Are Hartford’s Out-of-State Landlords More Likely to Receive Housing Code Complaints?

Community Learning Research Fellows Sulemaan Khalid ‘23 and Jane Dunbar ‘23
with community partner Arunan Arulampalam, Hartford Land Bank
and Faculty Sponsor Professor Delgado
Spring 2022, Trinity College, Hartford, CT

Research Question: Who owns Hartford residential property, and how do these landlords vary by place of business and housing code complaints? 

Background on Hartford Land Bank: Hartford Lank Bank Website

Typically, a lack of responsibility is seen among out-of-state owners. The housing stock is aging, and there is a bigger undertaking for most potential homeowners in Hartford. The housing stock in the US is aging. The median home age was 41 years in 2019; 45% of homes built before 1940 need repairs compared to 20% built after 2000 (Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and PolicyMap, 2019). In Hartford, specifically, 62.7% of housing was built before 1960, while only 3.9% was built after 2000 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2016-2020 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates). To rent a 2-bedroom apartment making minimum wage in Connecticut, you must work at least 91 hours a week (National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC), 2021 ). Like many other post-industrial cities, Hartford experienced a large suburban sprawl to the suburbs and new highway development that divided the city and preexisting social connections in the 1950s. Access to Mobility is significantly decreased among marginalized groups in the state. In analyzing the data in Hartford, there are clear trends of vacancy, abandoned properties, and tax-delinquent properties. 

Land Banks are public authorities or non-profits that acquire, hold, manage, and occasionally redevelop vacant and abandoned property to return it to productive use. The Hartford Land Bank describes its goals as “identifying and acquiring vacant, abandoned, tax-delinquent and/or distressed properties in Hartford, Connecticut, to steward their rehabilitation and return to productive community assets.” 

Arunan Arulampalam became the CEO of the Hartford Land Bank in July 2021, and following an attempt to run for treasurer of Connecticut in 2018, previously Arunan Arulampalam served as the Deputy Commissioner of the State of Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection. Through Arulampalam’s leadership, the Hartford Land Bank launched a ten-week Developer’s training program to help aspiring developers of color in Hartford. The program is free, and graduates will be able to acquire blighted properties from the land bank and redevelop them with funding from the Hartford Community Loan Fund, Inc. The Hartford Community Loan Fund, in their own words, is “…. a not-for-profit community development financial institution (CDFI) with a mission to provide and promote just and affordable financial services that benefit the low-wealth residents of the communities we serve.” Partnerships between Land Banks and other community organizations are essential to ensuring long-term stability as funding for these programs is small. 

Through the CLRF, the Land Bank is interested in getting community feedback to learn how the community can best utilize vacant properties in the city. The Land Bank reached out to Trinity because they wanted to better understand the condition of Hartford’s housing stock and wanted to use our data for a public report or newspaper article. 

We met weekly with other Community Research Learning Fellows led by Professor Doughtery to learn various research methods throughout the semester. Every week we met to brainstorm and produce reports for the CLRF program. 

Data and Methods: 

We used property data from the City of Hartford titled CAMAGIS Property Details, downloaded on February 7th, 2022. We also used housing code complaint data from the City of Hartford titled Housing Code Cases, downloaded on February 22nd, 2022. The websites from the City of Hartford, which had the property database (CAMAGIS Property Details) and  Housing Code Cases data, are linked below. To convert the city’s data into meaningful tables, we used pivot tables to isolate important variables and make comparisons such as the number of living units, the owner’s full name, and the number of complaints. When creating these charts, it is essential to filter out living units to be greater than one, ensuring that you are only searching for multi-unit housing. The Hartford Landbank wanted us to find the principals of corporations that owned the largest number of properties and had the highest number of complaints filed against them. Finding out who the principal agents of each property were important because it would make property owners be held accountable. To find the principals of corporations, we used the Connecticut Secretary of State Online Business Search, a database of all registered corporations in Connecticut. To find information on ownership status for corporations, we used the CAMAGIS database and filtered for owners with the term LLCs and LP within and outside of Connecticut. To find individual owners, we filtered for anything that was not a corporation because they had individuals listed as owners.  

