Oak Bluffs house owner cited for numerous code violations

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Oak Bluffs officials found numerous health and building code violations at this house at 98 Pennsylvania Avenue. — Barry Stringfellow

Last Tuesday, acting on a citizen complaint, Oak Bluffs health agent Ade Solarin, accompanied by fire chief John Rose and building inspector Mark Barbadoro, inspected 98 Pennsylvania Avenue, and found signs of crowded conditions in a house rife with fire and health code violations.

The four-bedroom, 1.5-bath, cedar-shingled one-and-a-half-story house sits tucked away on a leafy suburban street off County Road, where dirt roads are common and road signs are not. The owner is Lisa Kusinitz of Tiverton, R.I. Ms. Kusinitz is the widow of Stewart Kusinitz, who owned the defunct Smoke ’n’ Bones restaurant and had real estate holdings in Oak Bluffs and in Edgartown, now held in a trust bearing his name.

“The dwelling contains violations that may endanger the health and safety of the occupants,” Mr. Solarin said in a five-page certified letter dated Sept. 15 sent to Ms. Kusinitz.

Mr. Solarin outlined 10 health code violations. Underscoring the urgency of the situation, Mr. Solarin stated that eight of the 10 violations, including a failing septic system, absence of smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, exposed wiring, and “inadequate means of egress and egress obstruction in basement,” described as a two-bedroom apartment with working kitchen, needed to be remedied within 24 hours of receiving the certified letter. As of Wednesday, the return receipt from Ms. Kusinitz had not been received by the health agent’s office.

Troubling situation

“It was not a tenable living situation,” Mr. Barbadoro said. “It was troubling, to say the least.”

Mr. Barbadoro said that just about every room in the 1,300-square-foot house had a bed; some had two beds. “To be fair, a lot of houses on the Vineyard are a house full of bedrooms,” he said.

Mr. Barbadoro expressed particular concern about the basement apartment, which appears to be non-permitted. “A search of both the building and assessor’s records indicate that the basement was only permitted as unfinished,” he said. “Unless evidence is provided that a permit was given, they need to get a demolition permit to remove it. The house is old enough so they could possibly get a permit to rebuild, assuming the septic has been replaced. But for now, I want everything gone — the two-by-fours, the drywall, the wiring. I’m not trying to hurt people. But right now you have no windows, a full kitchen, exposed wiring, and only one point of egress. That is not safe. I don’t want people to die if there’s no way out of that basement.”

Mr. Barbadoro said that the three adult occupants that were present at the midday inspection said they were related to one another: “I don’t know if they were trying to get around the boardinghouse rule, but that’s what they said.”

According to Oak Bluffs town bylaws, renting rooms and/or furnishing of board to four or more unrelated persons is deemed operating a boardinghouse. Massachusetts state law defines related as “within second degree of kindred.”

“Even if everyone is related, sanitation code is still a big issue,” Mr. Barbadoro said.

“Because there’s so many people in the house, the septic couldn’t handle it,” Mr. Barbadoro said. “They were pouring muriatic acid in it to dissolve the sludge that was causing the backup, but the chemical reaction plumes the vapors into the air and makes the odor much worse.”

Neighbors took notice

A neighborhood resident who declined to give his identity told The Times that problems with the house have been escalating for years.

“The smell this summer was horrible,” he said. “Someone was pumping the septic tank into the woods with a sump pump hooked to a garden hose. I was walking my dog, and he rolled on something on their lawn that I thought was a dead animal, but it turned out to be human sewage. I try to be a live-and-let-live person, but that crossed the line. They have kids living there, playing in that yard, playing in raw sewage.”

He estimated 18 people were living at the house. “This summer they had people living in a tent in the backyard. There are a lot of cars coming and going. The people that live there are good guys, they were never aggressive. But this is not tolerable.”

At the Sept. 13 meeting of the Oak Bluffs selectmen, Burt Combra, a former Oak Bluffs selectman, member of the board of health, and town highway superintendent, spoke publicly about deficiencies in the town’s zoning-inspection process.

“This has been going on way too long. It’s always been a problem,” Mr. Combra, a Pennsylvania Avenue resident, told The Times. “I built that house 30 years ago. It’s the same septic system. You can’t put 20 people in there. The raw sewage in the yard, it’s ridiculous. I worry about the kids living there.”

Mr. Barbadoro said this is an increasingly common scenario in Oak Bluffs. “I’m buried in boardinghouse complaints,” he said. “I have one that says 22 people are living in a house. It’s tough, because there’s such a need for housing. This is about how we make sure people are living safely.”

Oak Bluffs health inspector Ade Solarin did not respond to a request from The Times for copies of the photos that accompanied his report. In a brief conversation with The Times, Mr. Solarin said, “We have a housing crisis. It’s been going on for decades. Until the towns can get together and find a solution to the problem, it’s always going to happen.”

Owner ‘was unaware’

“The current tenant has been leasing the property for many years, happily,” Tisbury-based attorney Erik Hammarlund, who represents Ms. Kusinitz, told The Times on Tuesday. “It would be incorrect to attribute [the violations] to my client. She has received no requests from the tenant to address any of those issues. She was completely unaware of it until the inspection.”

The board of health letter did not identify the tenant by name.

Mr. Hammarlund said Ms. Kusinitz acted “instantly” to remedy the violations once she learned about them.

“I’ve spoken to my client every single day since she got that letter,” he said. “She has done every request which has been made to her by the tenant or the building inspector relating to the matter.” Mr. Hammarlund said the septic was pumped, an electrician had been contacted, smoke alarms had been installed, and receipts for that and other work were being sent to the health agent’s office.

In a telephone call Wednesday, board of health office administrative assistant Alexandra Kral said the receipts had not been received.

Mr. Hammarlund said Massachusetts state law does not allow a landlord to inspect a rental property unless invited by the tenant. “So if the tenant isn’t asking you to do anything, there’s not a whole lot you can actually do,” he said. “You can’t as a landlord go in and stomp around your tenant’s back yard.”

Mr. Hammarlund said that Ms. Kusinitz had never been contacted by anyone in the neighborhood about the issues.

A request by The Times to speak directly with Ms. Kusinitz, made through Mr. Hammarlund, brought no response as of late Wednesday.