Thomas MacMillan Photo
The lack of air conditioning in a Newhallville public housing complex already sent one senior to the hospital. Catherine Canady, breathing from an oxygen tank, said she feels like she’s suffocating.
Canady (pictured) is one of several tenants who spoke recently about surviving the sweltering heat at the Constance Baker Motley apartment building at 819 Sherman Pkwy. The building, which is run by the Housing Authority of New Haven, contains 45 apartments for elderly or disabled residents. Tenants said they’ve been without air conditioning all year, and the housing authority has been unresponsive to their complaints.
Karen DuBois-Walton, head of the housing authority, said her agency is working to fix the problem and has handed out fans to mediate the situation.
The box fans distributed by the housing authority have done little to mitigate the heat and humidity, tenants said.
A tenant named Marcus Thomas, who needs the assistance of an oxygen tank, was sent to the hospital last month because of trouble breathing in the heat, according to two tenants. When he returned from a week in the hospital, the housing authority outfitted his apartment with an air conditioner. Asked about the incident, DuBois-Walton said she couldn’t speak about individual tenants.
The lease agreement for Motley tenants states that the housing authority is obligated to keep building systems and appliances working.
DuBois-Walton said the housing authority is not legally required to provide its tenants with air conditioning. It’s an “amenity,” she said.
Last summer, elderly tenants in another section of town complained that the housing authority was neglecting maintenance on their homes.
On Thursday, frustrated by the heat, Constance Baker Motley tenant Verna Wells called Statewide Legal Services of Connecticut to report the situation.
“It does sound like something very serious,” said Jan Chiaretto, director of the legal services hotline. Since the matter involves a large group of elderly tenants, “it definitely caught our attention.”
Wells said she’s considering taking legal action if the housing authority doesn’t repair the air conditioning. Chiaretto said tenants would start with a demand letter to the housing authority. That could be followed by a “paid into court petition,” which would allow tenants to pay their rent to a court instead of the housing authority, until the air conditioning is fixed, Chiaretto said.
On Thursday afternoon, tenants Wells and Peggy Robinson were sitting in front of the Motley building, trying to beat the heat. Wells, who’s 64, rested in a Jazzy wheelchair. Robinson sat in a red folding chair. The building is supposed to have central air conditioning, but it hasn’t worked at all this year and, for some tenants, even longer, Wells and Robinson said.
“I haven’t had air conditioning for two years,” Wells said. “It’s miserable. It’s terrible. It’s awful in this building.”
The lack of air conditioning took its toll on tenant Thomas, who’s on an oxygen tank, Wells said. “He’s only working on one lung,” she said. The heat was too much for him and he ended up in the hospital last month, said Wells and Robinson.
After he returned, the housing authority installed an air conditioner in his room, but he still had trouble breathing, Wells said. On Thursday, he was taken to the hospital again.
Wells said tenants have been complaining about the lack of air conditioning, with little results. At a meeting with the tenant resident council on June 14, the housing authority handed out 19 fans. “They said, ‘We’re not obligated to give you anything,’” Wells said. But the lease agreement states that the building will have air conditioning, she said.
DuBois-Walton said the housing authority distributed fans to all tenants who requested them.
Wells and Robinson provided a quick tour of the five-story building, to give a visitor a taste of the temperature. The stuffiness and heat in the hallway was immediately apparent, and got worse as Wells wheeled into the elevator.
“The other elevator is hotter than this one,” Wells said.
On the fourth floor, Wells and Robinson stopped in to visit Canady. The 59-year-old, who suffers from asthma and emphysema, answered the door wrapped in a bathrobe and trailing a long oxygen tube. Behind her, an air conditioner rattled in an open window.
Canady said her family gave her the air conditioner, but it wasn’t installed properly and no one had helped her with it. It’s still hot in the apartment, she said. “Sometimes I feel like I’m smothering in there.”
Canady said she’s complained, but received no response.
In her bedroom, a fan spun in the window while CSI: Miami played on a TV by the bed. Canady said the fan doesn’t cool the room enough, since her oxygen machine generates heat at the foot of the bed.
Down the hall, John Robinson had his door open to try to circulate the air.
“It’s hell,” said the 67-year-old. He has one of the fans handed out by the housing authority. “It helps a bit, but it’s blowing hot air.”
Robinson said he mostly just sits in his chair with his shirt off and drinks cold water to try to cool off.
“It’s treacherous at night,” said a woman on the fifth floor, who asked to remain anonymous. “It’s awful. The fans are doing nothing.”
She said she couldn’t understand why the housing authority hadn’t fixed the air conditioning. “Beats the heck out of me and you.”
Back outside, Douglas Bethea was tooling around in his wheelchair. The 69-year-old had a one word description of what he does in the heat: “Sweat!”
Bethea said he has four pillows on his bed, and soaks them with sweat each night.
While Bethea went to his apartment to pull out his lease agreement, Edward Manning complained about the way his mother, tenant Fannie Manning, has suffered in the heat.
“There’s no reason for this,” he said. Manning’s rent is always paid on time and she doesn’t deserve to be without air conditioning, he said. The housing authority should take better care of a building full of elderly and disabled people, he said. “How low can you go?”
Bethea (pictured) returned with the lease. Section E under “HANH Obligations” states: “Maintain in good and safe working order electrical, plumbing, sanitary, heating, elevator(s), ventilation, and other facilities and appliances supplied by HANH.” That provision must cover the central air blower units provided to tenants by the authority, Bethea argued.
DuBois-Walton said the housing authority immediately took action to rectify the air conditioning problem as soon as it came to light in May. Since the repair is too big of a job for the in-house maintenance staff, it had to go out for a competitive bidding process. A contract has been selected and work will begin soon, DuBois-Walton said. She said she couldn’t predict exactly when the work will begin or be completed, since her project manager was out of town.
DuBois-Walton disputed tenant claims that the housing authority has not acted fast enough. The agency started working on it immediately, she said. “I don’t know how they can say we’ve been unresponsive,” she said.
The lack of air conditioning hasn’t been a problem until recently, when temperatures shot upwards, DuBois-Walton said.
Air conditioning is not required by law or by Department of Housing and Urban Development regulations, she said. “We provide it as an amenity,” she said. The tenants “are still getting what they signed on for.”