Housatonic — It was Barbara Heaphy’s last meeting as executive director for the Great Barrington Housing Authority, and it wasn’t easy.
Heaphy, who is leaving for the same job at the Lenox Housing Authority, sat quietly throughout most of the January 19 meeting at Flag Rock Village, as a number of residents and some on waiting lists for housing complained of poor communications, confusion about how things get fixed, or how the waiting lists work.
Heaphy said she was heading to Lenox because she lives in Lenox and because that housing director is retiring. And she had worked for the Lenox authority before coming to Great Barrington. “It’s an opportunity I can’t pass up,” she said. “It’s my hometown.”
Two candidates for the job are now being vetted.
The meeting was a window into what it’s like to run multiple low income housing complexes with limited resources under state oversight by the Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD). The local Authority also manages Dewey Court and Brookside Manor in Great Barrington, and both of those are for seniors. Flag Rock Village has senior apartments, too.
The meeting was also a brief look at how things are for struggling residents, or those who are in desperate need of a place to live. Given the high poverty rate in Berkshire County and the number of people on waiting lists for housing, they are in good company.
“Any one of you could be in the situation that I’m in,” said Shannon Sinico, who said she came to Heaphy a couple months ago begging for emergency housing for herself and her 13-year-old daughter after a car accident and divorce set her back. They are now on a 1- to 2-year emergency waiting list, and living with a friend after also seeking help from the Elizabeth Freeman Center, which provides services for domestic violence and sexual assault victims.
“What constitutes an emergency?” she asked the board. “I am at risk of being raped…who makes the decision on who gets to move in or not? I work four jobs, I’m not working the system.” She said “lots of people” living at Flag Rock are “drug dealers,” something three other Flag Rock residents have also told the Edge.
Sinico accused Heaphy of “condescending” behavior toward her when she came to her in November, and said it was “enough to make a person cry.” She also said she had found aspects of the process of seeking help “degrading,” like showing “text messages from a disgusting human being.”
“You’re here because you have a problem and because you’re desperate,” Sinico added. “The last thing I want to do is live in a place like this where you are at the bottom.”
New board chair Nan Wile was sympathetic. “It sounds degrading and horrible,” she told Sinico, but added that the Authority had to follow “state protocol” with regard to waiting lists. “People are ahead of you,” Heaphy said, adding that she couldn’t discuss individual cases at a meeting.
“I could respond to all the issues,” Heaphy said. “Some are confidential, private tenant issues that I can’t always address in an open meeting.”
But those waiting lists are long. For senior housing at Flag Rock and Brookside alone, for instance, there are 82 applications for a one-bedroom and 54 for the two-bedrooms, Heaphy said.
There was much lamenting over bureaucratic fog. Judy Carlson said she isn’t “blaming anybody,” but “there are big miscommunications in this organization.” Carlson said she has taken a tumble into hard times and is 64th on the emergency list for Dewey Court. She had put in applications for all three housing complexes, “went through every hoop,” but said there is “confusion around here about where to send things” and “how to go thorough the steps.”
Jane Greene said she is an advocate for the elderly and disabled and has lived at Flag Rock for three years. “For three years I was quiet,” she said. “But [tenants] came to talk to me [about problems].”
Greene said the new director should have stronger “experience in human services,” something that is “important for people in the last years of their life and people who have fallen on hard times…the present director hasn’t kept the board fully informed.”
Wile explained that, while the board is “depleted” with two vacancies and overseen by DHCD, “we’re not babes in the woods totally adrift; we’ll make sure we don’t hire a total idiot or total fool.”
But when mammoth bureaucracies like DHCD are in charge from a distance, things can get murky or maze-like.
“The authority set-up is odd,” said tenant Grace Sebell, “when the town doesn’t have a say.”
Wile said things like the website could benefit from being “cleaned up.”
Greene said instructions for filing complaints should be included in each lease renewal. Wile agreed.
Then there are the problems for those who already live at Flag Rock. Last month the Edge reported on Arianne Blanchard, who is suing the authority over what she says is a systemic mold problem at her house that her physician says has caused a debilitating autoimmune disorder. Her former next-door neighbor also said mold had made her two children sick, forcing her to leave Flag Rock.
Annie Pruhenski told the board she’s lived in Flag Rock for 14 years. She had an electrical problem that “took weeks” to deal with, she said. Now she has a “defective stove” that needs replacement. “I don’t feel the communication is good between—I’m sorry Barb—you and us…I’m not a complainer; it’s just something that has to be done.”
Wile said Pruhenski would have to go through the paperwork protocol. “The stove sounds dangerous,” Wile added. “It’s the first time I’ve heard about it and I appreciate being brought up to speed.”
Marlene Koloski has had flooring issues and hinted that there is often a delay in sanding and salting the roads.
And it is no wonder. The authority, for all three of its complexes, has only two groundskeepers and one of those is a part-time assistant.
“How can Rick [Phair] and his assistant take care of all the properties and take care of all these people?” Greene asked.
“It’s the system,” Koloski said. “It’s broke.”
And so is Rick Phair’s ankle. He had slipped while sanding the drive and won’t return until February 10.
That also meant that there was no one to answer phones in the office for a week, since Heaphy only had limited hours to assist in the transition. “We have a week to figure it out,” she said.
A more general discussion erupted about the “perception” among tenants that it takes a long time to get things done. And Wile said one of today’s complaints “had been done months ago…it has been standard policy here…every time, it’s acted on.”
“People do as good a job as they can,” Wile added. She had maintained her good humor throughout, noting that her first day of this chairmanship was “like a baptism by fire.”
