7 New Haven Landlords to Look Out For
East Rock Management broke into the 784 Orange Street apartment while the lease is still active to “clean” for prospective tenants, throwing the active tenants’ things down the stairs as shown in this photo.
The New Haven renters market is particularly parasitic. Yale undergrads pay whatever their parents’ checkbook will allow, graduate students accept subpar conditions for short-term stays, and housing segregation encourages predatory landlord behavior. A study by WalletHub ranked New Haven as one of the least affordable cities for U.S. renters, creating an ever-worsening unhoused population that has recently doubled.
The average rent in New Haven is 24% higher than the national average at $2,064 per month, Apartments.com says, while RentCafe reported that figure up to $2,362 as of August. Many renters say that although rent keeps going up, the housing quality keeps going down.
Some landlords are creating extra blight in New Haven. One only has to walk a few blocks before seeing buildings with boarded-up doors, a second floor held up by stilts, or dilapidated roofs, sometimes owned by the same management company.
People need to sift through r/newhaven to hear about tenants’ experiences, but missing just one thread can lead them to rent from a dangerous landlord.
Here is a list of seven New Haven landlords and management companies with a history of neglect, based on public records, formal tenant complaints, public hearings, and firsthand statements provided by interviewees. All subjects are presumed innocent of legal violations unless determined otherwise by a court of law. All landlords were contacted for comment, however none responded by the scheduled time of publication.
Ocean Management
Fenced-off Fitch houses, between Dyer and Blake. Credit: Thomas Breen, New Haven Independent
If you’ve driven by Fitch and Blake Street in New Haven, you’ve likely seen the row of fenced-off abandoned properties. This block has been slowly crumbling since the first fines were put on Ocean Management in December 2024, in which New Haven’s Livable City Initiative (LCI) fined the company for collapsed porches, peeling paint, and decaying roofs, as well as old mattresses, broken furniture, and trash bags piled in the back of 172 Fitch.
This is just one example where Ocean Management neglected properties to the point of catastrophe. Ocean owns over 300 properties and 1,300 units in the New Haven area.
This past November, the Fair Rent Commission held a hearing for Angelique Cortez and Gaylord Salters versus Ocean Management. Cortez alleges she contracted an upper respiratory infection from the apartment’s dangerous conditions. The tenant union representative present during the meeting also noted that the rent for Cortez’s building is going up about $200 per apartment.
In 2024, Altheda Bastien and an LCI field representative found a “high volume of garbage and large pieces of glass throughout the walking area of the perimeter of the building.” They also cited that active squatters were in the basement, vermin entered the unit, the toilet did not function, and water was leaking through the roof in the bedroom.
There has been consistent effort from tenants against Ocean Management. In 2023, the Blake Street Tenant Union fought off retaliatory no-fault eviction notices, secured landmark collective lease agreements, and tried to buy their building from Ocean.
Mandy Management
Mandy Management has a history of neglect, despite overseeing 4,000 apartments across 800 buildings in the New Haven area.
In the last two years, there have been multiple families who went without properly working heat. A basement furnace at 479 Dixwell Avenue ran out of oil during a snowstorm. In another building, nine family members were living in a Dickerman Street apartment that, as Mandy’s records indicated, did not have functioning heat for most of the winter season.
Last year, Mandy Management tried to increase the monthly rent of a tenant by $300 per month, even though the basement flooded after the landlord came to fix the toilet, and the tenants had to clean up the resulting mess.
One tenant, who requested to only be named as Emma, rented from Mandy for two years in a cockroach-infested apartment one block away from Edgewood Park. She said that every time it rained, the walls and ceiling dripped. After a storm, the wall in the main hallway collapsed, and Mandy did not come to clean it up for a week, she said. This past December, the heat went out, and “they didn’t come fix it for almost two weeks, and that was after I called the city on them.”
A tenant in The Hill who prefers to stay anonymous grew up living in a Mandy Management apartment from 2014 to the present, and had a rodent infestation, a sinkhole in the ground, and “birds nesting in the ceiling.” They also had sewage in the basement that pooled.
