by Thomas Breen | Jul 13, 2022 3:47 pm
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Posted to: The Hill, Housing
Youssef Zaimsassi in his first-floor condo's bathroom: "Can't tell you how many times we changed the ceiling."
Dripping water in the basement of 3 Cassius St.
Drip. Drip. Drip … is the sound that Youssef Zaimsassi hears in his Cassius Street condo’s bathroom and basement every time his upstairs neighbor takes a shower.
From that leak, he claimed, have come mold, rotted wood, a busted ceiling, a stubbornly empty rental unit — and endless frustration that he can’t get the second-floor property owner, or the city, to do anything about it.
Zaimsassi’s rental-unit-maintenance dilemma at 3 Cassius St. in the Hill — which centers on an apparent persistent leak that he claims is coming from his upstairs neighbors’ bathroom — raises questions about what a property owner should do when negatively affected by another property owner’s actions, or inactions.
It also raises questions about what role if any the city’s housing code enforcement agency, the Livable City Initiative (LCI ), should play in helping resolve maintenance-and-repair-related disputes between property owners. Especially between condo owners whose properties sit within the same building.
In an email comment provided to the Independent for this article, city spokesperson Lenny Speiller intimated that, at this point in time, Zaimsassi should not expect any immediate intervention from city housing code inspectors.
“ LCI ’s jurisdiction over owner-occupied condominiums is extremely limited,” Speiller said. “ As a courtesy, LCI visited the property, met with the owner of Unit 1, and saw no immediate signs of a leak at that time. LCI also attempted to contact the owner of Unit 2 multiple times, but was unsuccessful. LCI advised Mr. Zaimsassi to try to resolve the issue with his fellow landlords as it is a matter between fellow property owners.”
At a glance, 3 Cassius St. looks like one of the many vinyl-sided, century-old, multi-family houses that line the streets of the Hill and most other residential neighborhoods in the city.
The building’s legal ownership structure, however, is quite a bit different than that of its peers.
Instead of existing as one multi-unit residential property with one legal owner, 3 Cassius St. exists in the city land records and assessor’s database as three separate single-unit condos with three different owners.
Zaimsassi, a 51-year-old West River resident and EKG tech at Yale New Haven Hospital, owns the first-floor condo. He bought it in 2001 from the affordable housing nonprofit Habitat for Humanity. He rents it out.
The second-floor condo is owned by Rosa Texidor, who has lived with her family in the unit since the 1980s.
The third-floor condo is owned by a holding company called 3 Cassius LLC . An affiliate of the current owner bought that property from the city a decade ago, and, according to Zaimsassi, also runs it as a rental apartment. (The Independent could not reach the owner of the third-floor condo for comment for this story.)
On a recent tour of his ground-floor condo, Zaimsassi said that most of his two decades of owning this three-bedroom unit have worked out as well as he could have hoped.
He said he rented it out to the same tenant for roughly 17 years. His tenant loved the place and kept it immaculately clean, he said.
And he said that, because he charged only $950 per month in rent and because his former tenant had a Section 8 rental subsidy, he was able to both provide an affordable place to live for a low-income renter while also earning enough money to cover his mortgage, taxes, and property maintenance — and supplement his hospital-job income to support his wife and two kids.
Zaimsassi said that he has gotten along well enough over the years with his fellow building condo owners.
Besides sharing the cost of a common light in the building’s basement as well as the occasional major building-wide capital repair like a fix to the roof, he said, each condo owner the covers the costs of keeping up their own respective unit. (He said that the three 3 Cassius St. condo owners are not a part of any condo association, which typically collects monthly fees used for covering shared maintenance costs.)
And that’s that.
Except, Zaimsassi said, it isn’t.
Because, he claimed, the property owner who lives right above his condo — Rosa Texidor — has failed to maintain her unit, and her lack of upkeep has directly affected his ability to maintain, and rent out, his own.
Bathroom trouble in Zaimsassi's unit.
Zaimsassi said the trouble with his bathroom ceiling dates back several years.
Pointing up to a gaping hole in the water-damaged bathroom ceiling above him, he said that there has long been a leak from Texidor’s bathroom’s pipes.
He had to replace a portion of the bathroom’s ceiling every six or eight months because of the damages caused by that leak.
“ I can’t tell you how many times we changed the ceiling,” he said with exasperation. “ So many times.”
