Community rallies around Hartford family facing eviction by tax-delinquent, New York landlord

A Hartford family with two young children avoided losing their home in the middle of this week’s snowstorm after community activists rallied to protest their eviction by a tax-delinquent, New York landlord.

The case, which also garnered the attention of local politicians, was resolved Friday after the tenants reached an agreement with the owner of 170 Earle St. to postpone their eviction by 30 days, the parties said during a hearing in Hartford Housing Court on Friday.

The mother, reached Friday while she was at work, declined to speak about the case. The Law Offices of Bruce Bergman, which represent the landlord, did not return a request for comment.

The Connecticut Fair Housing Center — which learned of the case Thursday morning and stepped in to represent the tenant in court — says it was just one among more than 1,000 eviction cases filed in Connecticut since the start of the pandemic. The long-anticipated wave of evictions has already started to break, with 50 to 60 families and individuals being removed from their homes each week, executive director Erin Kemple said.

While most tenants are still protected from eviction by the state and federal moratoriums, which have been extended through the spring, a growing number of people risk being left out in the cold.

Property owners can evict people who owe more than six months’ worth of rent since the start of the pandemic nearly 12 months ago.

“That’s a lot of people and landlords are absolutely going ahead and taking advantage of that,” Kemple said.

In this case, the tenants were also many months past due on rent before the pandemic, according to the landlord’s complaint.

That’s not unusual either, Kemple said. Even before the coronavirus crisis, many working-class, low-income people were struggling to get by and to find decent, affordable housing. That’s only gotten harder with massive unemployment and other economic hardships caused by the pandemic.

But few evictions have garnered as much attention as the story of an anonymous Hartford family nearly forced out into the snow.

“It’s a criminal act of the state to put a mother and her child out on the streets in the midst of a global pandemic, in the midst of a winter snowstorm, in the midst of a legacy of economic and housing oppression in Black and brown working class communities in Connecticut,” said Kerry Ellington of New Haven, an activist with Cancel Rent CT.

It began when a marshal knocked on the family’s door earlier this week to start the process of removing them from 170 Earle St., a multifamily building in the heart of the North End. Grassroots organizers from several organizations connected with the family and members rallied on their street Thursday morning as the Connecticut Fair Housing Center applied for an injunction to halt the eviction.

The family — two adults and two children ages 1 and 6 — would become homeless if forced to leave the apartment, which itself has “significant health code violations,” the center wrote in the application.

State Rep. Brandon McGee, who represents parts of Hartford and Windsor, said he’s committed to helping any other tenants of 150 and 170 Earle streets, a “prison-like” brick apartment complex that looks the same as it did when McGee was growing up on Barbour Street.

Now that he’s spoken to the family facing eviction, he’s worried about the conditions others are living in.

“This is crazy that this has been allowed to go on so long,” he said.

The situation was publicized on social media by McGee, who co-chairs the General Assembly’s Housing Commission, and City Councilman Joshua Michtom, whose wife Constanza Segovia is a lead organizer with Mutual Aid Hartford.

Their tweets, which also reported that the landlord owed a large amount of property taxes to the city, prompted Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin to look into the case.

In fact, MOKE Peace 18 Corp. — the Brooklyn-based company that owns both 150 and 170 Earle St. — has failed to pay nearly $340,000 in Hartford property taxes since 2016, according to city records.

A judge called for a hearing Friday afternoon. By then, the parties had reached their agreement. About 50 community members gathered in the snow near Earle and Barbour streets for a second time in solidarity with the family, holding “Cancel Rent” signs and chanting “shelter is a birthright.”

They belonged to Mutual Aid Hartford, Cancel Rent CT, the Central Connecticut Democratic Socialist Association and the CT Right to Counsel Coalition, which have been working together to both push for broad policy changes and help individuals in crisis.

Between Monday and Wednesday this week, courts in Connecticut issued 42 warrants of eviction, the orders that authorize law enforcement to remove evicted tenants, according to Dahlia Romanow of the Central Connecticut DSA.

“We need to worry about the people who are evicted right now and we also need to think about the fact that there’s this huge crisis that’s coming, and it’s happening,” she said.

Sometimes, tenants don’t know they’re facing eviction until a state marshal comes to remove them, Kemple added.

“It’s unclear where people are leaving (eviction) notices, especially in multifamily buildings so they may leave a notice in a common area and it ends up blown out the door or not getting in the right hands,” he said.

McGee, who also supports the “right to counsel” movement for tenants, says the state’s housing crisis “is set to explode.”

“Today, from my perspective, was just a small example and it’s just really a microcosm of what is getting ready to happen,” he said.

Rebecca Lurye can be reached at rlurye@courant.com.