{"id":191,"date":"2019-03-25T13:27:22","date_gmt":"2019-03-25T13:27:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/?p=191"},"modified":"2019-03-25T14:13:44","modified_gmt":"2019-03-25T14:13:44","slug":"as-d-c-weighs-how-to-fix-its-public-housing-families-keep-getting-sicker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/191\/","title":{"rendered":"As D.C. Weighs How to Fix Its Public Housing, Families Keep Getting Sicker"},"content":{"rendered":"

www.washingtoncitypaper.com\/news\/housing-complex\/article\/21060618\/as-dc-weighs-how-to-fix-its-public-housing-families-keep-getting-sicker?utm_source=Editorial+and+Events&utm_campaign=a168723153-EMA…<\/a>
\nAs D.C. Weighs How to Fix Its Public Housing, Families Keep Getting Sicker “The weight of the world is on my shoulders in my household. … I don\u2019t want to bury my child because of asthma.\u201d
\nDarrow MontgomeryAlina keeps going to the hospital.
\nThe 10-year-old resident of Greenleaf Gardens has a health diagnosis her lawyer can hardly pronounce: allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis. (City Paper changed her name to protect her identity.) It\u2019s an allergy to mold\u2014an allergy so severe that a recent episode, in October of 2018, sent her into respiratory failure at Children\u2019s National Medical Center. Her doctors wrote, in a letter obtained by City Paper, that her living conditions put her at risk of readmission and, potentially, of death.
\nAcross D.C., in Ward 1\u2019s LeDroit Apartments, 59-year-old Andrew Glover feels drained. He\u2019s been this way for months\u2014\u201cconstant fatigue,\u201d he says, \u201cjust tired all the time.\u201d He lost his appetite and sleeps all day. Glover\u2019s doctor told him last week that his symptoms are the result of elevated blood lead levels..
\nThe factor both Alina and Glover have in common? They live in the District\u2019s public housing, in buildings that the DC Housing Authority has identified as containing some of the most significant health and safety hazards in D.C.
\nMonths after the DC Housing Authority went public with details about the extent to which its public housing stock has deteriorated, and years after its residents say they first began to complain, families continue to cope with the physical consequences of living in units that even the Authority\u2019s chief acknowledges are in \u201cdeplorable\u201d condition\u2014and they\u2019re doing so with no end in sight.
\n\u201cThis is a case in point: If housing conditions are creating a host of problems, including severe medical problems for young children, what are these families to do?\u201d asks Alina\u2019s pro bono lawyer, Stacy Ruegilin, an attorney with the white shoe firm Shearman & Sterling LLP.
\nRuegilin tells City Paper that the family submitted a petition for reasonable accommodation transfer, a protection enshrined in the Fair Housing Act that ensures tenants with disabilities have an equal opportunity to safe housing. DCHA approved the transfer, responding \u201cfairly quickly,\u201d she says, and \u201cacknowledg[ing] the severity\u201d of Alina\u2019s case.
\n\u201cThis was on Feb. 1,\u201d Ruegilin says. \u201cAnd in the weeks since, despite multiple attempts to contact them at several offices, they have refused to provide insight or visibility into the process and won\u2019t tell the family whether or when a transfer will be available. They don\u2019t know whether it\u2019ll be this week, month, year. On paper they have this approval, acknowledging this problem, but they\u2019re living in limbo. [Meanwhile] her doctors are saying, you have to get your daughter [out].\u201d
\nRuegilin adds: \u201cThey have stressed this to me, that her living condition is exacerbating her health issue.\u201d A spokesperson for Ruegilin\u2019s firm tells City Paper that the unit DCHA offered Alina\u2019s family is \u201clocated in an even older and considerably more decrepit housing project.\u201d Ruegilin will accompany the family on a visit to the site on Friday.
\nIn response to City Paper\u2019s questions about Alina and Glover, a DCHA spokesperson sent an emailed statement, saying in part: \u201cConcerns about the physical and environmental conditions at many DCHA properties are genuine and pressing; particularly the older properties. At each community meeting, residents ask questions about environmental issues like vermin and dust.\u201d
\nThe spokesperson continued: \u201cDirector [Tyrone] Garrett has made clear that the homes are in such disrepair that any further delay could affect the health and safety of residents who live there. More than 5,000 citizens, including 1,483 children and 937 elderly, live in these homes. We encourage anyone who is concerned about their health to immediately contact their medical provider. By law, medical providers are required to follow certain protocols that include informing government agencies, like DCHA.\u201d The spokesperson did not respond to a question asking whether DCHA is aware of any other tenants testing positive for elevated blood lead levels.
\nGreenleaf Gardens is a 211-unit apartment complex on N Street SW in Ward 6, and is notorious among legal service providers and public housing residents for hosting some of the city\u2019s most repulsive housing conditions. Last summer, Maggie Donahue, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society, recounted for City Paper the story of a client with such a severe cockroach infestation that the pests had eaten through the back of her kitchen cabinets, causing them to collapse; maintenance workers merely nailed the cabinets back on top of a blanket of cockroaches. Last month, Valerie Schneider, an attorney with Howard University Law School\u2019s Fair Housing Clinic, told City Paper that clients living in Greenleaf have also reported sewage leaking through their walls.
