Debbie Hill complained to the housing authority months ago that her kitchen ceiling would collapse. It finally did, sending two children to the hospital.
Hill (pictured) lives at 18 Lodge St. in the Westville Manor housing complex, run by the city housing authority in West Rock.
Her son, Taliferro Jones, was at the apartment with his daughter, Talizha, and a cousin, Honesty Gomez, Wednesday morning. Jones was washing dishes. Talizha, who’s 13, was making a salami sandwich with mayonnaise as a snack for after school. Honesty, who’s 5, was standing nearby.
All of a sudden, a chunk of sheetrock fell from the ceiling, hitting all three of them. All three were sent by ambulance to the hospital, where they were treated and released for head and neck injuries.
The chunk measured 1 foot by 2 feet, and fell at 9 a.m., according to housing authority spokeswoman Jasmin Franjul.
It left debris on the kitchen floor and counters.
“This is off the hook!” grumbled Hill Wednesday afternoon as she swept the floor with a broom.
“This is really aggravating,” she said. “I told the man last week” about the problem.
Hill said she has been trying to get the problem fixed for a long time. She first called the housing authority in April, when water was leaking through the ceiling in the same spot. The workers made a short-term fix, but the ceiling continued to crack and look worse. Hill, who’s the president of the Westville Manor tenants’ association, said she has made numerous requests since then for workers to fix the problem, but they have never returned.
“They never fix nothing,” she said.
“It’s not just this apartment, it’s every apartment,” Hill said. “This is crazy.”
The housing authority’s Franjul confirmed workers did some repairs to the ceiling in April. She confirmed that Hill put in a work order on Sept. 13 reporting a crack in her kitchen ceiling. She said the housing authority doesn’t have records of Hill complaining about the ceiling between those dates.
“We’ve responded to her requests. Repairs have been done,” she said.
“The exact cause of the ceiling collapsing has not been determined and still under investigation,” she wrote in an email.
Brian Jenkins, a family friend and a neighborhood activist who has been helping to resolve the situation, placed the blame on the housing authority employee who serves as property manager, not on the housing authority as a whole.
“This property manager is derelict,” he said. “It’s his responsibility as a property manager to make sure that when a resident makes a request regarding damage to the property,” that the problem gets fixed. He said he personally witnessed Hill tell the property manager about the problem about her ceiling at a meeting in April.
Hill said the drywall began to fall Tuesday night. She intended to call the housing authority Wednesday morning. She went out to an appointment Wednesday morning; her son helped the kids prepare for school.
“The next thing I know, I’m getting a call — the damn ceiling fell in,” she said.
The collapse unleashed a crew of winged insects that had apparently been living in the ceiling. On Wednesday, they were crawling over food left on the counter when the kids were whisked away to the emergency room.
The pieces of drywall hit 5‑year-old Honesty in the head, giving her a big bump, according to her dad, Twaine Gomez. All three were sent to the hospital; Taliferro Jones and his daughter Talizha suffered neck injuries.
Gomez, who lives in Dixwell, sends his daughter to Brennan/Rogers School at the bottom of the hill below Westville Manor. He said he goes to work very early, so he drops off Honesty at Hill’s house so she can walk to school along with Talizha.
He said he worried Honesty would be left with lingering trauma.
“She’ll always be scared that ceilings [are] going to fall,” Gomez said.
Hill documents the damage.
Workers came by Wednesday and patched up the ceiling with duct tape, Gomez said Thursday morning.
Franjul said the housing authority is planning further repairs.
“An action plan to fully repair the ceiling” was set to begin Thursday afternoon, Franjul said. “This includes temporarily relocating the tenant to a hotel, providing food vouchers, abating the ceiling and testing for mold.”
Franjul said Hill “was given the option to temporarily relocate to a hotel” on Wednesday but refused.
Gomez said the family is hoping for a quick resolution to the long-running problem. The problem extends beyond 18 Lodge, to the many tenants at Westville Manor who are awaiting repairs, but are afraid to speak up about it, he said.
“It’s deeper than just what happened yesterday,” he said. “Those people need to be treated like an equal and respected.”
Why are we giving massive raises to Karen, the director, sending her salary and benefit levels to the equivalent of over $250,000 per year, when ceilings are literally collapsing on the tenants?