Jeryl Curtis sat in his car with the air conditioning on while working on a crossword puzzle when three police cars surrounded him.
It was a hot summer day in July, and Curtis watched his girlfriend’s son as he played on the playground at Friedman Court apartment complex off Manchester Street.
Mulling over the crossword clues from the seat of his car at the playground was a typical activity for Curtis. His granddaughters visited him often – while they played on the swing set and climbing ladders, he worked across and down to fill out his newspaper puzzle.
But on this afternoon someone called the police to report a “suspicious person” at the playground, according to police records.
Curtis is no stranger at Friedman Court. He’s lived there for almost a decade – in a two-bedroom, one-bath apartment – that’s managed by CATCH Neighborhood Housing, a local non-profit that builds affordable apartments in the Concord area.
He knows his neighbors, and they know him. For one of them, he presumes, to call the cops on him, a 61-year-old Black man and report him as a suspicious stranger next to his own home, is a high-stakes attack, he said.
“If I would have made the wrong move, I could have gotten shot,” he said. “That is dangerous. And it’s dangerous to do to somebody.”
It’s not the first time Curtis feels he’s been the recipient of racially motivated aggression from neighbors. He’s filed multiple complaints that have fallen on deaf ears, he said.
But Alliance Asset Management, the company that oversees CATCH Housing, said it has taken his complaints seriously.
“When it gets to the level of Mr. Curtis’s allegations that someone’s using the N-word towards him, that is absolutely something that the policy says that Alliance will look into and in fact did look into in this case,” said Brian Shaughnessy, the attorney for the property management company.
For Curtis, this is only true as of late. He recently penned a letter to the Monitor, CATCH properties and others, detailing his experience. Now he knows he’s caught their attention.
But these problems have persisted for three years with no response.
For cases like Curtis’, it is a balancing act of addressing the needs of one resident, without unnecessarily harming another.
Now CATCH says they’re caught in the middle. With a tight rental market, pulling someone from their home with an eviction means it might take months for them to find a new one. Yet at the same time, for residents to say their civil rights are violated on the property holds serious weight.
Curtis remembers the day he moved into Friedman Court, an apartment complex with a series of gray shingled buildings. He had just sat down on the couch for the first time all day after hauling boxes when his upstairs neighbor accused him of stealing her Xbox.
“Instantly, ‘The Black guy did it’,” he said, about the neighbors immediate response to his arrival in the neighborhood.
Curtis has continued to have issues with neighbors here and there. But when one resident in particular moved in three years ago, it created an ongoing dispute since.
“I’ve always tried to be a good neighbor. And I know I’m different. I like being different. I like who I am. I like how I deal with people,” he said. “But some people you can’t deal with. I know that some people are just horrible.”
This neighbor did not respond to an interview request from the Monitor.
He said he has been called a racist slur repeatedly by her young kids. She has told new residents to avoid him, he said. She approached his granddaughter, telling her to avoid Curtis, not knowing they were related.
Now his granddaughter is afraid to visit, he said.
This unwanted dispute between neighbors has metamorphosed into a larger issue, Curtis said. It is a violation of his civil rights, and he’s contacted an attorney about a lawsuit.
His letter provides the repeated history of his time at Friedman Court.
“When I first moved into CATCH housing, I was a single father of two and was given a Section 8 voucher, which I still have today. I have been dealing with depression for a number of years, and CATCH and its management have completely pushed me into a corner,” the letter read. “I defend myself, I’m wrong and if I continue to take this abuse it won’t be good either. … I don’t feel safe here.”
Writing the letter is the first time he feels CATCH has taken his case seriously.
Curtis’ claims hold legal grounds for evicting the antagonists. But doing so requires building a case to remove another tenant based on a specific lease violation. It’s a “for cause” eviction, that must be supported by significant evidence and defended in front of a judge.
“One of the more difficult evictions to have, especially in federally subsidized properties, is an eviction for cause, because an eviction is a trial,” said Shaughnessy. “When you have a he-said-she-said between battling neighbors, it becomes very difficult.”
With any formal complaint filed with CATCH, the property manager begins an investigation into the incident.
After Curtis’ letter, a formal notice was sent to all tenants in the property that discrimination would not be tolerated in the neighborhood. In fact, it is a formal stipulation of the lease that tenants signed, and discriminating against a neighbor could result in a violation.
Lease violation notices were also sent to specific neighbors.
But after reviewing Curtis’ complaints and talking to other residents and witnesses, Shaughnessy said “we couldn’t really determine any racial motivation for any of these disputes.”
Curtis has witnesses. Neighbors, he said, have publicly called him racist slurs on the property.
“There are a number of people who have heard them do that,” he said. “If a person calls me a n*****, it shows me how ignorant they are. When someone says, ‘Hey, that doesn’t matter if they did or not; we can’t prove it.’ If they would have taken three years of complaints more seriously, the problem would have ended 2½ years ago.”
What comes next is complicated. With the current rental vacancy rate in Merrimack County sitting at 0.3%, removing someone from their home means they are unlikely to find another.
Curtis doesn’t want to have tenants evicted. He just wants them to stop, he said.
Property managers say they have tried to offered him solutions – like moving to a new apartment complex owned by the company or participating in a formal mediation session with one neighbor who he says is the source of his problems.
He’s declined both options.
The apartment they offered him was right down the street, he said. It would not solve the problem. And mediation was also never an option, from his recollection.
“That is a lie,” he said. “They never offered me mediation. Mediation in the beginning would have probably helped. But it was never offered. It hasn’t been offered yet. I have been living with this for three years.”
Evicting a tenant may also disqualify them from qualifying for future federal rental assistance – which could lead to further legal entanglements.
“The stakes are pretty high,” Shaughnessy said. “The management company has to make sure that the file is well documented, you cross your T’s and dot your I’s because any tenant can either make a phone call and get a free attorney or call HUD and make a complaint for discrimination.”
Shaughnessy also said Curtis’ file includes tenants who have also issued formal complaints against him.
“This is the most difficult part of being a manager, when you have a complaining person, sometimes you’re just a cranky person. How do you determine whether their complaints are founded enough? Because oftentimes, a tenant that doesn’t like another tenant just wants to get them in trouble,” he said.
Jennifer Hawkins, the director of operations for Alliance Asset Management, feels there’s not much more the company can do.
“I feel like, as a management company, we have stepped in and done pretty much everything we can in our power,” she said. “We are trying to resolve the issues and giving Mr. Curtis other options. So I do feel like we are trying to help him in this situation.”
For Curtis, these solutions are too little, too late.
“Nothing happened until I actually sent that writ out. It took that letter for them to actually act, to actually do something. It took that letter,” he said. “They didn’t do anything until they realized that somebody might be suing.”
For the time being, neither neighbor is leaving. From the property management perspective, they can continue to collect evidence to build a case, filing lease violations if needed.
But Curtis says he just wants the neighbor to stop – whether that happens on her own volition, or as a result of court trial.
“I’m Black in New Hampshire. Of course I am going to face racism every day. To have somebody that lives next door to you, constantly calling you a n*****… to live with that is not a good thing,” he said. “I just need it to stop.”