The owners of an apartment building plagued by crime and substance use struck a deal with the City of Burlington on Monday to temporarily close the property for repairs. The move will force all tenants in the 17-unit building to find other housing.
Bill Ward, the city’s director of permitting and inspections, said in an interview Tuesday that ahead of a Housing Board of Review meeting on Monday night, he was prepared to make the case that the property’s rental certificate should be revoked, citing a list of about 40 deficiencies in the building.
But before the meeting, he learned of a deal to avoid that action, which could have opened the door to a court challenge and further delays. The deal was reached by Acting City Attorney Kimberlee Sturtevant and Brian Hehir, an attorney for Sisters and Brothers Investment Group, the Handy family company that owns multiple properties in the area.
“In my mind this is a better deal for us,” Ward said. “Because it would expedite what otherwise could have gone on for a while.”
The agreement will still need to be documented and brought before the Housing Board of Review at its next meeting in October, Ward said.
Mayor Miro Weinberger called out the building last week when he told WCAX-TV that it was the most problematic in the city and highlighted the city’s effort to pull its rental certification. According to the Burlington Police Department, its officers have been summoned to the building more than 1,000 times over the past decade.
A neighboring property, the Chittenden Superior courthouse, constructed a new 6-foot fence around the parking lot adjacent to 184 Church St. “for security,” according to city permitting records.
Connie Ramsey, one of Chittenden County’s assistant judges, told VTDigger earlier this week that the fencing, along with other security measures, is expected to cost roughly $120,000. Ramsey said courthouse staff feel unsafe near the neighboring property.
In June, the city’s Department of Permitting and Inspections filed a report on the Church Street building. It included 14 pages of problematic conditions with the building that the department said had to be corrected. The deficiencies included:
- Unsafe lofts built to hold beds
- Holes and cracks in walls, ceilings and floors
- Missing fire extinguishers and covered smoke detectors
- Broken sinks
- Exposed wiring
- Hoarding conditions blocking exits from apartments
- Missing hot water
After a follow-up inspection in August, Ward said the only issues addressed were related to fire extinguishers and smoke detectors. That left 39 deficiencies affecting about 90% of the units in the building that hadn’t been corrected, he said.
“So it’s really more of the totality than it is any one particular one,” Ward said.
Charlie Handy, one of the property owners, said in an interview on Tuesday that he hopes to begin repairs within two weeks of the residents moving out. He said the company had already begun the process of evicting some tenants prior to Monday’s agreement.
Handy said he was working with a few residents to find a place to live at other properties owned by the company. One resident is working with Burlington Housing Authority, according to Ward.
Handy said he expects to keep the building closed for about a year while making the repairs. He also said that rents at the building would go up when it reopens due to the cost of repairs.
The Handy family has owned the building for about 15 years. Handy said it hadn’t always been problematic but that issues with tenants “hit the fan” during the Covid-19 pandemic when, he said, crime and substance use increased.
“There was no more police,” he said, referring to the Burlington Police Department’s recent staffing issues. “People were just doing whatever they like.”
While Handy defended some of his tenants, calling them “good people,” he also said there were residents in the building who brought in “the wrong crowd,” contributing to problems. He pointed to the long process to evict tenants, which can take months. Often efforts to enforce no-trespass orders can fall short with lower police staffing, he said.
“The whole system is just not working,” Handy said.
Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad said on Tuesday that there have been close to 1,100 calls at the address since 2012. Of those calls, 19 were overdoses — 14 of them occurring in the past year. In addition, one untimely death in the building appeared to be overdose-related, the chief said.
Murad said most of the drug activity involved “low-level” sales or drug-sharing, and he said there were people occasionally staying in the building who didn’t live there. According to Murad, police were limited in how to address those issues from their end.
“We’ve never encountered drug dealing at a sufficient level for us to be able to investigate and invest time and energy into trying to figure out whether or not” to make arrests, Murad said.
According to a press release Murad issued August 7, there were two reports of gunfire at the address within two hours on August 5.
Murad said he was troubled by the frequency of calls at the building but also worried about the impact on other well-behaved tenants.
“I think it’s just a place where people are currently using it as a place to rest their head,” Murad said. “The people who are inside — there are very many people in that building who are victimized by this behavior. They have nothing to do with it.”
