Postcard from the Edge
10/06/2006

Post Card From The Edge
Longtime Property Owner Struggles With Inner City
By Bob DeCosmo

Greetings to all who reside in Waterbury, the much-maligned city that some people living outside of here just love to ridicule. It has been awhile since I wrote an article for the Observer, but I felt compelled to do one because of the latest political flap from Ned Lamont's campaign manager's quote concerning "Evil and slime." I find the backlash somewhat amusing and the man showed absolutely no class for making such a statement to begin with.

But people seem to forget that a few years ago Money Magazine voted Waterbury as the worst city in America to live in. At the time, that dubious designation really made me think about my life and where we where headed as a community. I reasoned that I was working in the worst city, in the worst neighborhoods, on the worse streets and dealing with the worse tenants possibly in the entire world. Wow, that means I have some great insights into America's problems, right?

Well, I think I do, and for those who don't know me; I am a 1981 UCONN graduate with a degree in psychology and a minor in Sociology and Finance.

When I graduated from UCONN, Governor Ella Grosso had a freeze on hiring new state employees, so I found myself working on a construction crew as a framing carpenter and a laborer in 1982 instead of working at a desk with my cousin as a social worker for DCYS. Swinging a 28-ounce framing hammer and lugging tons of lumber was different than what I thought I was going to be doing to earn a living wage; that was counseling individuals as a social worker for Connecticut.

I began to purchase properties in 1983 with a partner, my carpenter boss, Ken Goodman. I also switched jobs later that year and began my property management career. The first properties I ran as a manager where located on the corner of East Main Street and North Elm Street where the new Art's Magnet School sits today. What a challenge. I was bringing on-line apartment units that were vacant for more than a decade, I flew through them. With this added experience, I purchased even more properties for my partnership and began to get the notion that I should be in the real estate business, I got my license to sell properties and thought the sky was the limit. I became a realtor and wanted to specialize in investment properties because of my property management experience.

I also had the wonderful idea that I could improve people's lives by renovating both their buildings and rental units and create a much nicer and better place for the tenants and their children to live. Well, as the saying goes, "Even the best laid plans" was about to rear its ugly head because I was unprepared for what society was about to evolve into in our cities.

Having given our readers a brief look backwards into my life, I want to make the following statement. "What has helped drag Waterbury and other cities downward is not only a global reconfiguration of manufacturing resulting in numerous loss of jobs in our urban centers, it is a decay in the moral values and certain lifestyle choices that so many of our city residents have made."

The drug epidemic has exploded and with the addition of "crack" cocaine hitting the streets in the mid 1980's and heroin surging in popularity simultaneously, this factor is one of the leading causes for the decay of our neighborhoods. These drugs are completely addictive and their users only want to light the pipe, stick a needle in their arm or ingest them again. Before these notorious drugs rose in popularity, marijuana was the drug of choice on the streets and people acted differently, much calmer, less violent, less filth, and fewer robberies. I never had many issues with my properties being destroyed or having people break in and steal every piece of copper tubing on site until after the emergence of crack and the surge in heroin use.

The reason is the cost of purchasing these drugs is much more expensive for the user than other drugs so the money demands are much different today than 20 years ago. Realistically in the early 1980's, people could buy marijuana and that $40 dollar purchase could satisfy the user for several weeks. However the crack user can easily go through the same $40 dollars in ten minutes and needs to have more crack within 20 minutes after the first $40 is done. You can clearly see the problem beginning.

The second reason our cities are in trouble is a false sense of "Entitlement" that many residents have today. In my parent's generation, people worked for what they owned. Old cliches like "The early bird catches the worm" referenced a work ethic that suggested the harder you work, the more you will attain. I don't ever recall my father missing a day of work; he was a very structured man and truly cared for his family. Today we are suffering many devastating ill effects from our failed welfare policies in Connecticut.

Although welfare may have been well intended, it was so destructive to the recipient's own self esteem. Welfare offered no incentives to better oneself and it inevitably created chaos for society.

The most obvious results from our welfare folly is the current education crisis in urban schools. Why can't Jane & Johnny do well on their mastery tests and why do urban schools rank lower than their suburban counterparts? The answer is debated by many in the education community, but not a puzzle for me at all. Jane & Johnny can't do well in school because the larger majority of the underachieving children came from single parent households where mom is basically illiterate. Education begins at home and kids really need both parents to do best in dealing with life's challenges.

Connecticut's welfare program resulted in many teen-age girls leaving school prematurely to make babies and receive free money and other benefits every month at the expense of our taxpayers. This event was called "Mother Day" on the streets and the 3rd and 16th of each month the cities where awash in state funded cash payments to the young girls. I used to say that if we didn't collect rent on "Mothers Day," the cash would be gone the next day. We actually mapped out a collection route and the last 2 stops for us were a lobster dinner at one apartment and then a keg party at the last. Somehow those welfare engineers didn't understand the street culture that was developing under welfare and it unfortunately helped create the drug gangs.

The welfare rules were well stated, you can receive cash benefits for yourself and child, but you cannot live with the father of the baby. If a welfare mom wanted a cash raise and increased benefits, she had to make another baby. What unfortunately happened was that young women where having babies with different men and the result was typically a 3-child household with three different fathers and not any one man willing to step up to care for that entire family unit.

With the passing of welfare reform many under-educated single mothers where thrown into the work force to earn a paycheck in order to survive.

