More Ceilings Ready To Collapse

Two weeks after a ceiling collapsed on three children in the Westville Manor public-housing project, at least three other tenants revealed long-ignored water problems that threaten to make them the next victims.

Will Jeanette Melton’s family be next? When people shower in her home, water drips through the ceiling and down her kitchen cabinets.

Will Markisha Simuel’s household be next? She has to put a bucket on her kitchen floor to collect the water that comes from a hole in her ceiling.

Attorneys from New Haven Legal Assistance Monday afternoon found themselves wondering who’d be next as they toured apartments at the West Rock housing development, where tenants have been phoning in repeated pleas for repairs to the housing authority. Click the play arrow to see what Melton is living with.

Tenants called the lawyers after the first ceiling collapse, on Sept. 18 in the apartment of Debbie Hill, the head of the Tenant Resource Council at Westville Manor. Click here to read about a how a chunk of her kitchen ceiling fell down, sending two kids to the hospital. Hill had asked the housing authority several times to repair her ceiling.

Hill’s ceiling has now been fixed. Her neighbors’ look ready to go any minute.

After the Independent wrote about Hill’s collapse, other tenants called Amy Marx and Amy Eppler-Epstein at New Haven legal aid. They told the lawyers that they’re struggling with spreading mold, and leaks of bathwater and rainwater that might lead to more ceilings falling in.

Westville Manor is a cinderblock housing development tucked away in an often overlooked part of the city, between West Rock Park and a shuttered nursing home. The row houses recall a barracks, or a bomb shelter, and many of the apartments are boarded up. 

A Monday afternoon visit to Westville Manor found a number of apartments showing evidence of serious neglect by the housing authority. Tenants told the lawyers that longstanding problems have been ignored by the property manager, despite repeated phone calls, sometimes over years.

Housing authority Executive Director Karen DuBois-Walton said Tuesday that in the wake of the ceiling collapse she has ordered expedited inspections, and then needed repairs, at all Westville Manor homes. Usually those inspections would take place over the course of a year. These will all take place ​“within the next couple of weeks,” she said.

16 Lodge St.

One of the tenants who called legal aid was Hill’s next door neighbor, Stephanie Sumler (pictured). Marx and Eppler-Epstein showed up at her home Monday afternoon with second year Yale law school student Lise Rahdert.

Sumler took them first to a closet (pictured) under the stairs, where black mold spotted the walls behind the apartment’s furnace. Rahdert snapped a photo with her cell phone.

She said it’s better than when it was when she moved in three years ago, when it was half way up the wall. That’s because housing authority staff sprayed it with bleach and cleaned it up a year ago. That helped, but the mold is coming back, Sumler said. She has three kids with asthma problems.

Sumler headed upstairs where she showed the lawyers her bathroom light fixture and exhaust fan. When it rains, water comes through the fixture, she said.

“When it rains, it’s going to rain inside,” Sumler said.

Sumler said she called a year ago to have someone come fix it. A housing authority maintenance worker came to her house, taped over the wall switch so that she couldn’t turn the fan on, and left. Sumler said she hasn’t been able to get the housing authority to send anyone back to fix it.

Meanwhile, the wall around Sumler’s shower was soft and crumbling, having been damaged by water.

“That’s a rotted wall,” said Marx (pictured), prodding the wall with her hand. ​“This is why ceilings are collapsing.”

49 Level St.

In an apartment down the hill, the lawyers found a ceiling that already had started to come down. Markisha Simuel had a hole in the ceiling of her kitchen (pictured), in the apartment she shares with her three kids.

Simuel (pictured) said water comes through the ceiling whenever anyone uses the shower. She has to put a bucket down to catch the drips, she said.

Upstairs in the bathroom, Marx found the floor was rotting underfoot.

“Look at this!” she exclaimed. ​“This is so dangerous! This is all going to collapse.”

As in several apartments the lawyers visited, the caulking around the tub was black with mold, and no longer providing a watertight seal.

Simuel said the floor and ceiling have been rotting away for two or three years, despite her ongoing complaints to the housing authority.

“They never did nothing,” SImuel said. ​“They never touched it.”

“This is the next ceiling to collapse,” Marx said.

47 Level St.

Next door was another contender for that title. The ceiling in Jeanette Melton’s kitchen bulged out. Black mold and water damage (pictured) were visible in the top of her kitchen cabinet, and water was pooled on the bottom of the cabinet.

Upstairs, the bathroom floor was even worse the Simuel’s: totally rotted.

Melton (at right in photo) said it’s been that way for two years. She said she’s called the housing authority at least 20 times in the last year alone.

Simuel stepped in to survey the kitchen ceiling. ​“That’s about to cave in,” she predicted. ​“That’s how ours started. I think they got real bad plumbing problems.”

“I feel stressed,” said Melton. ​“I feel like they’re taking advantage of me because I live in public housing.”

“It’s terrible,” said Luquaia Melton, Jeanette’s daughter. ​“It’s unlivable.”

Good Housekeeping

“It’s scary to me how helpless these people feel,” Marx said during the ride back toward her downtown office. She said the Melton family should be moved immediately; the apartment is unsafe.

Eppler-Epstein said the problems are made more poignant by the fact that the tenants obviously care about where they live, and have invested some of their limited resources into making their apartments into nice homes. She recalled the faux ivy pinned to the wall of one home, the scented candles, the new linoleum tenants had installed on the floors.

The greatest irony, Eppler-Epstein pointed out, was when Simuel told the lawyers that the property manager had just come by that day for an annual ​“housekeeping inspection.”

Simuel was keeping a tidy home in her apartment on Level Street, apart from the bucket she has to put in the kitchen before she takes a shower in the bathroom.

Marx said legal aid will continue to gather information about conditions at Westville Manor, and pursue legal action if necessary.