Hartford resident Melvina āBonnieā Keaton has lived in the same North End apartment on Bedford Street for nearly a decade with her two sons.
The living room lights donāt work and the roomās only illumination shines in from the bedroom window.
She says the problems started around five years ago. The building was foreclosed on and began to fall into disrepair, with water flooding her apartment and damaging medical equipment for her son, Andre, whoās nonverbal and autistic.
āI clicked the breakers, but they['re] not coming on. So we donāt know if thatās from the water damage or what it is,ā Keaton said. āMy son was hospitalized. I wasted a lot of things trying to clean up water damage, trying to keep us from freezing. My son['s] medical bed, it does not work.ā
Keatonās experience struggling to get in touch with building management reflects the recent rise of corporate landlords that are based outside of ŗ£½Ē»»ĘŽ. Advocates and state officials say itās a growing problem ā and often results in renters feeling helpless.
Over the last few years, Keaton says sheās reached out to whatever contact she believed to be the property manager or superintendent, often with no response.
āNo one knows that I'm going through this because no one[ās] listening to me,ā Keaton said.
Keaton withheld rent starting in October 2021. She wasnāt sure who she was paying or who to turn to for help, because her apartment was one of a batch of buildings on Bedford Street purchased by an LLC, or limited liability company, outside of ŗ£½Ē»»ĘŽ.
A growing trend
Over the last six months, tenants at several apartment buildings in the state rallied around the issue of new, corporate ownership. Civil rights attorney Cynthia Jennings spoke in September at a protest calling out companies outside the region that are raising rents.
āPeople from out of town and out of state are moving into our communities and taking over properties that are not accessible to the people who live here and pay taxes,ā Jennings said.
Anecdotally, housing advocates say corporate landlord ownership has increased nationwide since the 2008 housing market crash, and in ŗ£½Ē»»ĘŽ since the COVID-19 pandemic. Experts say the number of corporate landlords is hard to quantify because LLC owners can be hard to track.
The state is running into problems with programs set up to help tenants with rent because of property owners who are out of the area, said Seila Mosquera-Bruno, commissioner for the ŗ£½Ē»»ĘŽ Department of Housing.
āItās really difficult,ā Mosquera-Bruno said. āThrough the rent relief, we received several calls from tenants that were being evicted because somebody bought the buildings, in many instances. The difficulty is that when somebody comes and buys the property they form LLCs. And then you canāt find the owner and theyāre overseas, out of state.ā
The state is trying to find a way to differentiate between local and corporate landlords by generating a database, Mosquera-Bruno said.
For now, state lawmakers are that would require out-of-town landlords in ŗ£½Ē»»ĘŽ to register with an address and phone number.
Tracing ownership
Since the database isnāt up and running yet, ŗ£½Ē»»ĘŽ traced Keatonās rental property through , as well as annual filings to the Secretary of the State, and found the LLC was operated by a ā GreenLake Asset Management.
GreenLake was the lender to the former owner of Keatonās apartment. When that owner defaulted on the loan, the lender took it back.
Paul Diamond, GreenLakeās chief operating officer, said the company has no part in their propertiesā daily operations.
āThatās why you hire experts. People who know what they're good at doing,ā Diamond said.
At the time, Diamond said a was handling Hartford tenants like Keaton, a common practice for out-of-state owners. That property manager didnāt respond to ŗ£½Ē»»ĘŽās request for comment. But Diamond said he doesnāt think out-of-state landlords are the problem.
āWe have a local property management company that we've engaged and they know the city. They know the market,ā Diamond said.
That management company did finally contact Keaton in September ā ā after she went public about her situation.
But in February, Diamondās company sold the property ā to another out-of-state landlord behind . Neither the nor the New York-based owners responded to a request for comment.
Lower-income neighborhoods vulnerable
Low-income neighborhoods are home to vulnerable tenants like Keaton, and are often targeted for corporate ownership, said Sarah White, an attorney at ŗ£½Ē»»ĘŽ Fair Housing Center. The neighborhoods are areas with large rent gaps, meaning current rent is relatively low compared to what investors think they can charge.
āThe way we'll hold them accountable is by passing tenant protections that apply to everybody,ā White said.
The issue isnāt unique to ŗ£½Ē»»ĘŽ, but plays out nationwide, as White saw at a recent California conference.
āThere are always local variations to what we're experiencing. We didn't always have the same landlords, but the stories really are the same,ā White said.
Back in Hartfordās North End neighborhood, Keaton is looking for a new apartment while her eviction proceedings are pending. She plans to research who exactly owns the building before she signs any lease.
āI would just prefer to have just a person, a landlord, an individual,ā Keaton said.
Someone local she can reach out to, instead of a landlord based out of town.