But the water keeps dripping, he said, rotting away the wood and wearing down the drywall and plastic he put up to mitigate the harm.
His tenant moved out in April 2021 because she was fed up with the bathroom trouble, he said. He hasn’t tried to rent it out since, knowing that the problem with the ceiling hasn’t gone away.
Zaimsassi said he’s confident he knows the source of the drop.
“ It’s the pipes” in Texidor’s second-floor condo’s bathroom right above his own, he said. “ It’s the drain pipe from upstairs,” probably from the bathtub.
This is a problem that can be fixed, he said, and for not that much money. Maybe a couple hundred dollars.
“ But we have to have access upstairs,” he said. “ We may have to make some holes inside her bathroom,” maybe replace the sheetrock and the tiles in addition to the pipes.
Despite several conversations over the years with his second-floor neighbor, he said, he hasn’t been able to convince her to fix the problem herself or to let him hire a contractor for the job.
Zaimsassi said that he turned off the water for his empty condo months ago. No one has lived in his ground-floor unit since April 2021.
And, as of earlier this year, he said, the third-floor condo has also been empty, since that unit’s tenant left because of frustrations with the water-damaged laundry room in the basement.
That means that the only person still living in and using water in this building, he said, is the second-floor property owner, Texidor.
Whenever he hears and sees water dropping from the ceiling into his condo’s bathroom, and trickling down into the basement’s laundry room, Zaimsassi said, he knows that the leak’s culprit has to be the sole remaining occupied unit in the building: that is, Texidor’s second-floor condo.
“ What’s gonna happen” if things keep going the way they are now? he asked. “ The wood’s rotten. It will create more mold.”
This is a health and safety hazard, he said, as well as a potential structural problem to his bathroom, the second-floor bathroom, and the basement.
He said he can’t rent out his condo while this problem persists. Nor can he sell it. He has hit an impasse.
“ I don’t have money right now to dish on a lawyer and pursue this case,” Zaimsassi said when thinking through whether or not to bring his upstairs property owner to court.
What he really wants to see is LCI crack down on the apparent housing-code-violations stemming from this leaky pipe — and order his upstairs neighbor, or himself, or someone, to make a permanent fix.
But so far he’s had no luck, he said, because LCI has been reluctant to intervene in a property-maintenance-dispute between two different property owners.
“ It’s depressing,” Zaimsassi said as he surveyed his otherwise clean, but empty, condo.
After Zaimsassi left for the afternoon to head off for a shift at the hospital, the Independent stuck around outside of 3 Cassius St., knocked on the front door, and called up to the second level to see if the upstairs owner-occupant was home.
Twenty minutes later, Rosa Texidor came out onto the second-floor porch. She eventually walked down to the front entrance to tell the Independent her side of the story.
Texidor said she has lived on the second floor of 3 Cassius St. for 36 years.
Originally from Puerto Rico, she raised her family in this building, though now she lives in the second-floor unit all by herself. (She declined to be photographed for this story.)
Asked about Zaimsassi’s complaints and about the leak that he claims comes from her bathroom, Texidor repeated three rebuttals again and again.
First, she said, she is not a plumber. Nor is she a carpenter. She is not professionally qualified to say where the leak is coming from, if indeed there is a leak.
Second, she said, she did once have a plumber come by her apartment to take a look, at Zaimsassi’s insistence. She said that the plumber told her that whatever problem was causing the water damage in Zaimsassi’s first-floor bathroom was not originating in her bathroom.
Third, she said, that same plumber told her that it would cost a total of $900 to fix whatever that problem was, which, again, she said was not specific to her bathroom.
“ I’m trying to do my best,” she said. But, Texidor continued, she’s disabled. She lives alone. She doesn’t have a lot of money, and she can’t — and shouldn’t have to — pay for a $900 fix all by herself, she said.
During his interview with the Independent, Zaimsassi said he would be happy to pay for part of the fix, if only he and a contractor could have access to the condo. When the Independent raised this point with Texidor, she said that Zaimsassi and a plumber/carpenter did once come up to her condo to take a look, said they could fix what needed to be fixed, but never did.
On Tuesday, the Independent called back Zaimsassi to hear his responses to Texidor’s claims about the plumber inspection and the $900 fix-up bill, as well as to Speiller’s statement that LCI did not find a leak and largely cannot intervene.
“ If they didn’t see a leak, they should take a look again,” Zaimsassi said about LCI . “ I’ll call them tomorrow” and take them to the basement to show the dripping water.
