say WHAT???????????????

i'm telling you the courant better hold on tight to hele ubinas. she's one HELL of a reporter or columnist

A Blight On Housing Director's Record
Helen Ubiñas
City officials have offered lots of reasons why they can't seem to get a longtime housing official I've written about to fix up her neglected property and pay hundreds of dollars in outstanding fines and penalties.

Weak blight laws. Weaker enforcement. Just plain arrogance.

Well, here's another: It's sort of hard to come down on delinquent property owners when Hartford's housing director owns a blighted house.That's right — turns out Yasha Escalera, one-time deputy commissioner of the state's former housing department and now Hartford's $103,000-a-year director of housing and property management, owns his very own eyesore at 39 Allen Place.

Not two years after the city pretty much gave the property to Dresca Construction, of which Escalera is part owner, the city was back putting a lien against it and billing him more than $3,600 for emergency rubbish and debris cleanup.

Over the years, a number of departments have cited the property, and in 2007, the Department of Development Services, the very department for which Escalera now works, sent him a notice of violation for the property, calling it a "menace to the public health" that is "seriously depreciating property values in the neighborhood."............