Emma’s wall collapsed after a storm.
The sewage flooding in The Hill tenant’s basement, which began in April 2023 and continues today.
Most of the money behind Mandy Management comes from “Israeli funds,” including their parent company NETZ, which was previously publicly traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. Mandy Management shared with the New Haven Independent that, “our investors are happy with the returns that we’ve generated over the last 25 years.”
East Rock Real Estate and Management, Neighbourgood, & Nohu LLC
Tenants of East Rock Real Estate and Management have recently had rising rents and poor communication with property managers. This year, Neighbourgood took over as the management company for many East Rock Real Estate and Management apartments, which all of the cases below cite as their current property managers. As of August 26, 2026, all 35 of Neighbourgood’s New Haven properties are also East Rock Real Estate and Management properties. Neighbourgood is based in Cape Town, South Africa.
This year, a bathroom fell through the floor of an East Rock Real Estate and Management and Neighbourgood 784 Orange Street property, despite half a decade of annual rent increases. A second-floor resident who lived in their property from 2021 to 2025 said the rent was raised $100 per year. During that time, the maintenance staff disappeared and a fire alarm control panel, displaying warnings of faulty wiring, was left to ring day and night for years. In 2025, the landlord attempted to raise rent by $600, from $2,400 to $3,000. When those tenants moved out, havoc ensued, as documented in a June public hearing.
Major construction and remodeling began at 784 Orange Street while tenants continued to occupy the building. The work caused persistent and worsening interference with habitability, safety, and access to basic services. Tenants faced excessive noise and vibration, dust contamination, construction debris in common areas, blocked exits, loss of heat and water, unusable laundry facilities, gas-related hazards, and unauthorized or improper access to the apartment. In February 2026, Neighbourgood became the property representative for 784 Orange Street. Despite repeated complaints to the landlord and Neighbourgood property representative who said they would “mediate” between the tenant and manager of East Rock Real Estate and Management, the conditions continued for months with no meaningful response. Then in June 2026, a bathroom in the second-floor apartment fell into the unit below. East Rock Real Estate and Management was slow to respond and said they would find the first-floor tenants a new place, but never did.
Aftermath of the bathroom falling through to the first floor.
Particulate matter from construction went into the 784 Orange Street apartment.
Nails and other sharp construction debris were present in common areas of 784 Orange Street.
Another East Rock Management-owned apartment also experienced ceiling issues while they lived in the apartment between August 2024 and July 2026. Last year, their bedroom closet flooded with water from the above unit, which ruined many of their clothes. They described the number of issues in the place as “comical,” including wasps in the sunroom, multiple growing water stains on the ceiling, mice, and broken fluorescent lighting. When they moved into the apartment, they had unfinished kitchen cabinets in the back. Although a maintenance contractor came to fix it, they then had a mice problem in the same cabinets. They said their Neighbourgood representative was “impossible” to get in touch with about maintenance issues.
On the first day a Neighbourgood tenant moved in (who signed a lease with the name Nohu LLC, a holding company for East Rock landlord Albert Annunziata), they found debris all over the floor, a broken window, duct-taped window sills, no recycling bin, a broken fridge, and an unusable shower head, as well as issues Neighbourgood agreed to fix by move-in but did not, including a mailbox that does not lock, an AC filter caked with dust, moldy blinds, and an unfinished bathtub.
The tenant reported these issues to the property manager, who either ignored them or took days to respond. When the tenant submitted a maintenance request for chipped paint, the landlord sent a contractor who oversees at least 14 other Neighbourgood/East Rock Real Estate and Management properties. Still, the contractor did not properly cover the chipped paint. In the process, they also cut the WiFi cable, which the tenants went without for two weeks. The property manager did not fix the broken cable, and the tenant had to call and schedule the internet provider to come fix. They also painted their window shut, which, after reporting to the property manager, he “fixed” by taking a crowbar to the window to open it. Neighbourgood has cited the tenant’s broken back door and large holes exposing old plaster in the entryway as cosmetic and “wear and tear.”
