Eviction judge: ‘Time is the currency of this court’
often overlooked.
Gregory says that some cases are being decided “based on hardships” of the tenant with no regard for mom-andpop landlords. Acevedo, argues Gregory, has been allowed “to stay in someone’s property for free for months and months ... the court is not in a position, or shouldn’t be in a position, to just grant people time for free.”
Right to counsel
Nearby, another tenant, Ramon Colon, sits on a bench in the hallway awaiting a mediation with Gregory, who represents his landlord in another eviction case.
Colon, 46, a host at the Olive Garden restaurant in Waterford, says that he and his girlfriend had rented a room for the last three years in a three-bedroom apartment at 28 Warren St. in New London. He paid $800 a month to his roommate, Daniel Lopez, the tenant on the lease.
But in July, Lopez moved out suddenly, with no explanation. He promised to put Colon in touch with the landlord, but never did. Then one day, Colon came home to find an eviction notice tucked in his door.
Many tenants, overwhelmed or unaware of how the system works, fail to respond or show up, and lose their case by default. But Colon came down to the courthouse and spoke with a clerk, who put him in touch with Connecticut Legal Services, a nonprofit that provides legal assistance to the poor.
Connecticut Legal Services lawyers represent tenants under the state’s new Right to Counsel program. By law, every eviction filing contains a notification of the program and an 800 number to call for help. Even when lawyers don’t formally represent someone, the office can provide advice and information.
That’s what they did for Colon. He tells Judge Foley that he spoke to Natalia Planell, one of two CLS lawyers in New London, and that he thought she would be here. Colon seems stunned to be standing before the judge.
“I thought I would mediate,” he says. “I don’t know what’s going on. I was left holding the bag. I’m in limbo. I’m willing to pay the money ... I’m willing to try and work it out.”
Foley tells him that it would be good to reach an agreement, so the landlord can withdraw the case.
“Then you won’t have it on your record,” says Foley. “It’s such a penalty to have on your record.”
The lawyers at CLS say they try to work with their client and their landlord to reach an arrangement that will keep an eviction case off their record — such cases can make it harder for renters to find an apartment, especially in a competitive market.
Gregory promises to reach out to CLS. While it turns out that Planell is not formally Colon’s lawyer, the advice he receives helps. He waits nervously in the hallway to mediate with Gregory and court mediator Diane Day. His shift at the Olive Garden is starting; someone is covering for him.
Since the Right to Counsel program started, Day says, more tenants are showing up better informed. Day’s job as a mediator is to meet one-onone, then together, with tenant and landlord, in an effort to facilitate an agreement. If the landlord is unwilling to let the tenant stay, Day discusses move-out dates, trying to broker a mutually beneficial agreement. But it’s not easy.
“I try to defuse tense situations,” says Day. “I let people say what they need to say.”
That morning, Day’s approach had meant letting a woman facing eviction vent to her loudly in the hallway about how she’d been living in her car.
“There are a lot of hard situations,” says Day. “I hate mediating when there are kids involved. Christmas Eve. When landlords don’t want to make an arrangement on moving out, I appeal to their sympathies, try to push it to Jan. 1.”
Colon’s case winds up with a rare happy ending. After sitting down with Gregory and Day, he agrees to pay $1,000 a month rent. He’s been texting updates to his girlfriend, a nurse. But not the final outcome.
“I want to call and hear her voice when I give her the news,” he says, smiling. “It’s a win-win. I’m glad it’s out of
the way. It was stressful — I couldn’t sleep.”
Landlord-tenant tension
During the height of COVID-19, mediator Mark Vanaman saw tensions between tenants and landlords escalate with the financial hardships caused by the pandemic.
Government moratoriums designed to protect tenants slowed the process dramatically. Cases that could take six to eight weeks to resolve now stretched on for six to eight months.
As the New London area emerged from the pandemic, rising rents and the growing affordable-housing crunch have generated new pressures.
Vanaman’s job is like a marriage counselor’s. He talks to both sides, separately and together, to see if he can repair the relationship. If not, his job is to try to get the two sides to reach an amicable separation. The difficult negotiations often revolve around two points — how much missed rent can the tenant repay, and how long can they stay while searching for a new place. If Vanaman can’t broker an agreement, the case goes to the judge.
“It’s tense because people don’t really know what the next step is,” says Vanaman. “The relationship has already broken down when they get here.”
That’s the case when Vanaman greets landlord Elizabeth Sunshine and Samantha Mercado, the tenant she has been locked in a struggle with for more than a year.
Mercado, a single mother, shows up with her 10-yearold daughter Solana. Early in 2020, Mercado moved into an apartment in a house Sunshine owns at 15 Rosemary St. in
New London.
They moved from New York to Connecticut after Solana’s father died. Mercado said that she was happy to have a place where her daughter could have her own bedroom and a yard to play in, and be close to her school. And because Mercado doesn’t drive, she needed a place in New London so she could easily get to her job at a local Volvo dealership.
The month after Mercado moved in, the pandemic began. Along the way, Mercado says she lost her job and went several months without working. She stopped paying her $750-a-month rent.
