Weeks after suing over the Foundry District Lofts' affordable-unit shortfall, the Lowertown Tenant Alliance is back in court, this time against a different Foundry Row developer it says has left qualifying tenants waiting years for units that were promised on opening day.
The Lowertown Tenant Alliance filed a second lawsuit this week over an alleged affordable-housing shortfall, this time against Baldric Residential, the developer behind the 96-unit Cotter Street Commons apartment building in Foundry Row, arguing the company has repeated a pattern the group first challenged in its ongoing case against Millrace Development Partners.
The new suit, filed in Wentworth County Superior Court on behalf of four Cotter Street Commons applicants and the tenant alliance itself, alleges Baldric Residential’s 2022 redevelopment agreement required 17 income-restricted units, but that only five have ever been leased at qualifying rents in the nearly two years since the building opened.
A second case, the alliance says, is not a coincidence
“We didn’t go looking for a second lawsuit,” said Denise Okonkwo-Marsh, the alliance’s lead organizer and a plaintiff in both cases. “We went looking for one building’s compliance records after the Foundry District Lofts case got attention, and people started calling us about their own experiences elsewhere. This is what came of following up on those calls.”
Okonkwo-Marsh said the alliance has now reviewed compliance records for six Foundry Row developments built under the city’s affordable-housing redevelopment framework and found what she described as “significant gaps” at three of them, though she said Cotter Street Commons presented the clearest documentation to support a legal claim.
Baldric Residential did not respond to requests for comment on the specific allegations. In a written statement, a company spokesperson said Baldric “takes its commitments to the city seriously” and would “respond to the claims through the appropriate legal process,” declining to address the five-out-of-17 unit figure cited in the complaint.
I applied for one of the income-restricted units at Cotter Street Commons the week it opened. Two years later, I’m still on what they call a waiting list, except nobody from that waiting list seems to ever get called.
Byron Okafor-Lane, plaintiff and Foundry Row apartment applicant
Byron Okafor-Lane, one of the named plaintiffs, said he applied for an income-restricted unit at Cotter Street Commons when it opened and was told he qualified, but has never received an offer despite following up multiple times. “At some point you start to wonder if the waiting list is even real, or if it’s just something they tell people to keep the complaints quiet,” Okafor-Lane said.
City says it is reviewing its enforcement tools
City Council Member Aisha Muhammad, who chairs the housing committee and has pushed for tighter compliance language on new redevelopment agreements, said the second lawsuit strengthens her case for a citywide affordable-unit compliance audit, an idea her committee has discussed informally but not yet brought to a formal vote.
“One lawsuit could be an isolated dispute,” Muhammad said. “Two lawsuits against two different developers, both alleging the same basic pattern, tells me we have a structural enforcement problem, not just a bad-actor problem. The city needs its own compliance checks instead of waiting for tenants to sue.”
City Manager Marcus Whitfield’s office said the housing department is drafting a proposal for annual compliance reporting requirements on all redevelopment agreements signed since the framework was adopted, though a spokesperson cautioned the proposal is still in early stages and would need council approval.
- Cotter Street Commons: 96 total units, 17 required income-restricted, 5 currently leased at qualifying rents
- Six Foundry Row developments reviewed by the tenant alliance; three flagged for potential compliance gaps
- A citywide compliance audit proposal is being drafted by the city’s housing department
Aaron Kessler, the spokesman for Millrace Development Partners who has publicly disputed the tenants’ claims in the Foundry District Lofts case, said he could not speak to Baldric’s situation but noted that phased compliance timelines are common in multi-year developments and are not necessarily evidence of bad faith. “Every project’s math looks different depending on when you check it,” Kessler said, declining to comment further on a case involving a different company.
Okonkwo-Marsh said the alliance plans to continue reviewing records at the remaining Foundry Row developments it has flagged and has not ruled out additional legal action. “We’d rather these companies just fix the problem without us having to sue every single one of them individually,” she said. “But if that’s what it takes, we’ve clearly got the appetite for it now.”
A hearing date for the Cotter Street Commons case had not been set as of this week. Muhammad said her committee intends to take up the compliance-audit proposal at its next scheduled meeting, regardless of how the litigation proceeds.