How does he respond to Speiller’s statement that this is a dispute between private property owners, and should be resolved between those private parties?
“ Believe me, I’ve tried,” Zaimsassi said. “ I’m still trying. If anyone wants to intervene to mediate,” he’s eager to have them help.
And is he aware of Texidor’s claims that a plumber has taken a look at her bathroom, and said that the problem is not with her pipes?
No, Zaimsassi said, he’s not aware of a plumber ever going up to the second floor.
What about the potential $900 repair Texidor mention?
“ Believe me, I’ll put the 900 bucks on it myself” if that’s what it will cost to get this fixed and resolved, he said. “ I’m willing to.”
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Zaimsassi is lucky. I have seen a case were a tenant was living in a leaky lower level condo, and the upstairs neighbor would not fix the issue. The owner of the bottom unit reported the leak to LCI to try and have them resolve it. LCI ended up serving the owner of the bottom unit with an arrest warrant over something he had no control of.
This is an unusual situation. Two owners have an issue. They need to hash it out or go to court. The health dept or building code can come in but it must be determined what exactly is the cause of the leak. The fair thing to do is to divide the costs among the units that are causing the leak or that all 3 units divide the cost and repair. The 2nd floor owner is not being a good neighbor by just refusing to even try to find a solution. It is not a crime to not be a good neighbor but the LCI hands are tied.
This situation is likely covered in the Declaration of Condominium, which Habitat for Humanity should have filed on the Land Records when it created the condominium. Likely, the soil drain is either a common element whose maintenance all unit owners are responsible for through their condo fees and assessments, or a limited common element if the pipe serves only one unit, in which case the owner of the unit it serves is responsible for fixing it. If a unit owner cannot pay his or her share of the costs of a common unit repair, the condominium association can lien her property and foreclose her ownership interest. This dispute is a matter for the the owners and their association, not the city or LCI.
BTW, it sounds like Youssef Zaimsassi is exacerbating the rot and mold by trapping moisture in the space above his ceiling. If a leak cannot be fixed, the best solution is to let the water and moisture flow out. My wife and I had a similar problem with a leak from our upstairs bathtub drain, and sometimes the toilet drain seal, into the ceiling above our downstairs bedroom and living room. At times, I would poke holes in the ceiling sheetrock to let water flow into buckets. At other times, I would just rip away the sheetrock and leave the joists and upstairs floor exposed. This, with makeshift plumbing repairs, seemed to stop the leaks, which would only resume after we replaced teh ceiling sheetrock. :). Ultimately, we had to renovate our upstairs bathroom, including reinforcing joists and replacing the flooring and aged, rusted cast-iron solid drains (including the stack), for a total cost of about $30K. Again, with a condominium, the allocation of responsibility and cost should be set forth in the Declaration of Condominium for this property.
The Declaration of Condominium for 3-5 Cassius Street may be found in Volume 3920, at page 99, of the New Haven Land Records, available on line, and at the Hall of Records on Orange Street. My quick reading is that the Association, not the unit owner, is responsible for the pipe repair. Flooring and wallboard are the individual unit owners' responsibilities. https://www.searchiqs.com/ctnha/ImageViewerMP.aspx?CustomView=Search Results&SelectedDoc=L|345329&SelectedRowIndex=4
The question, 1644, would be who/what is the Association, what are their reserves, who runs it? Are they self-managed or do they have a property manager? Who exactly schedules and organizes repairs and maintenance to common areas? While this will be dragged out with entities who have no real authority here (LCI, etc), in the meantime, further damage will continue and the possibility of mold/mildew is growing... I guess then the Health Dept can be brought in but Maritza Bond is busy trying to get out of NH . It is so discouraging to see these issues literally fester.
Since there is no association organization for the condo, and the leak is between the first and second floor units, the two units should share the cost of a plumber to fix the issue, and the second floor unit owner should allow access to the plumber. It will impact the second unit when the dripping water rots out her floorboards and the tub drops through the ceiling to the first unit. It impacts the first and third floor owners who can’t rent or use their units. If she refuses to be reasonable and work out a shared solution to the problem with the first floor owner, then the first floor unit owner and the third floor unit owner, who both can’t rent their units, they should sue the tenant for damages and ask the court to force her to give access to the plumber and pay the costs of repair out of her pocket, since she refuses to share the responsibility and it is impacting them financially. The city and LCI needs to come up with a permanent solution to address this type of conflict. I’m sure it will come up again as more condos get created in smaller multi families with no association organizations.
