Election of Chair, Revised Rules On Agenda At Special Fair Rent Commission Meeting, April 4

By John McNamara

NEW BRITAIN – The city’s Fair Rent Commission, a largely dormant city board, will hold a hastily-called special meeting Tuesday, April 4th to elect a Chairperson and revise its rules and regulations.

The Commission meeting is scheduled for Tuesday at 6:30 P.M. in Room 201 at New Britain City Hall, 27 West Main Street. Notice of the meeting was received by Town and City Clerk Mark Bernacki on Monday, April 3rd at 3 p.m. and posted at City Hall, narrowly meeting a 24-hour notice requirement for all public meetings.

In addition to electing a chair, the agenda includes public participation and approval of a regular meeting schedule for the nine-member commission that has not met in more than two years.

The special meeting that includes consideration of new rules stems from a February Common Council meeting at which Alderman Aram Ayalon (D-3) asked “why the City has not followed the law by ensuring the City’s Fair Rent Commission meets, issues minutes, establishes community hearings, and ensures the commission uses its authority to give rental relief.”

In response to Ayalon’s petition, Justin Dorsey of the Mayor’s Office asserted the law is being followed and indicated that there would be “formal changes to the rules and regulations of the Fair Rent Commission” to clarify the roles of housing and human rights and opportunities employees in the fair rent commission process. The changes reported by Tuesday to the Common Council will apparently be taken up at the special meeting.

Dorsey explained that until now excessive rent increase complaints go to the Human Rights and Opportunities office and are currently being handled administratively without automatically going to the commission whose nine appointed members, according to statute, include three tenants, three landlords and three property owners. If it is determined that the case meets the parameters as spelled out by ordinance, “mediation efforts led by the City’s Human Rights and Opportunities Officer” begin. Without a resolution in mediation “the Fair Rent Commission also serves as the final say from the City when determining rent disputes for landlords and their tenants.”

The “formal changes” now being sent to the Fair Rent Commission come amid reports of a statewide housing crisis with advocate of affordable housing citing low vacancy rates, higher evictions, homelessness and excessive rent hikes that are occurring in the aftermath of the pandemic in cities such as New Britain. Recent data reported by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development showed rising rent prices and a shortage of affordable units in New Britain before the pandemic and the rise in inflation over the last year.

The Fair Rent Commission was created in 2012 in New Britain under state enabling legislation and incorporated into the city’s Code of Ordinances. The ordinance empowers the commission “to make studies and investigations, to conduct hearings and receive complaints relative to rental charges on housing accommodations, to ensure that rental charges “are not harsh and unconscionable,” thus creating a fair and equal process for the tenant and landlord; compelled by the need for habitable and rent stabilized housing stock in the city of New Britain.”

The one day notice of the meeting allowed little time to publicly announce the meeting nor post it at the City Hall website. According to state Freedom of Information law “notice of each special meeting of every public agency, except for the General Assembly, either house thereof or any committee thereof, shall be posted not less than twenty-four hours before the meeting to which such notice refers on the public agency’s Internet web site, if available, and given not less than twenty-four hours prior to the time of such meeting by filing a notice of the time and place thereof in the office of the Secretary of the State for any such public agency of the state, in the office of the clerk of such subdivision for any public agency of a political subdivision of the state and in the office of the clerk of each municipal member for any multitown district or agency.”

The next regular meeting of the Fair Rent Commission appears on the city’s calendar on its website for Wednesday, April 27th, at 6 p.m.