by Noel Sims, New Haven Independent, Dec 7, 2022
A group of Blake Street renters delivered a 31-name petition to City Hall — and officially became New Haven’s first legally recognized tenants union. Tenants of the 311 Blake St. apartment complex took that legal-recognition step on Nov. 23.
City Fair Rent Commission Executive Director Wildaliz Bermudez confirmed that 31 tenants from the 311 Blake St. complex signed on to the petition that was delivered late last month to her office.
Because only 45 of that 70-unit complex’s apartments are currently occupied, Bermudez said, the petition clears the local legal threshold that a tenants union include signatures from — to quote directly from New Haven law — “a majority of the tenants listed as lessees within the housing accommodation.”
“As more tenants become involved in tenants’ unions, it can provide us with a better picture regarding the housing stock that is available,” Bermudez said in an email comment sent to the Independent on Tuesday, “and for discussions to occur regarding better ways to maintain properties and have a good well-maintained housing stock when items are needed to be addressed.”
The Blake St. Tenants Union is now the first officially, legally recognized tenants union in the city. ….
311 Blake St. renter Jessica Stamp is one of the lead organizers of the newly recognized Blake St. Tenants Union.
“I want to stay,” she told the Independent in a recent interview about her current apartment. Her rent is affordable, which allows her to save money, and she enjoys her “fabulous closet space.”
She said that she and her neighbors organized a tenants union partly because of a lack of response from her landlord, an affiliate of the mega landlord Ocean Management, when Stamp and other tenants have complained of rodents, disruptive construction, and other safety issues. ….
Stamp said she is excited that the union will help her neighbors that have been anxious about rent hikes, safety issues, and possible evictions. “This will give them relief,” she said. Having filed the petition, tenants are now protected from rent hikes and evictions for at least six months under
state law.
Now that their union is legally recognized, Stamp hopes this will “empower people to speak up.” Before, she felt that tenants withheld their complaints out of a fear of retaliation by 311 Blake’s landlord.
Read more at www.newhavenindependent.org/article/blake_st_tenant_union
