The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Expert ties Church St. South conditions to asthma
High rates of illness found for children, adults
NEW HAVEN — An expert on environmental medicine makes a direct connection between the water leaks and pervasive mold in the Church Street South complex and the high rates of asthma and other ailments experienced by its residents.
Dr. Carrie A. Redlich, director of the Yale Occupational and Environmental Medicine Program, in a survey of 268 residents at the low-income deteriorated development, found that 48 percent of 170 children surveyed had physician-diagnosed asthma, while 37 percent of the adults suffered from the respiratory ailment.
Her study and that of experts on structural problems, water damage and poor maintenance are contained in a filing by attorney David Rosen, who is seeking class action status for his suit against the Northland Investment Corp. originally filed in October 2016.
The newest motion accuses the developer, who was contracted to provide “decent, safe and sanitary” housing for the tenants at Church Street South, of purposefully letting the 301-unit housing complex deteriorate for eventual conversion to a higher use.
The 268 tenants surveyed lived in 118 apartments in the development from 2008 through 2015, while the total complex had 301 apartments in 22 similar buildings, which were built almost a half century ago.
Northland, in a statement, took issue with Rosen’s
“The claims that damp, moldy conditions were neglected by Northland are unfair, untrue and ignore the facts.” Northland Investment Corp., developer operating Church Street South
suit and accused him of providing selective information.
“Any notion that Northland was undertaking demolition of Church Street South by neglect is simply unsupported by the facts and will be addressed in our response to the court,” the statement reads.
“It is well-known that Church Street South has been plagued by problems since the 1960’s including construction and design deficiencies. Northland inherited these problems upon purchasing the property in 2008,” the company stated.
“Northland’s plan is and always has been to work with HUD (the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development) and the City to redevelop the site with a high quality mixed-use community for New Haven which would include hundreds of units of newly constructed low-income housing,” the developer said.
Northland continues to own the prime property that is located near Union Station and was paid $3.6 million in rent subsidies from HUD annually when the complex was occupied.
After the New Haven Legal Assistance Association, starting in 2015, took legal action concerning the presence of asthma among the tenants and mold and structural problems at the complex, scores of residents were moved out to hotels and eventually into new apartments.
Prior to that, tenants had complained that the outside consultants contracted by the HUD to evaluate the complex cherrypicked the units they visited, skewing the results.
Following a thorough inspection by HUD in the fall of 2015, Northland was given a score of 20 points out of 100 on the condition of the apartments with more than 2,300 deficiences identified.
HUD already had found Northland out of compliance with its contract at Church Street South in August 2015, based on reviews by the city’s Livable City Initiative and Building Official Jim Turcio.
Northland didn’t appeal the 2015 HUD score and has been working with LCI and HUD since then to move the tenants out after the majority opted to use Section 8 portable housing vouchers.
The company estimates it has spent millions on emergency repairs, hotel bills, moving expenses and storage of tenant household goods as they were relocated in the last few years.
In a September 2015 report on decommissioning the complex, Northland said it spent nearly $5 million, beyond normal repairs, to extend the life of the building since 2008.
The exhibits attached to the class action suit look back on the condition of the apartments, the timeliness and standard of repairs and the health problems reported by tenants.
In her report, Redlich said the parents also reported that 41 percent of the children had other respiratory conditions; 47 percent had skin problems; 45 percent reported emotional distress while living at Church Street South.
Of the 104 children with physician-diagnosed asthma or other respiratory ailments, Redlich said 98 percent of them began to either experience symptoms while at Church Street South or those symptoms worsened. Some 66 percent reported improved respiratory conditions when they moved out.
For comparison purposes, Redlich wrote that the prevalance of asthma in adults across the United States is 7.6 percent and for children it is 8.4 percent, although in Connecticut it is higher, affecting 10.5 percent of adults and 11.7 percent of children.
Other data shows that asthma is more common in black and Hispanic children and adults, as well as for residents of poorer communities, but not as high as the Church Street South households.
She said physician-diagnosed asthma is widely used “to establish the presence of asthma and evaluate causative risk factors.”
Redlich said similar data is not available for the other ailments reported, “but it is notable how frequently these conditions, many of which are known to co-exist with asthma, were reported.”
The physician, whose primary focus has been environmental and work-related asthma in the New Haven area, said she could not identify any other cause for the high rates of asthma at Church Street South beyond the “independently documented water-related problems and visible mold” found there.
She said the findings are consistent across apartments and over many years.
Northand in its statement also said: “The claims that damp, moldy conditions were neglected by Northland are unfair, untrue and ignore the facts.”
It also stated that it “has continuously responded to tenant concerns, maintained the property, and made repairs and capital improvements.”
The suit contains a report by Certified Industrial Hygienist Robert Klein, a lecturer in occupational and environmental medicine at the Yale School of Medicine, who reviewed maintenance and inspection reports from 2008 through 2015.
He found that work orders were “frequently incomplete. This is evidenced by numerous LCI re-inspection field notes and HUD inspection reports, where the same deficiencies or problems persisted over many weeks, months or even years after being reported and logged into the work order system.”
Klein said another trend was the identification of mold or water infiltration in one apartment, which was then fixed, only to re-emerge in another unit in the same building, “further pointing to systemic building- and complex-wide problems.”
“The persistence of water infiltration, water damages, mold and mildew over months to years meant that residents were continuously expose to these conditions for prolonged periods of time,” Klein wrote.
Referring to the questionnaire given to tenants in 118 units, he said they reported “personal awareness of mold/mildew, water intrusion/leaks, various structural damages, and plumbing and sewage problems in 82 percent to 93 percent of their apartment units, rates generally consistent with the magnitude of findings from the third-party inspectors (LCI and HUD).”
Engineer James D. Parry of Miller Forensic Consulting, LL C concluded that Northland did not perform routine inspections or proactive maintenance that could have decreased the amount of water flowing into the apartments from the leaking roofs down to the tops of window and door frames, resulting in bulging or collapsed ceilings.
He said a roof leak in Building 1 in 2011 persisted for a minimum of five months, which “opened a massive opportunity for a large volume of water to enter the building with each rain event.”
In Building 7 in 2015, leaks were reported in April with roof work done in December. He said there was a “theme of roofing repair work that occurs several months after leakage reports.” In another it took four times and five months to correct leakage into the bathroom.
Parry concluded that all 22 buildings suffered from external and internal water leaks. In addition to inadequate repairs, he said there was no indication that wet walls, ceiling and floors were properly dried out before being repaired, thus encouraging mold.
Alder Delores Colon, D-6, whose ward includes Church Street South, as part of the suit, said the complex became known as “Asthma Central.”
”Very few of the residents had no respiratory ailments, but the most severely affected were the very young and the senior citizens of the complex,” Colon said in a statement attached to the suit.
She mirrored the complaints of tenants who said “repairs, if completed, were superficial and not long lasting . ... Interior mold and mildew on interior walls was bleached, then painted over. But the Sheetrock was never removed to get behind the walls to eliminate the source of the growing and constant problem, so it would come back time after time.”
Colon said often the repair person was a “handy man,” rather than a licensed plumber or electrician.