However, what I see now out here is equally amazing on another front. I was raised to live within your economic means. My parents bought what they could afford. Today we have ultra high utility bill costs and housing expenses in our state. Today, I am doing non-payment evictions at a record rate.

When we take possession of the apartments, I find so many unpaid bills thrown around the premises and worse, I see many tenants constantly switching their utility bills into their children names so there is cash around in the household to do other things.

They use this cash not to pay for legitimate expenses, like rent, gas & electric and even food. Instead they purchase drugs, or rent comfort items at home like 42' plasma televisions, 1000 watt stereo systems, and buy high end designer clothing to wear out while going "clubbing". It is simply amazing. I actually watched as Rent-a-Center had to remove the doors from the hinges from an apartment as they brought a giant television into the unit for a tenant we where evicting, I know we where not getting paid on our lease, but I bet the television bill is a priority payment now for that family living somewhere else and probably not paying their new landlord any rent either.

When we evict someone, it is for a valid reason because the cost of evictions when you calculate all the hidden issues is in the $4,000 range. Why wouldn't a tenant want to live in a property where there is a full service management company backing up any complaints? We have access to licensed plumbers and electricians, painters, and handymen. We have a staffed office and any complaints are answered, not ignored, so why do so many people constantly not pay us rent? You speculate on that for a bit!

The live beyond your means philosophy unfortunately is very common and the choices that people make in their fiscal priorities is another issue. Having a roof over your head to raise your family was always number one years ago. People would take care of their apartments whether they rented or owned the buildings because that is where they lived and they wanted to take care of their family.

I hear stories from my aunts Connie Chrichton and Ann Mazzaralla about how during the depression the old Italian women living in Town Plot on Saturday morning use to boil water and wash the sidewalks in front of their homes. It was a tradition of sorts and my grandmother was one of those who kept up their rental apartments. Today, I clean the street and sidewalk in front of my home; I use to do it as well for the investment properties. However, I got fed up and stopped because as soon I finished cleaning and sweeping, garbage would magically appear almost instantly. It is a futile mission. Today, I see tenants throw their garbage bags from the third floor porches constantly and where they land is where the garbage sits until somebody else cleans up their mess. It is disgusting.

My wife and I are raising five children, and diapers are a fact of life. Our children's diapers went into the trash, yet today I still have to pick up other kids diapers. Why is it that I see mothers throw dirty diapers out the back door that land in my rental properties back yard? Or even worse, the people living next door throw them over the fence and again they wind up on my property! I tell you I am at the end of my rope in dealing with this situation. I have tried my best over the years to keep things up and make conditions better out there, but it just doesn't work because too many people have little respect for public or private property and unfortunately, for even themselves.

These facts have led to a host of problems we all see today, such as poor performance in schools, municipal budgets strained under the costs of special needs education, city- wide blight and property abandonment. It is also the leading cause in my opinion of children having lead poisoning because children do not get lead poisoning from older homes with caring parents; it results from the drug culture and filthy house-keeping habits that many families in the inner city exhibit.

While on the subject of lead paint, it is not a national crisis as proposed by some. In my opinion it is a crisis by bureaucratic edict! Nationally, lead levels have fallen by some 70% since lead was taken out of gasoline in the mid 1970's. Last year's statistics proved that 82% of all Connecticut towns had no children with elevated lead levels, yet a proposal was offered last session at the Legislature. If it passed, it would have in theory forced any of us reading this story out of our homes when we where younger because nationally our lead levels where higher when we where kids than the levels that this proposal wanted to take the State of Connecticut into last year. Fortunately the bill was killed in the Appropriations Committee, but it will undoubtedly resurface next year again.

Today, I am back on the streets doing another three family renovation, maybe my last. It is because of that fact that I contacted John Murray in the first place and requested to write this article. What I am seeing every day now drives me nuts. Barking pit bulls leashed to tree trunks, abandoned cars, overgrown vacant lots, sidewalks covered with weeds and debris, garbage all over the place and teenagers using the "F" word as a noun, adjective and a verb causes me to pause about our future. Jokingly, I told a friend that we must have built the new transportation center in Waterbury and it is across the street from where I am working, because the amount of traffic coming and going from that house is enormous.

My latest headache is a tenant who just leased a unit and no sooner did they unpack, they brought in 2 pit bulls into the property in violation of the no pet clause in our lease. The custodian for the property called us because the dogs use the hallways as a bathroom and now he wants a raise to clean up the dog mess. So we planned a house visit, but before we got there, the fire department called to inform me that the tenants burned down the kitchen with a grease fire. Of course my insurance deductible is high because this is inner city property and we can't file an insurance claim. The lease says the tenant is responsible for any damage they cause to the unit, we'll see who winds up paying for the repairs. My new slogan is, "I fix them and they break them." Trust me, it is not just Waterbury, it is all over our state.

I now truly wonder what I would be doing if in fact after I graduated UCONN, I wound up as a state social worker and never ventured into urban real estate? Well, I tried to change things for the better out there and in so many of our neighborhoods I failed. It isn't working out. It is too much to deal with and you constantly get beat up by dealing with the chaos.

Fear not Waterbury loyalists and advocates, and I am one of both, we do have a proud city. I talk with so many people involved in my business from across the state and it seems just as bad for them in the larger Connecticut cities. So long for now and please try to take it slow. If you see some trash in front of your house, pick it up because inevitably it winds up in someone else's front yard, urban blight is one problem we can resolve, all we have to do is not use our streets as garbage pails.

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