HARTFORD, Conn. — Hartford's mayor provided some answers Wednesday for the roughly 100 people in the city who were displaced by a fire at the Concord Hills Apartments on Sherbrooke Avenue last month.
The city has started moving tenants into new hotels after they said the motels they were previously put in were dirty and unsafe.
In the long-term, Mayor Arunan Arulampalam said the city has a plan to move people into new buildings, but those displaced said there are still lots of questions.
“We wanted to make sure that we were giving them a wide range of options, so we gave them three different property owners, each of which owns dozens of units all over the city and so there’s options in every single neighborhood for these residents. There’s options at a variety of different price points,” Arulampalam said. “In addition to that, the city is putting forward $4,000 for the first few months rent. We’re putting forward moving costs. We kept pushing the existing landlord at Sherbrooke and they are releasing the security deposits. They are clearing back rent. A lot of these tenants owed thousands in back rent.”
Arulampalam said communication about the process has started going out to tenants. He also said moving back into the building at Concord Hills could also be an option once repairs are made.
“As those repairs are made, and we think within the next two and half week, there should be units opening up in that building. People will be able to move back in. What we realized when we sat down with tenants, when we talked with tenants individually is that many of them just didn’t want to go,” Arulampalam said.
He also addressed concerns from displaced tenants who said they were originally put up and spent weeks in area motels that were dirty and unsafe after the fire.
“I sat here with those tenants and the stories were just heartbreaking. We sent inspectors to each of these hotels. We’re working to make sure those hotels are in better condition because we don’t want hotels in our city to be in poor condition anyways,” Arulampalam said. “We are also working on moving some of those tenants out in the next few days and then getting them into permanent housing. Our goal since we left here that day a week-and-a-half ago with the tenants was to make sure we were getting them into permanent housing, so we’ve gone above and beyond certainly of our legal duties and what they’ve asked us even.”
The Uniform Relocation Assistance Act, or URAA, guarantees temporary housing and other rights to the tenants displaced from the fire. While it’s the city’s responsibility to arrange for the housing, the financial responsibility is with the owners of the building.
“The landlord should be stepping up under the Uniform Relocation Assistance Act. They haven’t. We have pushed them to step up and they haven’t so the city has covered these costs," Arulampalam said. "We’re putting out liens on their property and we will go after them for payment but we weren’t going to just sit and wait for the landlord to pay up. We don’t know if we’re going to be able to recover, but we thought it was important to provide these services to these residents.”
Angelo Bavaro is an anchor and reporter at FOX61 News. He can be reached at abavaro@fox61.com. Follow him on Facebook and X.
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