In Manchester, concerns arise that regulations fall short in addressing poor housing

Current and former tenants at this property, a pair of neighboring six-unit buildings built in 1880, described similar problems: leaks, insects, cracked walls, poorly handled repairs. (Courtesy photo)

The red flags were there from the moment Trina Luna moved in.

The first time she walked into her triple-decker in southeast Manchester, the bathroom smelled like urine. The refrigerator was so dirty she worried about unpacking her groceries. And it seemed to take forever to get things fixed.

“I should have walked away,” said Luna, who shares the apartment on Wilson Street with her father, fiance and 18-year-old son.

A decade later, the floor is peeling and the ceiling is fraying. Recurrent roach infestations have interrupted visits from the home health aides her family relies on.

“Conditions have just gotten worse since I’ve been here,” Luna said. “And now they’re just unbearable.”

Other current and former tenants at the property, a pair of neighboring six-unit buildings constructed in 1880, described similar problems: leaks, insects, cracked walls, poorly handled repairs. A chunk of one family’s living room ceiling fell down a few months ago, sending one person to the hospital. The ceiling has since been repaired, but residents say they still don’t feel safe in the apartment.

Tracey Hicks, who lived there under a crumbling ceiling until just recently, said she can’t understand how things have been allowed to get so bad.

“What is the city doing?” she said. “Does somebody have to fall through the ceiling? Does somebody have to die in there, just for them to come out?” On paper, Manchester’s housing code is meant to keep tenants at buildings like these out of harm’s way. Rental properties are supposed to be inspected every three years, or whenever someone files a complaint. If there are persistent violations, the city can issue fines, revoke rental permits or take unresponsive landlords to court.

But local tenants and housing advocates say the city isn’t doing enough to hold property owners who repeatedly flout local housing rules accountable. They say city officials are slow to respond to complaints and even slower to take meaningful action to demand timely fixes from landlords. City records also show a backlog of citations, adding up to thousands of dollars in uncollected housing-related fines dating back to 2019.

City officials acknowledge they could be doing a better job with housing oversight, blaming limited staff, resources and enforcement power. The pandemic also interrupted the city’s normal inspection schedule, though routine inspections have since resumed. The city’s top housing official also says its existing rules aren’t sufficient to deal with the problems many tenants are facing.

“A lot of these buildings I wouldn’t want to live in, and you probably wouldn’t either, but they might meet the housing code requirements,” said Leon LaFreniere, who oversees housing enforcement as Manchester’s director of planning and community development. “The housing code requirements really are speaking to the most fundamental of life safety issues. They don’t deal with aesthetics, they don’t deal with other quality-of-life issues that stem from that.”

For people living in these conditions, it can mean feeling stuck, with the absence of more rigorous enforcement profoundly affecting their quality of life. Not only can it be hard for people living in substandard housing to find another home in Manchester’s increasingly competitive and expensive rental market, but in some cases, the very conditions tenants are trying to escape are being used against them — as landlords point to overdue repairs to justify a wave of new eviction cases.

“The reason I haven’t said anything is because I’ve been afraid,” said Luna, who earlier this year found herself on the receiving end of just such an eviction notice.

“Because I have nowhere to go.”

A closer look

The city’s files on 215-221 Wilson St. describe a property with a history of problems.

It was up for a routine inspection eight months ago, but as of press time had yet to receive its certificate of compliance, the city’s way of confirming that it meets the housing code. City inspectors have toured the building at least five times since April, flagging broken windows and damaged floors, walls and ceilings. While several tenants told NHPR they experienced falling ceilings or other issues that, in their view, posed a threat to their safety during the same time period, city officials said their inspections didn’t reveal any deficiencies that presented an imminent danger.

Tenants aren’t the only ones who’ve taken notice of the property’s poor condition. In 2014, 215 Wilson St. was called out in a Granite State Organizing Project report on substandard housing for “a history of recurring leaks, electrical problems and insect infestations (cockroaches and bed bugs) so severe it was referred to the Health Department in 2006.”

The buildings have changed owners several times since then. For more than a decade, they were owned by a local family whose properties have some of the highest rates of tenant complaints in Manchester over the past decade, according to city data.

Hsiu Chang — whose family owns about 60 rental units across the city, many serving low-income tenants, immigrants and new Americans — acknowledged that their buildings have accumulated a lot of complaints. He also acknowledged that the Wilson Street property had a documented record of problems during their ownership, though he said they tried to respond to issues as they arose.

