Laura Glesby Photo
Ruth’s broken door.
Inside her Daisy Street apartment, Ruth is waging a war against wind.
Neat strips of clear duct tape cover a hole in her wall where a socket used to be, to keep the air out. More duct tape lines the side of one of the doors to her apartment; by now, it has crumpled and stuck to itself. She keeps it there to prevent a draft from entering the space between the door and the wall.
In the wintertime, she said, she had to cover her air conditioning unit with a garbage bag to keep the air from seeping through.
Ruth (who declined to provide her last name) lives in the Newhall Gardens elderly housing complex. The housing authority last year turned over management of the facility to its nonprofit arm, Glendower, and converted it to tax-credit-supported housing.
The tape over a hole in Ruth’s wall.
Ruth and a number of her neighbors shared concerns about Glendower’s response to complaints like hers, during a visit this week. Newhallville Alder Delphine Clyburn took a reporter around the 26-unit complex for six hours to knock on doors at the complex. Eleven of the tenants visited expressed concerns, while five others praised the new management.
Clyburn was following up on complaints she’d heard during a collective birthday party she recently held for the seniors and at a tenant meeting she attended.
Newhall Gardens’ property manager, Ellieben Acosta-Harris, said she had not previously heard about many of the complaints that residents raised. She said that others had already been resolved.
Ruth shows the duct tape on the side of her door.
As Clyburn rang tenants’ doorbells on Monday, she was careful to keep the screen doors shut so as not to startle residents who answered the door. She knew most of the tenants by name and kept some of their phone numbers in her contacts. “It’s ‘alder,’” she called when asked who was at the door.
When Ruth answered, she immediately brought out a broken glass pane from her screen door that she keeps behind her sofa. She said that the pane broke in April and hasn’t been fixed or replaced, even though maintenance workers have been alerted to the problem.
There’s a second door between the screen door and her apartment. Still, Ruth said, she’s worried about what she’ll do when it gets cold.
Tenant Bessie Williams said that for a month, she occasionally needed to collect water from her shower in a bucket and pour it down the toilet drain in order to flush.
Dorothy Shaw said that this past autumn, she fell and broke two ribs trying to clean up leaves that hadn’t been raked outside her apartment. “It just looked so bad,” she said of the pile of leaves.
Minnie Harris said that after Glendower renovated the floors of her apartment in September, she came home to find a glass fish she had owned smashed on the bathroom floor, the top of one of her lamps broken off, two suitcases full of winter clothes gone missing, and her bed partially dismantled. She has only been reimbursed for the fish, despite her complaints, she said. (Acosta-Harris responded that a number of contractors had been involved in the remodeling and moving process, not just Glendower.)
Two tenants noted that their drain covers had been disconnected. Susie Jenkins, an aide to Bessie Williams, said she was worried that Williams could trip over the empty drain, or that an “animal” could crawl out.
“I’ll make it plain and simple: they don’t care,” another resident said.
Two tenants’ sons claimed that they’ve needed to intervene in cases when Glendower hasn’t responded.
William Hernandez said the toilet in his mother’s apartment used to flood. Hernandez said that two inspectors had come on separate occasions to look at the toilet, but never fixed it. He ended up tinkering with some screws himself. The toilet can flush normally now, but he still wants a professional to take a look at it, he said.
And Mary Curtis’ son said he has fixed household issues not only for his mother, but for her neighbors as well. He put together an outdoor storage bin that had broken apart. It’s now held together by a twig that functions as a latch between the doors.
A twig holds one bin together.
“These people, you can’t even get them on the phone,” Hernandez said. When he has called, the company’s voicemail has been full, he added. Several other tenants echoed this complaint.
“You have to go to the office and give them the paperwork. Then they lose it,” Hernandez said, noting that many of the complex’s elderly residents have difficulty leaving their homes.
Other Tenants Pleased
A tenant’s son has called about this fence, which he says has been broken for months.
The mattress has sat there for months, too, he said.
When longtime tenants’ advocate Edwina Brown answered the door, she offered a different perspective. Brown said that Acosta-Harris has been receptive to her complaints, and speculated that other tenants haven’t been persistent or specific enough with their complaints. She said that her stove had been broken in May, and Glendower had fixed it within a month.
Brown called Clyburn’s attentiveness to the Newhall Gardens seniors a double-edged sword. “When you’re gone, what are they going to do?” she asked her. She urged Clyburn to encourage tenants to document their calls with Glendower.
Glendower’s Acosta-Harris said that some of the complaints that residents raised on Monday were news to her. Others, she said, had already been addressed.
Acosta-Harris said she meets with Newhall Garden tenants every month at the tenants’ council meeting. “I’ve always wanted it to be an open communication with my residents,” she said.
Outside of the tenant meetings, residents can call an emergency hotline number with concerns. The housing authority’s Community Economic Development team visits the properties weekly, Acosta-Harris said, and complaints that the housing authority hears are referred to Glendower as well.
“Usually, if they feel as if I’m not doing my job, they have straight communication to the executive director” of Glendower, Acosta-Harris added. “So there is really no way where the residents have not addressed their issues.”
A haphazardly fixed-up bin.
“I feel that we over-communicate,” she said later.
Acosta-Harris visited Newhall Gardens that afternoon to deliver a letter to each doorstep. The letter informed residents that “items stored in your backyard that are not outdoor furniture,” including grills, lawnmowers, and indoor furniture, would be “discarded” if they were not removed within two days.
The letter also mentioned that broken outdoor storage bins, like the one that Curtis’ son had fixed, would not be replaced. Acosta-Harris said those bins had been donated before Glendower took over the property.
According to Acosta-Harris, the outdoor items posed “a safety hazard,” and tenants had signed an addendum to their leases that prohibited them.
Still, several residents expressed disgruntlement over the policy. Curtis’ son was particularly outraged about the rule against grills. “They can’t get to the beach,” he said, referring to many of the tenants.
“They trying to tell you how to live,” one tenant said.
It is time the city paid attention to these problems. As an elder in an elderly disintegrating apt. complex I can relate to these other tenants. I am luckier since I can still afford to pay for help and required maintenance and it's expensive. I would say that most apts. in town already need some fixes here and there, either in or outside. The city must try to keep its citizens warm, dry, safe, and vermin-free...another reason to run for mayor. The search for some justice and responsibility goes on and on.