‘Everyone is affected’, family cries after letter in the post orders them to leave home – ‘grace period’ ends in 4 days

DOZENS of families are scrambling to find new homes just days before they have to vacate their apartment complex after the land it sits on was sold to another owner.

Ivy Residents Court in Groton, Connecticut — about 50 miles east of New Haven — were shocked to receive notices last month that their leases would not be renewed.

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But they were shocked to learn they only had 30 days to vacate the premises and find new homes.

Now, this grace period will end on Tuesday.

Up Reality, a New York-based real estate agency with offices in Connecticut, purchased the land where they lived earlier this year.

Residents immediately complained that a month was not enough time to find affordable housing in the area or to change their lives by moving to another neighborhood.

Some Ivy Court residents have lived there for several years and took to the streets to protest the move, according to the local Tegna affiliate. WTIC.

“Each of these houses in Ivy Court has three or four children, they have elderly people, people in their sixties and seventies, people from eight to 80 years old, they are all affected,” resident Gregory Edwards told reporters.

Another local woman described the panic she felt when she received the notification.

“Of course we were nervous, like, where am I going? We’ve been here eight years, my kids go to the Groton school system, and we were in shock,” Fatiema Alers said.

She said she has been struggling to find another home in the area for herself and her children in recent weeks.

“Groton needs affordable housing. There is none. In the search of these last few weeks, there are none,” she said.

MISSING AFFORDABLE HOUSING

Local officials agreed that affordable housing is a problem in the area.

“We’re looking at ways the city can maybe enact an ordinance,” Groton Councilwoman Portia Bordelon said.

She said residents should be able to wait at least 90 days’ notice to vacate, because less time “to find affordable housing, when there isn’t any, is not enough time,” she said.

And many tenant advocates agree.

They say affordable housing deserts are most likely to affect people of color and low-income residents.

“We’ve seen this in other parts of the country and now it’s really coming back to Connecticut, a process of gentrification where, you know, historically black and brown neighborhoods are being displaced,” said Luke Melonakos-Harrison, vice president of the Connecticut Tenants Union .