Safety, maintenance, mice and crime: New Bedford public housing tenants air concerns

NEW BEDFORD — Though she rose and spoke at a city council meeting to discuss safety and maintenance concerns in public housing, the 20-plus-year Tripp Towers’ tenant didn’t want to give her name for this article.

She didn’t fear any repercussions from using her name, she said. It was her preference.

You can think of her this way, she said: “A concerned elderly person living here for so many years and she can’t speak for everyone but she can speak for a lot of people.”

Nearing 90, she described her refrigerator going out over the long Juneteenth weekend to councilors and city officials at the Tuesday, June 28, committee meeting, and being unable to get it fixed. She went into further detail for this article.

Councilor Brian Gomes had called for the meeting, initially in January. Invited were residents of subsidized high-rises Tripp Towers and Melville Towers, along with city health, inspectional services and police officials. New Bedford Housing Authority officials managing Tripp Towers and Peabody Properties officials managing Melville Towers were not invited.

Gomes said complaints he’d heard were not being addressed, and said residents shouldn’t fear any backlash from coming forward.

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'I'm not here for compensation'

New Bedford Housing Authority Executive Director Steven Beauregard did attend the meeting nonetheless.

The Tripp Towers tenant said she noticed the problem with her fridge Saturday morning, but it had probably gone out sometime Friday.

“When I woke up Saturday morning, very early, I always reach in for a bottle of water and it felt warm, and there was an odor. My milk had soured. The two chops I took out to defrost a couple days before I didn’t trust. I didn’t like the looks.”

She threw the butter out, which didn’t look right, as well as the mayonnaise, and anything else that seemed questionable. She once worked for the New Bedford Health Department, she said, so she knew the vinegar and oils would be OK.

She added, “And I told more than one councilor, I’m not here for compensation. I don’t want that. I’ve already paid for new stuff. That’s not me. I had to clean out the refrigerator because it was a mess. I’m from the old school. You clean the things.”

“I used to have a lot of energy,” she added. “I’m almost 90. I don’t have that. I get tired. But again, old school, you have to clean the things,” she said.

She said the freezer seemed to be working, but she wasn’t sure if it would go next so she kept it closed.

Her neighbors helped out, she said. The man next door gave her some ice for her cooler, and she put some of the food items in there.

Another neighbor let her use her freezer for other frozen perishables in case her freezer went, too. “I’m not going to lie. It was stone hard but she put it in her freezer so I managed to save some things. Again, I don’t want compensation. I’m only saying that because that’s what happened and I lived three days like that.”

'That’s not an emergency'

Another friend, she said, was angered when she attempted to call for help and got nowhere.

She called a housing number, she said. “I told them what happened and they said that’s not considered an emergency.”

She said she was told, “I’m sorry for your inconvenience.”

She then tried a number available to residents to use in cases of off-hour maintenance emergencies. She was basically told the same thing, she said. “Oh, no, that’s not an emergency.”

She made do, she said.

“So I coped. Saturday, Sunday and Monday I coped. A couple people made me a meal, and I had Meals on Wheels that I defrosted.”

She added, “I managed to do it because I consider myself a trooper. I’m not one to cry. I’m not a sissy. Not at all, never have been. I spent five years in the United States Navy aboard a ship. I’ve been through a lot of stuff so this is like, almost nothing.”

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And, she said, the officials she met at the meeting were all very responsive.

“I talked to so many people and they were very kind. They listened and they all gave me their card if I ran into trouble to call them.”

On Tuesday, the regular maintenance man was back on the job and he had the refrigerator problem fixed in less than 10 minutes.

“There’s a plate in the back of the freezer and you undo that and then you can see this wire leading to the fan. I think what happened — I’m not an electrician or a refrigerator person. I think it was creating enough cool for the freezer but not enough to go down the tube that leads to the refrigerator. I think that’s what was happening. I think I could have fixed it. I’m handy with tools.”

Security concerns

As for security, she feels that more should be done, and added she’s not alone.

She said she’s encountered people in the building who looked suspicious, that she’s no longer comfortable washing her clothes in the laundry room at 8 or 9 at night as she has in the past. She said people had been found sleeping in the community room.

“There’s too much going on in here. We want to see security. I can speak for many of us,” she said.

Beauregard said there are no current plans to hire security for Tripp Towers, but that it has the most extensive surveillance-camera system in New Bedford public housing.

“I don’t have physical security down there but I have the best camera system you’re going to want to have,” he said. There are other security measures in place that he can’t make public knowledge, he added.

Councilors voted to invite New Bedford Housing Authority Commissioners, Beauregard, and representatives from Peabody Properties to an upcoming committee meeting to discuss the concerns, and to arrange tours of Tripp and Melville Towers for councilors within the next 90 days.

Prior to the committee meeting, a Peabody Properties official wrote the council that, though uninvited to the June 28 meeting, they would be happy to confer with the board and discuss any concerns going forward.

Concerns aired about elevators not working, mice and safety

A Melville Towers staff member reached by phone said the elevators were working fine – a look at how they were operating was one of the reasons the council voted to set the meeting with tenants back in January. She said she couldn’t comment on the recent council meeting because she didn’t attend it.

Councilor Derek Baptiste said at the meeting the several calls he’s received from Melville Towers, which is in his ward, were from residents concerned with safety. “When you have people with developmental disabilities and you can’t get to an elevator and can’t use the stairs — it’s very hard for these people to feel safe in the building where they have no control over what’s going on.”

In all, six Melville Towers’ residents spoke, as did 10 Tripp Towers’ residents. Concerns included safety, maintenance, and problems with mice. On the safety side, concerns with theft and drug use were raised.

Working more closely with Inspection Services

Damon Chaplin, New Bedford Health Department director, said his department worked with the property managers to address complaints when appropriate and that if they weren’t settled with the property managers they went to Housing Court. He said the property managers were typically respectful and cooperative.

While the health department’s response is complaint-driven, he said, there was an opportunity to work closer with city Inspection Services in the future on periodic joint inspections to be more proactive.

Inspection Services head Danny Romanowicz said inspectors from both his department and the health department have conducted multiple inspections of the properties of late. There have been some complaints issued that need to be addressed, he said, and Inspection Services will be following up to see that they are. They will also check on the violations alleged at the meeting, he said.

He added he has forms available for tenants who had complaints about the elevators - which are under state purview.

“We’re working diligently with the Health Dept. to help these tenants,” he said.

And, he told tenants during the committee meeting that if they had any complaints, “Call me directly and we’ll be there the next day.”

This article originally appeared on Standard-Times: New Bedford Tripp, Melville Towers' tenants air safety concerns