Maria Arozamena, Illustrations Editor

The Lenox Street, Quinnipiac Avenue and State Street tenants unions all have bargaining meetings with Ocean head Shmulik Aizenberg scheduled for this week.

On Sept. 11, Ocean Management agreed to meet and bargain with tenants unions from three of its properties just minutes before they were set to begin protesting at the landlord’s office. In the same agreement, Ocean tenants won just cause eviction protection, which will prevent Ocean Management from evicting occupants without citing a reason.

For the State Street Tenants Union, this is the first time Ocean has agreed to negotiate with them. Lenox Street and Quinnipiac Avenue unions will meet Ocean only for the second time. 

Tenants unions from Ocean’s properties have been fighting for collective bargaining rights with their landlord for more than two years and have a history of securing their goals through union advocacy.

“The leaders and members who fought to win this agreement are proving that, through our union, we have the power to change our own material conditions,” CT Tenants Union president Hannah Srajer told the News. “While we’re continuing our push for Just Cause legislation, we’re not waiting around for policymakers. Tenants deserve and demand better, now: peace and stability, rents we can afford, healthy living environments and real power and respect in our homes.” 

Ocean Management did not reply to request for comment.

In April 2022, the first tenants union in Connecticut was formed at Ocean’s 311 Blake St. property. It was later officially recognized by the city in November. Mayor Justin Elicker signed an ordinance recognizing tenants’ rights to unionize in September 2022. 

According to Luke Melonakos-Harrison, vice president of CT Tenants Union, the Blake Street union was formed in the wake of Ocean Management’s purchase of the property in late 2021. Having not been able to communicate with Ocean during all of 2022, the tenants decided to unionize, fearing being kicked out of their apartments without warning. 

At this point, tenants were paying month-to-month rent, nobody was able to renew their lease, and conditions at the apartment complex were beginning to worsen, Melonakos-Harrison said. He added that nobody was able to get in touch with Ocean Management. 

After another half year of silence from their landlord, tenants at Blake Street began receiving phone calls from Ocean Managements’ office informing them that their rent was going to increase by 30 to 40 percent and asking them to sign a new lease agreeing to these terms. 

“It was the moment that everybody had been bracing themselves for from when [Ocean] first got there. A year and a half later, it finally happened,” Melonakos-Harrison said. “We really think that it was the fact that the union had gone public in April and then filed with the city in November that stalled those rent increases from happening sooner.”

He speculated that Ocean waited until June to raise rents because a Connecticut state statute deems landlords raising rent within six months of the formation of a tenants union an act of retaliation.

However, the union ensured that all members responded to this call by saying they would only agree to negotiate as a group — not individually. After a number of tenants said this, Ocean stopped calling.

Meanwhile, tenants unions around the state were beginning to form, and in July 2023, CT Tenants Union officially came together as a coalition of tenants unions around Connecticut.

After two meetings for negotiations between the Blake Street union and Ocean about rent rates and tangible issues with the property, 16 tenants came home on Aug. 19 to notices to quit due to lapse of time, meaning they were being evicted simply because their leases were up.

Hundreds of protestors gathered at City Hall and marched to Ocean’s offices, demanding the landlord end “union-busting evictions.” Senator Richard Blumenthal LAW ’73 and other city and state legislators joined the protestors. 

The very same day, tenants at Ocean’s Quinnipiac Avenue property officially filed their union with the city, having organized in response to Ocean’s failure to address complaints regarding their building’s physical condition.

Two days later, Ocean agreed to a three-month cooling-off period with the Blake Street union, which entailed not evicting anyone for three months.

In November 2023, the Lenox Street complex’s union was officially recognized by the city as well. Lenox tenants were frustrated by poor living conditions that weren’t being addressed by Ocean, such as mold, leaks and broken fixtures.

Months of negotiations later, tenants from Blake Street and Ocean Management finally signed a deal in February 2024 agreeing to a rent increase of about 10 percent for leases that will last until 2026.

After unionizing in April 2022, Blake Street tenants were able to keep their rent frozen for two years. According to Melonakos-Harrison, rent in New Haven went up 30 percent overall in that time period.

Unionizing also allowed them to negotiate for a much smaller rent raise than Ocean originally proposed. Lease agreements that extend to 2026 secured rent predictability for two years.

In April, Ocean saw the formation of a fourth tenants union at its State Street property, for similar reasons as the unions from the other properties.

Lenox had a bargaining meeting in May but didn’t secure an agreement. Since, the union did not have more meetings with Ocean. Quinnipiac Avenue had a similar situation in August, and two of its tenants had been issued notices to quit for lapse of time at the end of July. 

It was this failure to secure follow-up meetings to continue bargaining that sparked the plan for a protest on Sept. 11, which subsequently brought Ocean back to the table. 

Despite the fact that the Blake Street Tenants Union successfully signed an agreement with Ocean back in February, they still face issues with their facilities and struggle to get in contact with their landlord.

“I can’t even do basic necessities sometimes at home because it’ll just break down and there’s nobody to call,” Garrett Kimball, a tenant at Blake Street said. “I haven’t done laundry at home in two months now.”

Ocean’s office is located at 101 Whitney Ave.