Hundreds of displaced tenants have moved back into Concierge Apartments in Rocky Hill after a disastrous series of water line breaks, flooding and electrical failures, but more than 200 apartments remain shut down with their residents staying in hotels or with family or friends.
Local and state officals report large work crews on the property every day, and are optimistic that the last two buildings can be put back in service by the first days of March.
On Thursday afternoon, the fire marshal and building official cleared Building 200 for occupancy after condemning it earlier this month. Contractors for Concierge replaced broken pipes and fire sprinkler systems, and conducted air quality tests that showed all levels are within state health department guidelines Mayor Allan Smith reported.
“Work remains ongoing in the 100 and 300 buildings to restore required systems before they can be re-occupied,” he said in a memo. “The town’s priority remains clear: To return residents to their homes as quickly and as safely as possible, while preventing this from happening again.”
Buildings 200, 400 and 500 are largely back to normal occupancy with hot water, electric service, and functioning fire suppression systems, the town said.
During the past few winters, relatively small sections of the sprawling property suffered hot water outages and frozen pipes.
But starting Jan. 24, uncommonly frigid tempatures and a storm with about 18 inches of snow plunged the whole 554-unit complex into crisis. Anywhere from 1,000 to 2,000 tenants were displaced because of cascading maintenance crises.
State Rep. Kerry Wood, who along with Sen. Matt Lesser has been visiting the complex several times a week since flooding began, praised the town’s emphasis on getting repairs done correctly.
“The quality is my main concern. In the past I think the problem has been (Concierge) patching things with not good workmanship,” she said Friday. “I wasn’t happy with them using out-of-state contractors when they are a lot of contractors here.”
Owner JRK has not replied to requests for comment, but sent the state a letter Feb. 8 saying it is “committed to paying for alternative accommodations, reimbursing residents for necessary expenses, and fairly compensating residents for the difficulties they have experienced due to this extremely unfortunate situation.”
Early in the crisis, Concierge told tenants it had teams of contractors working extra shifts to expedite repairs, and was bringing in more crews from out of state. But Connecticut’s labor department issued stop work orders for about a half-dozen of the companies after finding workplace violations including a failure to provide workers compensation.
“We want to get the work done the best way possible,” Wood said. “I want everybody to get back into the homes they’ve been displaced from. But we want to make sure that next winter we’re not dealing with this again. We’ve been up at that property for the past four years because of frozen pipes. We want them to properly insulate the pipes, dry out the wet parts of the building, remediate the asbestos.”
The crisis has drawn in federal officials and Connecticut’s attorney general, who all have sharply criticized the apartment complex’s multibillion-dollar California-based corporate owner, JRK Real Estate, for years of building maintenance failures.
“JRK let Concierge Apartments fall into disrepair, leaving residents in the cold,” U.S. Rep. John Larson said after touring damaged apartments this week.
On Saturday a construction union will rally at the complex in support of residents and to protest payroll fraud by under-the-radar contractors.
North Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters is urging its members to bring nonperishable food donations for Concierge residents, who’ve endured a flurry of unexpected costs during weeks of being away from their homes. The union is calling on state lawmakers to toughen penalties for wage theft or ducking workers compensation and employee taxes.
Attorney General William Tong is undertaking an investigation of JRK’s operations in Connecticut. Smith said Tong is negotiating for Concierge to cover expenses of displaced tenants, such as the higher meals costs when they lost access to their kitchens for weeks at a time. Some tenants were put in hotels as far as Vernon and Naugatuck and incurred commuting costs.
Smith is particularly concerned about displaced tenants getting large utility bills for periods when they couldn’t live in their homes. Water bills might be high because the complex lost vast quantities of water to broken pipes, he said, and tenants were told to keep heat up to prevent more pipes from freezing.
“It’s all a symptom of a larger housing crisis. The thing a lot of people don’t grasp is that if the market was right, this would have been fixed a long time ago. But there just aren’t a lot of options or places to move to,” he said.
“When interest rates went up over the last few years, a lot of hedge funds and lage companies figured real estate was a good place to put money,” Smith said. “But when you’re two steps removed from the tenants, you won’t feel shame when they’re out of their homes. These corporations don’t have empathy.”
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