 CAMAGIS_Property_Details | Data | City of Hartford 

Secretary of State Online Business Search 

Housing_Code_Cases | City of Hartford

Key Findings:

Owners of Multi-Unit property Property owners in Hartford can be split up into four categories:

1. In-State, Individual Owner 
2. In-State, Corporate Owner
3. Out-of-State, Individual Owner
4. Out-of-State, Corporate Owner 

After looking at the data it’s clear that Owners of Multi-Unit Properties in Hartford are owned mostly by Individuals and corporations from Connecticut making up around 90% of total multi-unit ownership. Out-of-state corporations and individuals make up around 9% of multi-unit owners in Hartford. 

A. Out-of-State Owners have higher complaints per unit rates than in-state owners

• There are twenty-three states that owners are from that have more complaints per living unit owned than that of owners from Connecticut.
• Seven out of ten of the top owners with the highest percent of total complaints are out-of-state owners, with all seven owners being from either New York or New Jersey.
• Of the top owners with the highest percent of total complaints compared to percent of total living units, seven of the top ten were out-of-state owners.
• 5% of the tax-liable properties in Hartford are owned by 5 out of state corporations.
• From Hartford’s top property owners by the number of parcels, 10 of 13 owners are residents from New York and New Jersey. 

I. Which property owners have the largest number of housing units? 

Table 1: Top Ten Owners with the Largest Number of Housing Units 

The following table shows the names of owners with the largest number of housing units in Hartford. The City of Hartford and the City of Hartford Park Towers have the same mailing address but are registered as different entities. The Housing Authority of Hartford has a different mailing address than the other two; both properties are believed to be owned by  Hartford. The City of Hartford Park Towers is a high-rise apartment complex. 

II. Which property owners have the largest number of parcels? 

Table 2: Top 10 Owners with Largest Number of Parcels 

The following table highlights the top owners of tax-liable property in Hartford by the number of parcels. This table is significant because five corporations own over 5% of all tax-liable property in Hartford. Of Hartford’s top property owners by the number of parcels, 10 of 13 owners are residents from New York (5) and New Jersey (5).  

III. Which owners have the largest number of housing code complaints?  

Table 3: Top Ten Owners with Highest Number of Housing Code Complaint Cases

These are the top 10 owners of residential units that have the most housing code complaints filed against them.  These housing code complaints are significant as they demonstrate a tenant having problems with the unit they are living in. 

a. Heat Map: Created by Ilya Ilyankou ’18 with support from Community Learning

This heat map shows where the housing code complaints have been made in Hartford from January 2020 to the present. Each dot represents a different housing code complaint filed with the city. The Heat map helps showcase properties with housing code complaints filed against them in Hartford, allowing the viewer to visualize the scale and location of housing violations. There are higher concentrations of complaints around the Parkville Historic District, Allen Place Lincoln Street Historic District, and the Asylum Avenue District Historic District. 

IV. Which owners have the highest percentage of housing code complaints relative to total living units? 

Table 4: Complaints per Unit for the Top 10 Largest Housing Owners by Number of Units

This table lists the top 10 owners by the number of living units sorted by the ratio of complaints to units. This ratio gives a complaint per unit to control because owning more properties could mean having more complaints. Of the top ten living unit owners in Hartford, three in-state-owners all have a complaint per unit rate of zero. However, all out-of-state owners have a complaint per unit rate above zero. 

V. Are rates of housing code complaints per total living unit higher for out-of-state landlords than in-state or in-Hartford landlords?

Table 5: States with more than 15 Housing Units and Number of Housing Code Complaint Cases 

Notably, individuals and corporations in states far away, such as California, Florida, Georgia, and Texas, own over thirty living units in Hartford and have more complaints per unit than in-state-owners. Property owners in New York and New Jersey have slightly lower complaints per unit than Connecticut property owners. 

Table 6: Top 10 Owners with Highest Percent of Total Housing Code Complaints Compared to Total Living Units including State Owner is From

Seven out of ten of the top owners with the highest percent of total complaints are out-of-state owners, with all seven owners being from either New York or New Jersey. This data is significant as it demonstrates that out-of-state owners make up most of the top ten owners with the highest percentage of all housing code complaints. 

Of the top owners with the highest percent of total complaints compared to percent of total living units, seven of the top ten were out-of-state owners. Based on Table 6, out-of-state landlords have more complaints per living unit than in-state landlords. 

Acknowledgments:

We would like to thank Professor Delgado and Professor Dougherty for their constant support and advice while completing this research. We would also like to thank Ilya Ilyankou for allowing us to use the Heat Map of Housing Code Complaints as a part of our final project. Finally, we would like to thank Arunan Arulampalam and Yahaira Escribano for being such helpful and supportive community partners.

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