FITCHBURG — Green Acres resident Jazmin Guzman has been living in her Leyte Road apartment with her two children for nearly five years, and said mold on her walls and ceilings has been an issue from the beginning.
She says multiple complaints and service calls under both administrations of her Fitchburg Housing Authority unit have gotten her nowhere. So in July, she chose to not pay her rent in the hopes that she would be brought to court, where she might have a chance to tell her story to a judge.
“Why hasn’t anything gotten done yet?” Guzman asked last week. “How much more do I have to scream for somebody to hear me?”
While some Fitchburg Housing Authority residents are already seeing the benefits of management by its Leominster counterpart, others are wondering when they’ll start to see significant changes, too.
According to Housing Authority management, decades of neglect have left the buildings in such dire condition that they simply can’t be fixed quickly, and require more capital than the authority can currently provide.
Leominster Housing Authority Executive Director Gene Capoccia, who also heads the FHA through a management agreement that began in October, visited Guzman’s apartment with the Sentinel & Enterprise on Thursday, just hours after learning of her complaints.
He said that less than a year is simply not enough time to fix all of the problems throughout the FHA that have developed over 25 years of neglect.
“It’s not going to look brand new within a few months, with the condition we started from,” he said.
‘It’s been too long’
Guzman said she followed FHA maintenance advice to use bleach to clean the mold on her bathroom ceiling and fan, but it reappeared again and again, leaving her fed up. Coats of paint applied by maintenance also did not stem the growth. The mold has also appeared on her in-ceiling attic door and the outer edge wall-ceiling junctures of both upstairs bedrooms, leading her to believe the problem lies within her roof. Family members have told her that she and her children shouldn’t be living there.
Guzman said she was told by a former FHA employee that her building was on a list to receive a new roof last year, but when it came time for it to be fixed, it was no longer on the list.
She said she’s also been waiting two years to move to a three-bedroom apartment. Her son, 9, and daughter, 7, have been sleeping in bunkbeds in the same room, and Guzman said it’s past the time when she should have been able to give them their own rooms.
Residents like Guzman and her neighbors see various cosmetic improvements being made outdoors — grass mowed, flowers planted — and wonder when the FHA will begin to pay attention to the serious problems they face indoors.
“I just want to see action,” Guzman said. “I want to see it here, I want to see it now. It’s been too long.”
Too many work orders
Capoccia said at least 15 to 20 new work orders come in daily from residents across the authority’s properties. The FHA is now also regularly performing its own inspections of apartments, which generates even further work orders for things that need to fixed, he said.
Capoccia said that the authority began to address some of the serious unit issues with available funding last fiscal year, which ended June 30, and has $200,000 available this fiscal year to make major improvements. With each of the several housing developments within the FHA all needing serious amounts of work, however, that amount isn’t going to go very far.
He has applied for a $16 million High Leverage Asset Preservation Program grant through the state Department of Housing and Economic Development, and hopes to find out within the next month or two whether the FHA will receive all or a portion of what it has requested. That funding, if secured, would allow renovations such as new roofs, dewatering basements and other site improvements, Capoccia said. He said tenants have also asked for vent fans over their stoves, and he would like to accommodate them.
Capoccia said the outside conditions are important too, and he wants residents to be proud when they come home. He said there is a significant connection between property conditions and crime, and the way people treat their apartments.
“I want to let the residents and the community know we value this development,” he said. “We value these apartments and we’re going to treat it as such.”
Capoccia said he and his staff are doing the best they can to communicate with residents, show they care and correct problems they’re experiencing. After work orders are completed, he said they follow up with residents to see how everything went, and they’re “getting wonderful comments back.” But it will be at least another year or two before Capoccia said he can be satisfied.
“We haven’t made everybody happy yet, but we’re trying,” he said. “We’re doing the best we can given the circumstances.”
Addressing problems
Foreman Bart Larkin said that when maintenance entered Guzman’s apartment early last week, they found the bathroom shower head was leaking hot water, which was causing excess steam and moisture. Guzman said she had reported the problem months ago.
Capoccia said he will take look at the ceiling to see if there is water penetrating the walls and causing the mold, or if it just surface mold. Of the 45 buildings, he said 12 have had roofs replaced, and the rest need new ones as well.