The bedroom on the day they moved in
A hole in the shared entryway deemed “wear and tear” and cosmetic issues by Neighbourgood
Pike International
Pike International has a history of absent property managers. In 2013, after more than a month of smell complaints, Pike removed a decaying corpse underneath a Park Street apartment.
Last year, a tenant of 1447 Chapel St, was going to have his rent increased by $350 per month. He brought the case to the Fair Rent Commission, arguing against the increase after the tenant's apartment went without heat for over a week and his ceiling fell in, blocking his bathroom for four days.
In 2022, a tenants union formed in Quinnipiac Meadows, after 43 renters demanded management address "vermin, broken kitchen appliances, mold, and water damage,” before they continue to increase the rent.
In 2019, Newhallville Alder Delphine Clyburn cited Pike International as a significant contributor to the poor living conditions for her neighborhood. “You wouldn’t believe the mountain of money these landlords get from our government, and they’re not willing to do anything.”
Hammock Home Management
One of the issues cited by the CT Tenants Union
There is former staff overlap between Ocean Management and Hammock Home Management. Tenants across their properties deal with major pest infestations, including mushrooms growing on the walls, without response from the company. The Connecticut Tenants Union picketed outside Hammock in 2024, and have continued advocating for safer housing for tenants, as many currently deal with winters without proper heating, untreated mold, broken windows, all while they continue to raise the rent.
This year, there have been two major protests outside of Hammock Home Management offices, one of which was visited by Mayor Elicker. Tenants reported that the building has maintenance and appliance concerns, including infestation of “mold, mice, and roaches.” Tenants also reported “verbal warnings of rent increases, somewhere between $100 and $200 a month.”
Olive & Wooster (Adam America Real Estate, EPIMONI, and B.HOM)
The Mayor Elicker-celebrated Olive & Wooster apartments have racked up many issues from their negligence.
A tenant named Beto has been documenting his journey on the New Haven Reddit, which includes cockroaches, elevators going down, and garbage buildup in public spaces.
Last year, Olive & Wooster was cited for running “collective” rentals, which is considered an illegal rooming house.
One tenant who asked to go by Alex, lived in Olive & Wooster apartments in 2023. He had had his packages stolen from the delivery room and dealt with fire alarms going off “randomly” throughout the night. “The cost of rent greatly outweighed the value of the apartment and any of the marketed amenities,” said the tenant. For their one-bedroom apartment, he paid $2,150 a month excluding utilities and parking. “Living there was one of the worst financial decisions I’ve made in my life.”
None of the companies that run Olive & Wooster are based in the New Haven Area.
Garbage bags left on the floor at Olive & Wooster
Garbage bags left on the floor at Olive & Wooster
Open cases left by Beto
Jianchao Xu
The landlord Jianchao Xu was responsible for more than a dozen fires at his properties over the last decade, one of which was fatal. In 2024, he tried to block Livable City Initiative from investigating his property. In just one week this past March, city inspectors found more than 50 housing code violations at eight of his properties.
A 2025 fire from Jianchao Xu on 126 Sheffield Avenue in Newhallville. Credit: Thomas Breen, New Haven Independent
The city has now revoked all of Xu’s local rental licenses while he is in housing court. This was the most extraordinary action that the city took against a landlord on this list – but only after multiple fires destroyed homes, including one on Avon Street earlier this year. This “extraordinary” action, however, should be the bare minimum standard given the extreme neglect for Jianchao Xu.
What will it take for negligent landlords to be fully accountable for the havoc they wreak on New Haven?
Notes:
Many thanks to the Connecticut Tenants Union for their help in this story. If you are dealing with dangerous living conditions, they welcome reaching out to their organization for support and information about your rights.
The Fair Rent Commission and Livable City Initiative provide critical services to help tenants’ rights.
New Haven Rising has a petition to stop slumlords “from listing apartments on Airbnb to make more money while there's less housing for people who actually live here.”