Refer to the Declaration first, but fall back to the statutes: Sec. 47-221. Unit boundaries. Except as provided by the declaration: (1) If walls, floors or ceilings are designated as boundaries of a unit, all lath, furring, wallboard, plasterboard, plaster, paneling, tiles, wallpaper, paint, finished flooring and any other materials constituting any part of the finished surfaces thereof are a part of the unit, and all other portions of the walls, floors or ceilings are a part of the common elements. (2) If any chute, flue, duct, wire, conduit, bearing wall, bearing column or any other fixture lies partially within and partially outside the designated boundaries of a unit, any portion thereof serving only that unit is a limited common element allocated solely to that unit, and any portion thereof serving more than one unit or any portion of the common elements is a part of the common elements. (3) Subject to subsection (2) of this section, all spaces, interior partitions and other fixtures and improvements within the boundaries of a unit are a part of the unit. (4) Any shutters, awnings, window boxes, doorsteps, stoops, porches, balconies, patios and all exterior doors and windows or other fixtures designed to serve a single unit, but located outside the unit's boundaries, are limited common elements allocated exclusively to that unit.
I think CTs 1984 act concerning condos defines a single building with multiple individually owned units as a condo and mandates an association. The owners may not know it exists but I think it does. Even if it doesn’t have any relevant functional rules, that doesn’t prevent one owner from suing another owner for causing damage to their unit.
City Yankee: Seller's of condominiums are required to provide that information to buyers in a "resale package" prior to closing. Condominiums have association which represent owners, who elect officers and board members, make rules for the complex, collect monthly tax-like fees, and maintain common elements like parking lots, sidewalks, lawns, pools, docks, roofs, siding, and, sometimes, interior wiring, plumbing, etc., especially when the dwellings are attached. My guess is that the owners have cheaped out, allowed the association to be moribund, and have not paid any dues or kept any reserves.
Robn is correct: Conn. General Statutes Sec. 47-243. Organization of unit owners' association. A unit owners' association shall be organized no later than the date the first unit in the common interest community is conveyed. The membership of the association at all times shall consist exclusively of all unit owners or, following termination of the common interest community, of all former unit owners entitled to distributions of proceeds under section 47-237 or their heirs, successors or assigns. The association shall have an executive board. The association shall be organized as a business or nonstock corporation, trust, partnership or unincorporated association.
From the Declaration, page 6: "... The Association of said unit owners for the condominium is an unincorporated association, the name of which is 3-5- CASSIUS STREET ASSOCIATION .... Each owner of the [sic] unit in the condominium shall be a member of the Association. The Association shall not have a separate Board of Directors, but its members as a whole shall have all the powers and duties of the "executive board" within the meaning of the Act. The Association shall be organized, and its affairs shall be managed, in accordance with such by-laws as may be adopted by the Association.
There's a Hole in the Roof! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THNUuxQc73k
Mayor Elicker, Board of Alders are you paying attention. All city taxpayers deserve protection from raw sewage pouring down into their homes, LCI's duty to ALL HOUSING should be responded to and fast acting with enforcement action. What a shame I pay taxes as a condo owner and am denied even the most basic protection. No laws, associations etc. should stand in the way of safe housing especially one with sewage pouring in. I went through this for five years and the city refused to help. So much damage. In my case a lawyer owned the upstairs unit and collected subsidized rent and no help was made available and it is all documented. Sewage is dangerous contaminating other peoples homes with it should NEVER be allowed. Where is New Haven's Board of Health? Does anyone hear the pleas of the helpless who are hemmed in by laws that deny any advocacy and actually protect these types of abusers to dump their sewage on other people. HELP US PLEASE! LCI should respond to all calls for this type of help from ANYONE requesting it.
Why is a condo constructed by Habitat presumably for a low income owner occupant being rented out ? I know Habitat has covenants in its documents to prevent anyone from profiting off its good work. What happened here?
Most Habitat restrictions, which limit the capital gain a purchaser may keep (excess going to Habitat), expire after 25 years. In this case, I cannot immediately find the standard restrictions, but the Land Disposition Agreement with the city required unit purchasers to use the units as their primary residences for three years. Since these dwellings were sold by Habitat circa 1988, any restrictions expired long ago.
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