To address Guzman’s bathroom, Capoccia said the FHA will remove the mold and install a new vinyl covering over the shower area. They’re also installing a humidistat, which will turn the fan on automatically whenever moisture exceeds a preset limit, he said. These devices are being installed in every unit that gets turned over and any area of special concern, Capoccia said.
Without a device like this, he said it is the tenant’s responsibility to remove any excess moisture by running the fan during and after showers.
Capoccia said lifestyle has been shown to contribute to mold growth. Units that are constantly kept dark with shades drawn and windows closed will experience more mold than those with normal ventilation and sunlight, he said.
“When you have a dark, damp environment, that promotes the growth of mold,” Capoccia said. “We’re working on an education program so residents will be informed so they can work with us to eliminate those problems.”
About two weeks ago, he said all of the water bills were reviewed in Green Acres, and maintenance was sent out to all of the units with unusually high water consumption, because it could be an indicator of leaks, broken toilets and other issues.
Roaches
Guzman said the last tenant to live in 14 Leyte Road, at the other end of her building, was “outrun by roaches,” which have now migrated to other apartments in the building.
A recent night when Guzman woke up with a headache, she said she went down to her kitchen to grab some Tylenol, and when she turned the light on, several roaches scattered. Guzman believes they migrated to her apartment from a unit at the other end of the building via a dirt trench in the basement that runs the length of the building.
A neighbor in the middle of the building, who moved in around the same time as Guzman and asked that her name not be used, also keeps her apartment tidy but has nonetheless suffered from cockroaches in the past year. She said her bathroom ceiling also began growing mold in the same time frame, and the paint on the ceiling of an adjoining hallway is peeling and falling off in chunks.
The former tenant in 14, Tammy Valcourt, said she’d never lived in an apartment with roaches before moving to Leyte Road about two years ago.
“At first, I didn’t see any bugs,” she said. “I think they were waiting for me to get comfortable, and that’s when they all started coming out.”
Valcourt said the apartment was treated multiple times under both administrations but the roaches kept coming back. She said she called the Board of Health and was told to clean her house and stove.
“They were clean,” she said.
When the problem became worse and worse, Valcourt said she stopped paying rent and looked for another place to live. When she found another apartment, she left all of her belongings–except for her washer, drier and some clothes–in her old apartment because everything was infested.
“I couldn’t stay here no longer, that’s how bad it is,” she said.
FHA maintenance staff treated the apartment again last week.
While Valcourt said she kept the apartment clean, Capoccia remembers it much differently, and said she failed to maintain it “in a clean and sanitary manner.”
“I’ve been doing this business for 45 years, and it was one of the worst apartments I have ever been in,” he said.
Capoccia said it was unusual to have to treat the same building three times in the course of the last few months, and that it’s not fair when tenants who are clean have to deal with the consequences brought by those who are not.
Guzman took issue with the fact that vacant units are being renovated and filled, while long-term residents like her have to wait for improvements. She believes current residents should have been moved to the vacant units while problems at their units were addressed.
Capoccia said the state has mandated the FHA fill vacant units to an appropriate level, and the 94 vacancies authoritywide when he took over have been reduced to 42. An additional 30 to 40 units have also been vacated and turned over, he said, and another 23 units at Wallace Tower are undergoing remediation for asbestos and will soon be put back online.
Doing what Guzman suggested would mean additional work, cost and much longer turnover of units, Capoccia said, leaving those on the authority’s long waiting lists to wait even longer. He said the FHA has to balance resident concerns with those of 200 new applicants each month, many of whom are homeless, who desperately need any kind of housing.
Despite the problems, at least Guzman had a decent place with affordable rent, while others have no housing at all, Capoccia said.
“Why don’t you live here for a day and see how you would feel?” Guzman said to Capoccia. “I don’t think you would feel very fabulous like you’re trying to make it seem.”
‘Part of the solution’
Capoccia said he hopes to form a strong tenant association to ensure regular communication with residents.
Any tenants interested in joining a tenant association may contact Lease Enforcement Manager Janel Hebert at 978-537-5300 ext. 145 or janel@leominsterha.com.
Capoccia said authority staff are there to help, not to make residents feel bad. He said he values the fact that Guzman tries to keep her apartment in good shape.
“We need folks like you who are concerned about making this a good place to live,” Capoccia told her. “You’re part of the solution, not part of the problem.”
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