to a year, or longer.

"We have told the tenants, 'You are going to be here for Thanksgiving and Christmas and Easter and probably next Christmas,'" said Gibson, who moved to New London a year ago and joined the board in March, and like Passero has made a quick study of the dire situation at Thames River Apartments.  

"We have put very poor people in this situation, and they live in fear," she said of the tenants. "And my hope is to change this, but I don't work on hope, I work on action."

Last week the authority named Lee C. Erdmann, the former chief operating officer and city manager of Hartford, as interim executive director of the authority, after dismissing Sue Shontell, who filled the post since 2009.

The city will explore options for future management of its public housing, Passero said, suggesting it could be a private company or a partnership with another municipality.

"HUD is looking for housing authorities to connect and draw economies of scale," he said, adding, "With federal money drying up, facilities like Thames River are not going to be supported."

"As buildings reach the end of their usable life, there needs to be a plan in place," Passero said.

He believes the time it will take the city to secure the housing vouchers will allow landlords to prepare additional units. And while the so-called "emergency-enhanced voucher" would allow tenants to move anywhere they want, out of the city or even out of the state, the mayor said he suspects many of them will want to stay in New London.

"This gives us time and opportunities to enhance our housing stock," Passero said. "Our goal is to work with landlords and let them know this is coming."

 Shortage of apartments

An informal canvass of local landlords indicates while they would welcome Section 8 tenants, there may not be an adequate number of units in the right size and price range to accommodate them.

With a voucher, the government pays the balance of rent that exceeds 30 percent of a renter's monthly income. The rental unit must be inspected and approved by the local housing authority and the rental amount must be at or below the fair market rent set by HUD. In 2015, HUD's fair market rents in New London County ranged from $851 for a one-bedroom unit to $1,457 for a three-bedroom unit and $1,690 for a four-bedroom unit.

Bill Cornish, a local property owner and landlord in New London, said he has some studio and one-bedroom rentals, but no larger units, a concern cited by several other landlords. But given the time to ready larger apartments in buildings he owns, Cornish said he would complete the work if he knew there would be tenants in the near future.

"When you're in business, that's what you do; you respond to the market," he said.

Frank McLaughlin, another city landlord, said he has had good experience with Section 8 tenants in the past, and would welcome them in the future. But he, too, doubted there are an ample number of units available to house all the high-rise tenants.

"If those 124 families had vouchers right now, I doubt they could be absorbed in New London County. It's a relatively strong rental market right now," he said.  

Mark E. Grillo of MEG Property Services helps manage 164 units in 12 buildings in the city for his brother, Joseph Grillo, and said MEG specializes in studios and one-bedroom units.

Grillo has some Section 8 tenants in his smaller units, but wouldn't be able to accommodate families of three, four or five members, because he doesn't have apartments large enough to house them.

"Section 8 has never been a big deal. It's a bit of paperwork with the state, but it's a guaranteed payment, and some of my nicest and best tenants have been Section 8," Grillo said.

'A different direction'

Further complicating the city's public housing dilemma is recent and future litigation.

In 2014, in a lawsuit brought on behalf of the high-rise tenants by attorney Bob Reardon, the Housing Authority conceded and stipulated to a judgment that mandated a timeline for construction of replacement housing for those who reside in the Crystal Avenue apartments. That plan recently was upended when the city's Planning and Zoning Commission voted 6-1 to defeat a requested zone change needed for construction of a privately built and managed 124-unit complex at the site of the former Edgerton School off Colman Street, where it was expected the high-rise tenants could relocate.

The P&Z decision will be appealed, and Reardon is expected to push for compliance of the 2014 ruling in the case that he brought and won, which required the city to commence work on the replacement housing by September 2017.

Meanwhile, the city is working toward relocating the tenants. Jeanne Milstein, New London's social services director, said she recently attended a meeting with tenants at Thames River Apartments to discuss the possible change in vouchers and their possible relocation.

"Everything we do must be in partnership with the tenants," Milstein said. "We are talking about people's lives here. We are talking about where they live, their families, and we need to make decisions with the families about what is best for them and their needs. So this is definitely a partnership. ... We want to make this as seamless as possible."

When tenants get the vouchers, Gibson said the city will assist them in finding new accommodations and in relocating. Everyone will not move at once, but maybe one unit at a time, or one building followed by another, she said.

For too long the city has been lax about its public housing, Passero said, with his predecessor and former city managers never being as involved with the city's Housing Authority as they should have been.

Public housing policy "has been developing for a long period of time, and New London has not been participating," Passero said. "There are all kinds of opportunities that New London has missed out on. We've got to start moving in a different direction. We need a different model. There are new programs coming down the pike, and New London has just never cared. The city has preserved the original model and never moved away from it."

"That's what we are doing now."

a.baldelli@theday.com