Allan Appel Photo
Tenant Patricia Mackay.
Receptacles overflowing with garbage in the unmopped trash rooms. Blood in the elevators that doesn’t get cleaned. A compromised front door code that’s raising anxiety and endangering residents.
Those complaints came to the housing authority’s front door — where the complaints also stemmed from.
Residents of the Charles T. McQueeney Towers for the elderly and disabled at 360 Orange St. brought those complaints to the latest monthly meeting of the board of the public-housing Housing Authority of New Haven (HANH).
They didn’t have to travel far. The building also houses HANH headquarters and administrative offices, where the meeting takes place on the third floor.
HANH Commissioner Foluke Morris , herself a resident of the building, spoke in support of her neighbors, saying, “this isn’t the way people should live.”
HANH Commissioner Chair Erik Clemons and Commissioner Morris.
Patricia Mackay, an eight-year McQueeney tenant, took the microphone after four of her neighbors spoke politely, but passionately, during the meeting’s public comment section about the garbage containers being a mess, floors not being swept, inadequate responses to calls for service, and the entry code for the front door no longer being secure.
“I live next door to the dumpster.I’d mop it myself. I’m willing to mop it. I’ve told this to maintenance men. This is not a way people should live. It’s deplorable that we have to live like this,” she said.
McQueeney has apartments units on seven floors. One of the residents, who has lived there over 20 years, was especially concerned about strangers entering and a general decline in security.
“Could you change that code?” she said. “We’d appreciate that very much.”
Mackay said that maintenance in general has declined steeply in recent years.
Commissioner Morris said that the group expression of serious concern was organized a week ago.
“Since nothing else is being done, we decided we should speak for ourselves, here,” she said.
HANH Executive Director Karen DuBois-Walton took notes as the tenants spoke. She set aside the long list of agenda items to respond immediately and directly to them.
McQueeney enants Bruce Gatling and Maggie Hamrick.
“I’ve written down everything they’ve said,” DuBois-Walton said. “Your property manager is here. Each will be addressed. I will personally walk the building. Some are emergencies. It does not meet our standards. I’ll report to the board, and you’re welcome to come back.”
Mackay said she was pleased with DuBois-Walton’s response.
“We’ll see if they do it,” she added. “What they say and what they do are two different things.”
DuBois-Walton responds.
Congratulations to the McQueeny residents for organizing and making their issues known to the Housing Authority.
People are re-discovering their collective power and this is the only real hope we have in today's hostile world.
I look forward to the next article in which the residents celebrate getting all of their issues resolved in their favor.