No hot water for weeks at a time. Elevators that break, leaving elderly and disabled residents stranded. No heat in the community room.
Tenants at the eight story, 97-unit Glen Hazel high-rise in Pittsburgh’s Glen Hazel neighborhood, fed up with mounting problems in their building, have been bringing their concerns to the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh’s monthly board meetings. For the last several months, residents have been regularly peppering board commissioners with their complaints and concerns.
“We live in deplorable conditions,” resident Mae Norris, 71, told the board late last year. “Periodically I have water run down my wall. Sewage backs up. Water backs up into the tubs. Elevators do not work. Alarm systems go off, bug infestations, and hot water does not work. I have chronic pain and have to deal with these deplorable living conditions.”
Ralphina Coleman, 68, another resident, citing the elevator issues and having to boil water to bathe, bluntly told housing authority officials, “We can’t live like this.”
Another resident pleaded in December: “Can you please inform us at Glen Hazel that we have not been forgotten, that we are important and that we matter to you?”
Housing Authority officials have pledged improvements — though they have cautioned that some of them will take time.
Rental Assistance Demonstration Program
The Glen Hazel building has a unique ownership structure. Owned and managed directly for many years by Pittsburgh’s Housing Authority, it is now owned by a nonprofit affiliated with the Housing Authority. It is managed by a private company hired by the Housing Authority, though authority officials have stepped up their involvement and on-site presence in the wake of recent tenant complaints.
The convoluted ownership and management structure is because the property is part of a program called RAD, which stands for Rental Assistance Demonstration.
RAD was created in 2012 as a way to preserve older public housing that needed high-cost repairs. Because the nation’s public housing collectively has a tremendous backlog of needed repairs, and Congress doesn’t appropriate enough funds to cover all the needs, the program essentially converts public housing into another type of affordable housing that allows it to access other funding, such as tax credits, to make physical upgrades. As part of the RAD program, the high rise and the nearby family-style homes got $12 million in upgrades, which included improvements to kitchens and bathrooms, flooring, windows, and roofs.
Prior to the RAD conversion in 2018, Housing Authority officials pledged to Glen Hazel residents that the impact on tenants would be minimal. But since then, there have been some complaints about the property manager and some other issues. A report issued late last year by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Inspector General recommended that HUD do a better job monitoring such RAD conversions.
Repairs are planned, but uncertainty remains
Housing Authority officials have said they have heard the residents’ concerns. HACP staff are meeting with residents, visiting units to investigate any problems, and planning for improvements, said Anthony Ceoffee, senior director of asset management for the housing authority.
HACP staff have also been advising tenants on all the steps they must take to form a tenant council, Ceoffee said, so they can continue to advocate for themselves.
And, as for some of the big ticket repairs that are needed, Coffee said, the Housing Authority’s nonprofit subsidiary recently approved a $1.2 million loan to replace the antiquated boiler system responsible for the hot water outages, modernize the elevator, and upgrade the HVAC system for the community room. Repairs are scheduled to start in late May, he said.
Ceoffee emphasized that many complaints tenants have brought to the agency’s board meetings have been addressed.
City Councilor Barb Warwick, who represents the area, has been helping tenants resolve some of their complaints. But she thinks a better long-term solution is for HACP to just run the building directly as it once did.
“What I would really like to see is for the Housing Authority to simply take this property over, because if it's a Housing Authority property, then it's the Housing Authority that manages it and it's the housing authority that we can hold accountable,” Warwick said.
In the meantime, tenants are still frustrated.
Resident Richard Lucas II, said the conditions are stressful for residents.
“It's a disgrace. It is a disgrace that you would do your elderly like this because we all have to get old, you know? He said. “And it's not right. It's not at all. It's not making it easy. It puts depression on people. It gives people anxiety because you never know what's going to happen.”