Sometimes it was hard to keep up with repairs, Chang said, whether due to labor shortages, trouble coordinating with tenants’ schedules or other hurdles. He also questioned whether some of the issues could have been caused by the tenants who, he said, could have chosen to live elsewhere if they didn’t like the condition of their apartment. And in general, he thinks the city’s approach to housing enforcement works well.

“I think it’s very fair,” Chang said. “They are not expecting you to change it to a five-star hotel. They want everything to be safe.”

In 2018, Chang’s family sold the buildings on Wilson Street to 215 Wilson Street LLC, which, based on public corporation records, appears to be connected to a Massachusetts company that markets to property owners hoping to offload houses quickly, without making repairs.

NHPR attempted to contact 215 Wilson Street LLC by email and phone but did not receive a substantive response as of press time. We did connect with a man whose phone number was listed on city paperwork during 215 Wilson Street LLC’s time of ownership, who told NHPR he was managing the building for a friend but declined to elaborate on his role or affiliation with the property owner. The same man said tenants’ complaints were, in his experience, adequately handled.

In early 2021, the buildings were sold again, to a Boston-based owner, Mark Daniels, who works for a real estate private equity firm and owns about 70 units scattered across New Hampshire, in Claremont, Newport, Laconia, Bristol and Greenfield.

Daniels agrees with the tenants at his new property on Wilson St. in Manchester: It’s in rough shape.

“The tenants are right that over the course of several years of, I would say, for lack of a better word, neglect, we’re starting to see the consequences of that,” Daniels said.

In fact, he said that’s part of what drew him to buy it.

He wants to invest in the property, which he said should be a “shining star” in its neighborhood, and he’s budgeted about $300,000 for a “down to the studs” overhaul.

But Daniels said he can’t finish the most intensive renovations with tenants inside. Since buying the building in March, he has pursued evictions against at least four families — including Luna and Hicks — citing the need to do significant work in each apartment. He said he didn’t have the budget or the obligation to complete his planned repairs without displacing tenants.

“We try to be as respectful of the tenants during the eviction proceedings as we can,” Daniels said. “I think it’s a responsibility as a landlord to improve the building as much as possible, but I don’t think it falls on us to have the responsibility to put an entire family up in a hotel for a couple of months.”

Elliott Berry, who co-directs the New Hampshire Legal Assistance Housing Justice Project, is less convinced that eviction was the only option. Berry has been working with a few of the tenants at the Wilson Street property, and he said the entire situation might have been prevented if officials hadn’t allowed the property to fall into such disrepair in the first place.

“I don’t think there’s any question that if the enforcement had been more rigorous, the property would be in better condition and it probably wouldn’t necessitate the need to do extensive renovations,” he said.

Berry also said this situation isn’t unique. He and his colleagues have been working on lots of eviction cases backlogged in local courts during the pandemic. They’ve been witnessing what Berry called “an epidemic of evictions based on the landlord’s need or desire to renovate.”

“I have a strong suspicion that in many cases that’s just being done because it’s an easy way to evict tenants that you don’t want,” Berry said. “But on the other hand, I also do think that there are plenty of cases where the reason for the renovation is years of neglect by the owner or the owner’s predecessors.”

An uncertain future

A few of the tenants facing eviction on Wilson Street have found new places to live. Another tenant has until the start of the new year to do the same.

Luna is still trying to figure out what’s next for her family. Her eviction case was dropped after Daniels, her landlord, missed a court hearing. But she still wants to get out — if only she could find somewhere else. It’s been hard to find another place that fits her budget and has enough room for her family, but she also needs somewhere on the ground floor due to accessibility concerns.

When she hears people in power say their hands are tied, that there’s not more they can do to help families like hers, she doesn’t really buy it. As someone who relies on food stamps to feed her family, she knows firsthand what it’s like to try to keep up with government regulations.

“My feet are held to the fire,” she said. If an extra $25 a month is enough to warrant cuts to her food stamps, she wonders, why is it so hard to apply the same level of scrutiny when it comes to the safety of her home?

“It’s not that difficult,” she said. “It’s not that complicated.”

If they really wanted to, Luna feels like the people in power could figure out how to hold landlords’ feet to the fire too.

This article is are being shared by partners in the Granite State News Collaborative. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.

City officials place blame on limited staff, resources and enforcement power.