So Mercado and Sunshine turned to UniteCT, a pandemic program that provided rental assistance for the poor through direct payments to the landlord. The state paid Sunshine $7,500, covering the first 10 months of 2021. But then Mercado stopped paying again. After her third missed month, Sunshine began eviction proceedings in January 2022.
Like many tenants, Mercado failed to appear, and the judge ruled against her. When she finally got wind of the judgment, Mercado went to court and pleaded for more time, saying she had applied for additional assistance from UniteCT.
Sunshine’s lawyer, Yona Gregory, objected. She argued in April that UniteCT had already paid out the full benefit of $10,000; Mercado would only be eligible for two months of rental assistance, and now owed for six months. Mercado had not personally paid any rent for 16 months and had made no effort to do so, Gregory wrote.
Judge Foley gave Mercado more time, the additional UniteCT payments were approved and, in July, Sunshine withdrew her complaint. But it wasn’t over. When the state funds ran out, Mercado again missed a rental payment, on Sept. 1, and Sunshine filed for eviction again.
By the time Mercado and Sunshine arrive in court this November morning, things have grown acrimonious. Mercado complained that Sunshine tried to raise the rent, to $925 a month, and complained about problems with the apartment — roaches, no heat, a leaking refrigerator. Sunshine countered that she fixed problems as they arose, but Mercado grew angry whenever she would try to come to the house for repairs, at one point calling the police.
Sunshine said that she did raise the rent, which is still reasonable, because she was preparing to sell the house and the sale value is based on the amount of rental income. Dealing with non-paying tenants during the pandemic had exhausted her.
Sunshine, 54, of Lyme, has been a landlord for 24 years, since her father helped her buy and fix up her first house. Before the pandemic, she owned 13 houses in and around New London, with a total of 47 apartments. She says she charged reasonable rents and had good relationships with most of her tenants.
But after the pandemic hit, things changed. Half her tenants struggled to pay their full rent. About one-third stopped paying completely. She says she worked with UniteCT and other government programs, filing 34 applications for tenants. But she also found herself bringing more and more evictions cases; at one point, she had 13 cases pending.
Meanwhile, without rental income, Sunshine was putting more and more of her own savings into keeping up with mortgage payments and other expenses — $100,000 in all. While tenants could get relief, landlords couldn’t; she recalls a lawyer who handled collections for the water department laughing in her face when she suggested he cut her a deal on his legal fees.
Sitting on the steps inside the courthouse, waiting for a mediation with Mercado, Sunshine says that landlords can be unfairly cast as the villains.
“Even if you need something, you can’t take it — like a coat if you’re cold,” she says. “Yet if you take my product — time, space — and don’t pay, it’s not illegal. There are two sides to every story. If someone steals from you, you can be made whole. But my product is gone, used, consumed.
“I’m sitting here wondering how much time the judge will give her — two, three, four weeks? How would you like it if I told you that you could take my groceries for the next two, three, four weeks? I’m so done. This is not OK.”
Recently, Sunshine sold
11 of her 13 houses. She says she heard from one longtime tenant who said the new landlord had doubled the rent — she asked Sunshine for a reference as she searched for a cheaper apartment.
The courthouse is nearly empty as mediator Mark Vanaman ushers the last two parties of the day, Sunshine and Mercado, into the tiny mediation room. Gregory, Sunshine’s lawyer, and Mercado’s daughter Solana join them.
They hammer out an agreement — Mercado can stay until the end of January, but must pay $750 a month for November, December and January.
“I’m shaking — I don’t like confrontation,” says Sunshine, leaving the courthouse. “I will get my property back in January.”
A few minutes later, Mercado emerges. The mediation was tense, she says; Sunshine wouldn’t look at her, and at one point was so upset she walked out. Mercado praises the mediator.
“Mark has been amazing. If it wasn’t for him, I would have had a panic attack,” she says. “I have anxiety and this hasn’t been helpful. It’s scary looking for a new place. We want to stay in New London because of Solana’s school and because I work and don’t drive or have a car.”
Address unknown
Three days after the hearing in Brown v. Acevedo, Judge Foley issues his decision. He denies Acevedo’s petition. The landlord could seek an execution for her removal on or after Dec. 2.
A state marshal had already been notified to start the eviction process when Foley revised his ruling and granted Acevedo until after Christmas, to Dec. 31, to leave. But the judge rejected her request for another hearing and more time.
“While this may seem harsh, Ms. Acevedo has had months to seek alternate quarters,” wrote Foley.
Acevedo wound up staying past the New Year. But on Jan. 27, after some back and forth between Acevedo and state marshal Nicholas Poppiti, eviction day finally arrived. The marshal says that he showed up at 17 Grand St. that day with a moving company and helped move her possessions into a Waterford storage facility she had rented.
Acevedo, he said, was on the phone with the court, in another apparent attempt to gain more time.
The marshal said he doesn’t know where Acevedo has gone. She had spoken last November of possibly moving in with a relative. But she stopped returning calls to The Day.
She left no forwarding address.