Hartford is celebrating the success of its housing task force, created last year, to address negligent property owners.
Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam stood outside of a vacant, blighted apartment building on Wethersfield Avenue Wednesday, where he announced the task force’s success rate. The building, missing almost all of its front windows and with a padlock on the front door, is in foreclosure by the bank that financed the owner’s mortgage.
Arulampalam hopes the 12-unit apartment building will soon become useful again for residents.
Arulampalam also announced the city is expanding its list of out of state landlords accused of neglecting their properties.
Since announcing a list of three problem out-of-state landlords last December, there’s been a 93% success rate in addressing the landlord’s negligence, according to Arulampalam.
“We have seen either a change in ownership, or a landlord who was so freaked out by that initial announcement that they came and tried to straighten up their act,” Arulampalam said. “It turns out it works. When you shine a light on those landlords, they will straighten up their act or get out of the city of Hartford.”
The building owners often operate under LLCs, but the city identified the individuals behind the organizations.
One of the landlords cited, Casey Askar, owns the blighted high-rise tower at 25 Sigourney St. The city invested $250,000 to secure the building, according to Arulampalam’s office.
Two of the three companies the city first identified as problem landlords, Whitehead Estates and PAXE Properties, sold or are in the process of selling their Hartford properties, Arulampalam said.
PAXE Properties lost nearly all of its buildings to foreclosure. The four remaining buildings owned by PAXE are currently in foreclosure, Arulampalam said.
“We hope to see foreclosure actions on those soon,” Arulampalam said.
The third landlord, Moshe Grossberg, is working with Hartford’s Department of Development Services to get in good standing.
Following the success of calling out landlords with neglected properties, the task force identified four additional landlords. Three of them are based in other states, according to Arulampalam.
Residents in those buildings have complained about a number of issues including rodent and insect infestations, mold and unreliable heat.
The updated problem landlord list provided by the city of Hartford:
"If a violation is discovered upon inspection, notices of violation are issued to the responsible owner. Those notices of violation in 2024 to 2025 increased by 31% in the last year,” Deputy Director of Hartford’s Department of Development Services Judith Rothschild said.
If those notices are not adhered to, the next step is a citation, or fine, for unaddressed violations. In the last year, the number of property owners who received citations tripled, along with liens placed against properties by the city, Rothschild said.
“We've had a 20% drop in 311 calls coming in in the last couple years,” Rothschild said. “That equates to the increased enforcement, the mayor's focus on bad landlords…and also on our rental licensing program, which requires landlords to have proactive advance inspections by the housing division, the fire marshal's office and other divisions in order to be licensed to rent property.”
