Elected officials, including Gov. Ned Lamont, joined tenants at the Connecticut state Capitol on Wednesday for a press conference blasting the renters’ landlord for alleged “bullying,” “harassment” and failure to perform necessary maintenance.
The tenants rent apartments at buildings owned by Alpha Capital, a Shelton-based real estate company whose website lists 20 apartment properties around the state. They described going without adequate heat through the winter, living with unremediated mold and water damage, and elevators being out of service at buildings with tenants who can’t use the stairs.
The tenants union said the head of Alpha Capital has refused to meet with them. The company did not immediately return a request for comment for this story.
Mark Ball, a resident of an Alpha Capital building in Middletown, uses a wheelchair and lives on an upper floor.
“The elevator is broken,” Ball said. “This is not how we’re supposed to live.”
Ball said he relies on a friend to bring him groceries.
Troy Gesswin, a tenant in the same Middletown building as Ball, called for “an end to the bullying, the harassment, and the very concerning disregard for the rights of all Alpha Capital tenants.”
Karen Quinn said her apartment building in East Lyme was a good place to live before its purchase by Alpha Capital. She described no-fault evictions and “massive rent hikes” driving tenants from their homes at the same time she says basic requests for things like adequate heat went unaddressed by ownership.
“Alpha Capital looked at our community and saw no value in the people themselves,” Quinn said. “They only saw the money-money-money value – a chance to squeeze more money out of a building by squeezing people out of their homes.”
Lamont encouraged the tenants to stay organized.
“A lot of landlords think they can take advantage of people,” the governor said. “Well, not here in Connecticut. Not when the tenants organize, stand up, and make sure you get a place at the table.”
State Sen. Martha Marx, a New London Democrat and co-chair of the General Assembly’s Housing Committee, called on Alpha Capital CEO Tyler Smith to “sit down with these very good people and let’s make a plan.”
State Sen. Matt Lesser, a Middletown Democrat, shared with Connecticut Public a Tuesday letter from Smith in which the CEO declined a meeting with Lesser, other lawmakers, and affected tenants.
“We take the wellbeing of our residents seriously and encourage any resident with unresolved concerns to contact our property management team directly,” Smith wrote. “While we appreciate your invitation, we are not in a position to attend the proposed meeting in its current format.”
Quinn, the East Lyme tenant, said the company was prone to lying.
“If Tyler Smith claims to value resident input, please know that he does not,” Quinn said. “If he claims to care about properly caring for the building that he owns, please know that he does not.”
“We didn’t form a tenant union because we wanted to,” Quinn said. “We did it because we had to.”