\nAnd a lead hazard assessment of Glover\u2019s building, conducted by an independent contractor between June 21 and July 11 of last year, found \u201cdeteriorated lead-based paint\u201d and \u201celevated concentrations of lead in dusts,\u201d including in tenants\u2019 apartments.
\nIn a phone call with City Paper last week, Glover\u2014who also manages asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes\u2014says that recent blood tests showed blood lead levels of five micrograms per deciliter. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers that amount the threshold for an \u201celevated\u201d blood lead level, and it is associated with decreased renal function, \u201cadverse cardiovascular and kidney effects,\u201d and cognitive dysfunction..
\nCity Paper reported in early February that DC Housing Authority leadership has identified 14 buildings that are in the most critical condition. Among these properties, which altogether represent about 3,300 units of public housing, are Greenleaf and LeDroit. By the DC Housing Authority\u2019s own count, 36 percent of residents who live in the 124-unit LeDroit Apartments are seniors; 40 percent have a disability. And one-quarter of the residents in Greenleaf are children, while 25 percent live with a disability.
\nDCHA has asked the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development for an additional 2,500 housing vouchers to help rehome families it says are living in some of the worst conditions, but it has not received them. In late February, Garrett announced that the Authority aims to present a portfolio \u201crepositioning plan\u201d to the public within 60 days, which will include an outline for \u201chow the agency will address at least 2,400 housing units, over the next 24 months.\u201d The Authority has beefed up staff in recent months as it prepares to release the plan.
\nThat plan will not rely on \u201cselling off properties, but rather, unlocking private investments to provide housing assistance to our existing residents,\u201d Garrett said in a statement at the time. \u201cFull dependence on federal funding is no longer an option and we have to find ways to bring other resources to the table.\u201d
\nOn Wednesday, Mayor Muriel Bowser released her proposed fiscal year 2020 budget. It includes an increase of $1.47 million for rent subsidies distributed by the Housing Authority and no additional funds for capital improvements. DCHA has said it needs at least $330 million in one fiscal year to make immediate health and safety repairs.
\nFelicia Ross, Alina\u2019s mother, says that her daughter has lived most of her life in public housing\u2014first at Potomac Gardens, and then Greenleaf. But her current unit isn\u2019t any better than the old one.
\nRoss and her attorney say the apartment is infested with mold, mildew, rats, cockroaches, and mice, which the family sees \u201con a daily basis.\u201d Walk too hard on the staircase, and you might punch a hole through it. There\u2019s \u201cwhite mold, a whole lot of it\u201d under the kitchen cabinets. There have been close to two dozen pipe leaks since the family moved in. There is \u201cfeces water\u201d that seeps into her unit from the apartment next door. In the last week, she has caught three mice. \u201cAnd there\u2019s still more in there,\u201d Ross says. \u201cI see the droppings everywhere. It\u2019s embarrassing to have company and mice run across your feet.\u201d
\nThe conditions, she says, \u201cstart telling on themselves.\u201d
\nRoss\u2019 daughter, meanwhile, regularly takes anywhere from five to eight antifungal medications and steroids a day. She has several different inhalers. Her mother has learned to pack a bag for the hospital because she knows she\u2019ll be there for up to five days, and has spent thousands of dollars on air humidifiers and purifiers. She says she is wary of letting Alina play downstairs, where the bulk of the mold grows, because it exacerbates her asthma. She is mostly confined to her bedroom.
\n\u201cShe just doesn\u2019t have an understanding of why she can\u2019t play tag. She rides her bike, she gets out of breath. But she tries,\u201d her mom says. Alina\u2019s health \u201chas always been a downhill battle. It\u2019ll get better, and then it\u2019ll turn for the worse. Since she was diagnosed with her asthma, she has always been a frequent patient in the ICU.\u201d Ross and her other two children, each older than Alina, also have asthma.
\nBack in September of 2018, before Alina got sick, Ross says she contacted her building\u2019s manager at DCHA to discuss the conditions on her property: The refrigerator was leaking fluid, the stove was leaking gas. The next month, Alina was hospitalized. \u201cAnd I said, this is what I tried to prevent,\u201d Ross says.
\n\u201cI\u2019m lost for words,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m tired. The weight of the world is on my shoulders in my household. My main thing is to make sure those kids are straight. I don\u2019t want to have to hear\u2014another child\u2014it\u2019s not just about me. I know there\u2019s other kids suffering in that housing complex just like mine.\u201d She wants a home Alina \u201ccan breathe in, somewhere she can grow,\u201d Ross says. \u201cI don\u2019t want to bury my child because of asthma. I can\u2019t keep enduring this.\u201d <\/p>\n

Mary Bolton 202-390-1208<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

www.washingtoncitypaper.com\/news\/housing-complex\/article\/21060618\/as-dc-weighs-how-to-fix-its-public-housing-families-keep-getting-sicker?utm_source=Editorial+and+Events&utm_campaign=a168723153-EMA… As D.C. Weighs How to Fix Its Public Housing, Families Keep Getting Sicker “The weight of the world is on my shoulders in my household. … I don\u2019t want to bury my child because of asthma.\u201d Darrow MontgomeryAlina keeps going to the hospital. The 10-year-old resident of Greenleaf Gardens has a health diagnosis her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-housingarchive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}