An illegal apartment discovered in the fall by the town’s Public Health Division is unusual for Needham, said assistant director of public health Tara Gurge and environmental health agent Sai Palani.Â
On Oct. 28, Palani received a complaint about mice from tenants renting a unit in a two-family home on Riverside Street. When performing a routine inspection in response to the complaint, Palani found a third, unlisted unit.
“We went down into the basement, and then I realized there was another unit down there,” he said. “And that unit was not secured, obviously, because other tenants could go down there and access their oil tanks.”
Palani requested access from owners and occupants — whose names have not been shared publicly — for a formal inspection Dec. 2. In a joint inspection with the building commissioner and fire inspectors, all agreed the unit was uninhabitable.
A constable delivered orders to correct, condemn and vacate two days later.
“This letter is to inform you that our office has considered the conditions in the dwelling are so unsafe and dangerous to life or health of the occupant(s) that this dwelling will be immediately condemned without need of a hearing (105 CMR 410.650(E)),” Palani wrote, referencing the basement apartment. “The unit must be vacated and remain unoccupied until the Needham Board of Health deems the unit safe for human habitation and/or the unit is demolished to not allow this residence to exist any longer and to be used for habitation.”
Palani returned the following Monday to ensure the occupants had left and locks had been changed to prevent reentry into the unit.
“It’s potentially an unsafe environment,” he said. “If there’s ever, God forbid, a fire there, and there isn’t a second exit, there could be an issue there. So we wanted to get them out of there as fast as possible, and then also to start the demolition of the unit so this doesn’t reoccur again.”
Conditions cited included lack of a second exit, lack of handrails on stairways, inability to secure the unit from illegal entry and a floor-to-ceiling height less than 7 feet for more than three-quarters of the total floor area. The emergency declaration of a dwelling unfit for human habitation was brought before the Board of Health in their most recent meeting on Dec. 19.
“We don’t want to have anyone be homeless, right?” Palani said. “So, yeah, the Board was very understanding about it, and was willing to work with the owner to make it a habitable unit.”
A prior illegal unit in the same space was discovered in the aftermath of a fire. It was ordered to be demolished by the Building Department in September 2002. A permit was pulled and the tenant vacated at the owner’s expense, but no records exist to confirm inspections were carried out post-demolition.
Current owners told Palani the unit was demolished and rebuilt by a family member who resided there. Once that family member moved, the unit was once again rented out.
Palani believes the most recent tenants had lived there less than a year. Both tenants and owners were cooperative during the course of inspections, he said.
“It’s kind of an uncomfortable situation, obviously, and we try to give them as much time and space to handle that,” said Palani.
The unit owner is covering costs of the tenant’s stay in a local hotel, as required by state law, in addition to a moving truck, services and storage for their belongings until they find permanent housing. The main entrance to the basement unit has been placarded and demolition permits have been filed with the Building Department to begin reverting the illegal unit back to a basement.
This is the first illegal unit Palani has encountered in his two-and-a-half years in Needham, and only the second that Gurge has encountered in her 20-plus years working for the town.
“I can only recall one other one that I did as a health agent when I started (in) 2000,” said Gurge. “So it’s very rare. It’s very rare that we would come upon an illegal unit that’s not habitable.”
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