Dozens of Revere residents are still trying to find permanent homes weeks after a fire at a Revere high-rise apartment building as the city puts pressure on the owners to help their tenants.
Mayor Brian Arrigo says the Connecticut-based owner, Carabetta Companies, has been dragging its heels on helping the 103 people displaced by the fire at 370 Ocean Ave.
“It’s just wild, you know? You’re, like, pulling your hair out. It’s just, ‘Geez, just work with us a little bit,’” Arrigo said. “The trauma that this kind of dislocation creates for people. It’s really frustrating. And the willful ignorance of Carabetta to just ignore what is going on in people’s lives right now. It’s criminal, in my mind.”
The fire broke out on an apartment’s deck on June 21. There were no serious injuries, but according to the city’s lawsuit, the building has significant structural and water damage.
Revere’s efforts to compel the owner to take action, so far, have had limited success. First, the city demanded each unit receive a state-mandated relocation fee of up to $750. Arrigo said the owner has yet to help people get their payments, but the city itself gave many tenants the money out of a pool of federal pandemic relief funds. Two weeks after the fire, Revere condemned the building as unfit for habitation. And last week, the city took the owners to court in an effort to take over the building and make repairs.
But it lost its bid Wednesday to put the Water’s Edge Apartments into receivership. Arrigo said he was “appalled” by that decision. But he added that a Boston Housing Court judge did refer the city and Carabetta to mediation, where they met to discuss finding a mutually agreed-upon contractor to start repairing the building.
Yvgeniy Pavlukhin, one of the Water’s Edge tenants, told GBH News he’s had to spend $10,000 in the last month in rent and hotel rooms, eating out and parking two cars for him and his fiancee. He says their normal rent and parking is $2,500.
Pavlukhin said Carabetta posted a notice at their local management office with the name and number of an insurance company adjuster who would handle claims.
“I tried to call multiple times almost every day, and left multiple voicemails,” Pavlukhin said. “And I get nothing from him.”
He said he was then given an email for an adjuster, which did not work.
“We have no direct contact with anybody to give us a reasonable timeline, or at least … some kind of a list of what’s happening,” Pavlukhin said. “The most horrible thing that’s happening right now, is that we are hanging in the middle and we don't know what’s going to happen next.”
Carabetta did not return requests for comment.
Arrigo said the scope of repairs to 370 Ocean Ave. is extensive. It involves water and fire damage, including some units that need to be completely demolished, repairs to the fire suppression system and the fire alarm system, mold remediation, charring on the outside of the building and wooden decks on the outside of some apartments that must be removed or replaced since they are in violation of current building codes.
The mayor said the issues with Carabetta do not stop with the fire. The company owes the city $1.9 million dollars in taxes for three Revere properties, including the condemned building on Ocean Avenue.
He also said the city has issued more than 70 fines to the company since 2004. One of those fines was from 2018, Arrigo said, when elevators stopped functioning in several Revere buildings the company operates, and Carabetta had left tenants to walk as much as 18 flights to their apartments.
Arrigo said the city and Carabetta are due back in court August 10 to report back on any progress made on repairing the damaged high-rise.
“There are a lot of people that would just want to go back to their unit, and I can't blame them, you know, that’s your home,” Arrigo said. “We want to make sure that the building is safe for them to do that. ... And we want to hold Carabetta accountable to providing that, because, at a very bare minimum, for the people that are paying rent and putting their hard-earned money into the pockets of the Carabettas, they should have a safe and clean place to live.”
