by THOMAS BREEN
A state judge ruled that the Fair Rent Commission doesn’t have to worry about stepping on the court’s toes when hearing retaliation complaints filed by tenants against landlords suing to evict them.
State Superior Court Judge Walter Spader, Jr. handed down that separation-of-powers-clarifying decision in the case Juana Valle v. City of New Haven Fair Rent Commission.
His March 9 ruling reversed a Fair Rent Commission decision from last May that dropped a tenant’s retaliation complaint because of a related ongoing eviction case. It also clarified a contested understanding between legal aid and city attorneys about how city fair rent proceedings dovetail with eviction cases filed in state court.
The upshot: The city’s Fair Rent Commission, which is a state-empowered local body charged with cracking down on rents deemed “harsh and unconscionable,” can hear retaliation complaints at the same time that the courts are overseeing related eviction, or “summary process,” matters.
“Accordingly, the Court finds that the plaintiff was entitled to adjudication of the retaliation portion of her complaint, and the Commission did not consider the evidence or any substantive issues regarding that portion of the complaint,” Spader wrote in his decision in this appeal case. “It, therefore, improperly dismissed that portion of the compliant procedurally. The decision of the Commission is vacated and the case is remanded to the Commission to hold a hearing consistent with this opinion and the Court’s decision on the earlier motion to dismiss.”
Valle told the Independent she is “happy and proud of the change in the law even though” she personally did not benefit from the change, as she has subsequently moved from her Maltby Place apartment. She is “happy to know it will help other people not to go through what” she went through.
All of this dates back to a controversial decision that the Fair Rent Commission made nearly a year ago in a two-complaint case filed by a Maltby Place tenant against her East Haven landlord.
Valle and legal aid attorney Amy Marx appeared before the commission in May 2022 in part to push back on the landlord’s proposed rent hike from $1,000 to $1,250 for Valle’s family’s three-bedroom apartment. That proposed rent hike was to include a new $150 monthly pet fee.
The Fair Rent Commission heard Valle’s fair-rent complaint, and ruled that the landlord — Silverio Lucero — could raise the rent by $100 per month, and could charge a one-time $150 pet fee.
That settled the rent-related matter.
But that wasn’t the only complaint Valle had filed with the commission.
Valle and Marx also tried to get the Fair Rent Commission at that time to weigh in on a separate retaliation complaint filed by the tenant against her landlord. In that matter, the tenant alleged that her landlord had violated state and local law by filing an eviction lawsuit against her less than six months after she first approached the Fair Rent Commission with her fair-rent complaint.
Following the advice of then-city Assistant Corporation Counsel Blake Sullivan — who has subsequently left his city job for a position with the state attorney general’s office — the Fair Rent Commissioners voted to not hear Valle’s retaliation complaint. Why? Because, as Sullivan cautioned, the same retaliation allegation involving the same tenant and landlord was currently being considered by a state judge in an ongoing eviction case. Sullivan saw this as a potential conflict between the a municipal administrative body and the judicial branch — and he pointed out that the housing court’s decision on such matters take precedence, and the Fair Rent Commission cannot and should not intervene.
While the Fair Rent Commission does have the authority to hear retaliation complaints, Sullivan said during the May 2022 hearing, “once a summary process action has been filed with the Superior Court, with the housing session, the housing session has exclusive jurisdiction over those claims.”
The commissioners agreed, and declined to hear Valle’s retaliation complaint.