A 2022 fire in Watertown fire claimed the life of Joshua DeJesus. Was the building he was renting, owned by the father of a state representative, up to code?
WSHU’s Ebong Udoma spoke with CT Mirror’s Ginny Monk to discuss her article written with Dave Altimari, “A fatal fire, an illegal apartment and a closed investigation,” as part of the collaborative podcast Long Story Short.
WSHU: Hello, Ginny. Did you decide to do a deep dive into the house fire in Watertown that happened in January 2022 because of who the landlord is, Guiseppe Polletta, the father of Republican State Rep. Joe Polletta of Watertown?
GM: That was certainly part of it. My colleague, Dave Altimari, had reviewed some of the documents and we chatted about the political significance of this story and Joe Polletta and his role in the state legislature. He's sort of set himself up as a defender of landlord rights and spoken pretty strongly against some of the bills that would offer more protections to tenants. He's often in partnership in business, not in this instance, but often in partnership with his father in their landlording and talks a lot about good and bad landlords. So we thought it was relevant to say, 'hey, you talk a lot about how many landlords are good landlords, do you think that this is an example of good landlording?'
WSHU: Now, could you just tell us a little bit more about what exactly happened in this house fire that resulted in the death of Joshua DeJesus?
GM: Yeah. So some key questions have not yet been answered. But we know that there was just one method of egress. So only one way for him to exit the apartment. There's sort of some debate about where exactly he was; whether the fire started and then he went out onto the patio and tried to jump to get away, whether the porch collapsed and he was standing on it, or Polleta’s attorney has argued that, because he did not have certain injuries such as fractures in his legs, that he had been outside the apartment when the fire started.
WSHU: Now, let's talk about the apartment. This is an illegal apartment. There wasn't supposed to be an extra apartment in that building. Is that the case?
GM: That's correct. So, it was initially supposed to be a two-family apartment building with a family on the first floor and a family on the second. Guiseppe did some work to create the third apartment up in the attic without the proper city permits and in violation of building and fire codes.
WSHU: Now, talking about fire codes, what was the situation as far as getting out? Was there a second way of getting out of the apartment?
GM: There was not. There was just one set of stairs.
WSHU: And there was a door that was permanently bolted?
GM: Yes, that door had been sealed when the apartment was created as best we can tell. So it wasn't an option for a way to get out.
WSHU: What was the fire marshal's investigation? What did it mean? What was the result of that?
GM: The fire marshal asked state police to look into the incident. They did some work investigating how the fire started, and pretty immediately, the fire marshal was questioning, hey, is this an illegal apartment? There's some code violations here. We need to look into this.
WSHU: Now what has been Polletta’s role on the Housing Committee in this past session? What issues did he take up?
GM: So in this past session he again spoke out for landlord rights as he's done many years in the past. At the time of the fire, he actually was the ranking member of the Housing Committee, meaning that he was in a position of leadership for the Republican Party on housing issues.
WSHU: Now, there's been a big tenant movement this past year. And tenants have accused landlords of all sorts of things. What has been Polletta's stance on this? Because he's been defending landlords.
GM: Yeah. So he has largely said, you know, it's just a few bad apples, largely out-of-state landlords, who are providing these bad conditions to people. And he said, you know, we need to hold those people accountable, but we need to protect the rights of what he calls “mom and pop landlords" to smaller, not corporate landlords like himself, like his father.
WSHU: So how does he defend the situation that happened with his father? They ended up having to settle with the deceased family, right?
GM: Right. Yeah. So, initially I chatted with him for a moment about the issue. And he wound up sending over a statement in response to a list of questions we'd sent him and sort of distancing himself from the issue saying, I'm not a part of this property, and that he believes his own experience as a landlord has helped him make decisions in the state legislature, which is another question that housing activists and tenant activists had been raising for the past couple of sessions, like, how does being a landlord change the way someone thinks about landlord-tenant relationships?
WSHU: Now, talking about that, there was a pretty big bill to session that the tenants had pushed. Did he vote for the bill? And if he didn't vote for the bill, what was his reason for not voting for the bill?
GM: Yeah, so there were two particular bills that Polletta spoke up against this session. He actually was brought out to talk with reporters by a Republican Party spokesperson. So, the two bills, one of which would limit landlords' ability to look back at criminal histories when they're deciding who to rent to. The other was an eviction protection bill that would have largely ended evictions when leases expire. So those are called lapse-of-time evictions. And he spoke out against those, saying they would be harmful to landlords, and that ultimately, it would wind up in more costs and more burden being passed down to tenants.
WSHU: Okay, and did the bills make it?
GM: They did not.
WSHU: So the tenants groups are holding people like Polletta responsible for the fact that these bills have not been able to make it.
GM: That's certainly part of the reason. Polletta and a couple of other Republicans in the House had been outspoken on this issue. Of course, there we saw a little bit of division within the Democratic Party, particularly on the eviction bill as well. So you can't tie the whole thing to Republicans, but they definitely play a part.
WSHU: But your deep dive into this brought out a little bit of some vested interests involved with some of the members of the committee.
GM: Correct. Particularly when Polletta was ranking member of housing, there was a bill to require that landlords offer tenants walkthroughs with a checklist to say this is wrong with the building. This is wrong. This is wrong. Can we get these things fixed before they sign a lease? Polletta spoke out against that bill. He voted against that bill. The goal was to offer tenants more protection against bad housing conditions.
