click to enlarge - File: Courtney Lamdin ©️ Seven Days
- 184 Church Street
Updated at 1:21 p.m.
The Burlington Housing Board of Review took the unprecedented step this week of suspending the rental permit for one of the city's most notorious apartment buildings after the landlords failed to address more than three dozen code violations at the property.
The Handy family, which owns the 17-unit complex at 184 Church Street, is barred from renting out the building until September 5, 2024, the board's December 12 order says. Existing tenants must be relocated on the Handys' dime.
The board also directed city officials to petition the Vermont Superior Court to appoint a temporary property manager after one of the owners, Joe Handy, testified he wouldn't "ever do anything" to repair the building if the city revoked his permit.
The Handys narrowly avoided losing their rental permit in September by coming to a tentative agreement with the city that would have created a property management plan, including a timeline for relocating the tenants.
Mayoral spokesperson Samantha Sheehan said in an email that the city "worked in good faith" with the Handys on the settlement until late October, when talks broke down.
"Unable to reach a voluntary agreement with all these terms, the City sought to have those provisions enforced by the Housing Review Board," Sheehan said.
The crackdown, while focused on code violations, also sought to address public safety issues at the property, Mayor Miro Weinberger told
Seven Days in September. The building, which Weinberger called "the most problematic in the city," has racked up nearly 1,000 police calls in the past decade. Five siblings in the Handy family, one of the city's largest landlords, have owned the building since 2005.
Handy family attorney Brian Hehir said on Friday morning that his clients plan to appeal the order in court; he otherwise declined to comment. Joe Handy didn't immediately respond to a request for an interview.
Burlington officials began their investigation in June, after a routine inspection turned up 46 deficiencies in the building, which is located across Main Street from the pedestrian Church Street Marketplace. Officials documented cracked walls, leaking and clogged sinks, electrical issues, and faulty fire extinguishers.
Two months later, nothing had changed, and city officials gave the Handys two more weeks to comply. At one point, a building manager asked for even more time because, he said, one of the tenants had threatened workers with a gun. When officials returned a final time, in August, the Handys had only replaced the fire extinguishers.
Code enforcement director Bill Ward later testified that 184 Church is "one of the most egregious cases of neglect" he'd ever seen, the order says.
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Emergency responders also submitted testimony to the housing board regarding public safety concerns at the property. Police responded to 184 Church more than 200 times between January 1 and September 25 of this year for various "disturbances," trespassing and drug overdoses, police data show.
The building was also connected to two gun crimes, including an April shooting at an apartment above Manhattan Pizza & Pub on Main Street and shots fired in August, which sent al fresco diners at nearby restaurants ducking for cover. Burlington EMTs were under order not to enter the building without a police escort, Fire Chief Mike LaChance told the board.
The case went to the housing board in September, but a half hour before the meeting, the city and landlords said they had reached an agreement to clean up the building and move out problem tenants. The board was to review the deal on October 10.
The parties didn’t meet that deadline and asked for more time. Then the Handys wanted even
more time. The board initially refused, then relented when the landlords' attorney couldn't make a late October meeting. A final hearing was held on November 6.
During the proceedings, tenants told the board that Matt Handy, the building manager, had been responsive to their concerns and that conditions had improved. But they also testified that they had to make repairs themselves, in one case installing a lofted bed to support an exterior wall that was “buckling inwards,” the order says.
Joe Handy argued that his tenants, some of whom he’d evicted, had damaged the building and that the city was overstating the problems there. He said he wanted to make the repairs — but wouldn’t if the city took his rental permit.
“Do whatever you want to do. I guarantee you that it’ll be a mistake,” Handy told the board, according to the order. “That’s what it’s going to be … or let me go out and do my job and finish it.”
The board wasn’t persuaded. Code violations are the landlord’s responsibility, the board wrote, and tenants can’t be blamed for the building’s structural and electrical problems. “Violations permeate almost every part of the subject property,” the order says.
The board also rejected a request from Ward, the code enforcement director, to allow Matt Handy to manage the property until the permit is restored. The board decided that Matt Handy, who manages more than a dozen other Handy properties in Burlington and surrounding towns, would be too busy to oversee 184 Church.
The board, in its order, also expressed "some reservations" about allowing Joe Handy's relative to oversee the building while the permit is suspended. In the end, the board ruled that Matt Handy remain in charge until the court appoints a property manager.
Meantime, the Handys have to find other housing for the remaining tenants within seven days of receiving the order. The city believes four people still live in the building.
The Handys must cover the tenants' relocation costs — but they don't have the best track record of doing so. The Handys refused to cover moving costs for the dozen tenants who were displaced from a St. Paul Street apartment in May, despite a city ordinance that ordered them to. The city paid instead and placed a $20,000 lien on the property. The money can only be recouped if and when the property is refinanced or sold.