Democrats at the state, local and federal level rallied Monday behind a group of Avon residents, who formed a tenants union in an effort to negotiate safer living conditions from their out-of-state, corporate landlord.
Members of the new Avon Place Tenant Union staged a mid-morning press conference to detail a litany of complaints about the management of the roughly 180-unit complex, tucked away in a lightly wooded swath of land near the Farmington River.
Attendees of the Monday event slowly navigated their vehicles along a privately owned road, cratered with deep potholes, to a facility building, where more than a dozen Avon Place residents gathered in blue union tee shirts. Behind them, the complex’s pool sat unused, despite the oppressive mid-August heat.
“It’s been closed by the health department for three years in a row,” Amy Arlin said of the pool. Arlin, a resident of Avon Place, serves as vice president of the new tenant union chapter. “This is not just a lack of maintenance, this neglect and we have all tried to get things changed ourselves and nothing has worked. So, we are coming together as a union.”
Other residents reported a variety of maintenance and repair issues: mold and sewage issues, a collapsed bathroom ceiling, which one tenant said left her without a working shower for around six weeks.
In some cases, residents said their efforts to find solutions were met with hostility from the property’s management. State Sen. Paul Honig, a Harwinton Democrat whose district includes Avon, recalled meeting with distressed tenants several weeks earlier in the complex’s musty smelling lobby and was surprised when a staff member called the police on them.
“I was gathered with maybe a half a dozen residents in the lobby, talking about the issues they have here at Avon Place and the manager actually called the police on us,” Honig said. “So we had an interaction with Avon Police — just a completely frivolous call to the police department, harassing the tenants.”
When officers arrived, they quickly concluded that the tenants had broken no laws, Honig said. He said Avon Place residents deserved a safe, healthy and peaceful place to live and thanked the members of the new union chapter for their efforts.
Dan Polhamus, town chair of Avon, said the town had also encountered many of the same difficulties in dealing with the property’s owner. Since 2023, the town or the Farmington Valley Health District have had to intervene on issues related to hot water outages, relocation efforts following a fire, elevator problems, road conditions, pool upkeep, and unpaid back taxes, he said.
“The reality is, here in Avon, we’ve never faced this level of egregious mismanagement,” Polhamus said.
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal said the residents of Avon Place were seeking basic decency and fairness, objectives he believed the union would help them achieve.
“A tenants union gives people power,” Blumenthal said. “It gives tenants what they need to force change when greed puts them at the mercy of landlords, whose only motivation is to extract more money and provide less service.”
Hannah Srajer, president of the CT Tenants Union, said the new chapter would hold the property’s owners accountable.
“We look forward to having a respectful relationship where real accountability is made today, tomorrow and for the rest of the time you own this complex,” she said.
