City Council - Housing & Community Development Committee Hearing on Dockets #0259 & #0769

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Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Chamber this morning. For the record, my name is Liz Breadon, District 9 City Councillor, and I am the Chair of the Boston City Council Committee on Housing. and Community Development. Today is October 16, 2025, and the exact time is 10.14 a.m. This hearing is being recorded. It is also being livestreamed at boston.gov backslash city-council-tv. and broadcast on Xfinity Channel 8, RCN Channel 82, Fios Channel 964. Written comments may be sent to the committee email at ccc.housing at boston.gov. and will be made a part of the record and available to all councillors. Public testimony will be taken at the end of the hearing and individuals will be called on in order in which they signed up and will have two minutes to testify. If you're interested in testifying in person, please add your name to the sign-up sheet near the entrance of the chamber. And if you're looking to testify virtually, please email our central staff liaison, Cora Montrond, at cora.montrond.boston.gov. for the link and your name will be added to the list. Today's hearing is on docket number 0259 in order for a hearing to discuss the status of the elevators at the Boston Housing Authority Ruth Burke, Barclay Apartments, and docket number 0769 in order for a hearing to discuss the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's HUD report on Boston Housing Authority. This matter was sponsored by Councillor Ed Flynn and Councillor Julia Mejia, co-sponsor on 0769, and referred to the committee on January 15th and April 2nd Ed Flynn, and Councilor Erin Murphy. and I have a letter of absence from Councillor Pepén. So we'll have opening remarks from Councillor Flynn as a lead sponsor. You've got two minutes.

Thank you to the residents for Ruth Barclay for being with us today. Thank you to Administrator Bach as well. Last year, I filed a hearing regarding aging elevators at Boston Housing Authority, which have posed public safety concerns. In November 2024, I held a hearing on this issue. What we all heard during maybe the most important hearing I have been a part of at the council was directly from residents at the Ruth Barclay apartments about not being able to go about their daily lives. They were heart-wrenching stories. They talked about not being able to get groceries, pick up medications, Staying active, going to medical appointments, family appointments, getting basic services, prolonged periods of elevated disrepair. They talked about not being able to get upstairs. and use the bathroom in time. Elevator access is essential for our seniors, persons with disabilities. This hearing will discuss the latest status of the BHA elevator modernization at Ruth Barclay. In February of this year, the Department of Housing and Urban Development Inspector General released a report on BHA and found that BHA did not consistently maintain its program units and buildings. Public Housing Programs units in decent, safe, and sanitary conditions and in good repair. It also found that the BHA did not consistently perform its annual self-inspections and correct identified deficiencies. The audit reported that both public housing units and buildings had deficiency and of the 31 of the 36 housing units inspected had deficiencies. and over a third had life threatening deficiencies that needed to be corrected within 24 hours. Some of these types of life threatening deficiencies including missing, or inoperable smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, security hazards, blocked egresses, electric hazards, inoperable fire exits. I represent the most public housing residents in the city of Boston. Our public housing residents are some of the most vulnerable residents in the city. They deserve respect. As leaders of the city, we have a moral obligation to ensure that all units meet HUD's and BHA's own requirements that our public housing residents live in a safe, decent, sanitary environment. This hearing will discuss any updates to the status of the elevators at Ruth Barclay, how BHA has improved on the issue. And again, we want to make sure accessibility for persons with disability and our seniors is a priority. This is a civil rights issue. This is a federal issue. In the final analysis, we talk about spending a lot on money on various programs. I can't think of what could be a better use of our time and efforts than focusing on ADA accessibility, civil rights, equity, and respect most of all for our neighbors at Boston Housing Authority. Thank you, Councilor Breadon.

Thank you, Councilor Flynn. We'll move straight to testimony from Administrator Bach. who's the administrator of Boston Housing Authority. And I understand you have a presentation. No, just for the lead sponsors. Do you mind? I'm happy to give way to the councillor, yeah. Okay, okay, that's fine. I'll reset. Two minutes, thank you.

Thank you, Administrator Bach. Josh, and other members of your team who are here, but especially to our residents who came to share their personal stories, which thank you, Councilor Flynn. I've been to some You know meetings that you've set up at the residence and in the community and the hearings that you filed here been a strong supporter of making sure that we uplift the voices of the residents who have some real concerns so Over the past year, we've heard too many stories from residents, especially our seniors and those living with disabilities, who have been trapped in elevators, missed medical appointments, or felt unsafe in their own homes due to conditions to the BHA developments. Specifically at Ruth Barclay Apartments, residents went through the holidays with broken elevators, relying on a single cab that often failed. These aren't just inconveniences, they're qualitative life and safety issues that violate basic human dignity. So thank you, because it's always vulnerable to share These concerns you have, so I appreciate you being here today to do that. Now with the release, which actually came out a little while ago, but the HUD Inspector General Report, we see this isn't an isolated problem. It's systemic. The report found that a majority of VHA units inspected had serious deficiencies including life-threatening ones, missing smoke detectors, Inoperable fire exits and electrical hazards. These findings raise fundamental questions about oversight, accountability, and how BHA is ensuring the safety and well-being of more than 17,000 residents across Boston. I believe we owe it to our residents, many of whom are family, seniors, and people with disabilities who often feel that their voices are not heard or they don't have a place here in City Hall to speak up. So we need to make sure that BHA is meeting its legal but also more importantly, it's moral obligations. So this hearing to me, it's about accountability and steps forward and I trust that the conversation today with you, Kenzie, Just that, and we'll have some action plan moving forward to make this better. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Murphy.

Administrator Bach, you have the floor. Great. Thank you so much, Madam Chair, and thank you to Councilor Flynn for calling the hearing and to Councilor Murphy. I'm really glad to be here today because I agree with the Councilor's comments that The conditions of BHA housing are the most important thing for all of us that work at Boston Housing Authority to focus on, and I think it's a good opportunity today to cover some of the work that we've been doing and are going to continue to do. If I just say next slide, Cora? Yeah, that might help, yes. Okay, great. And I'm sorry, this is a little small for those who are here in the Chamber. I think Councillors have a printed copy. Maybe just to start with saying that the HUD-OIG report, although it came out in February of 2025, was produced based on data from 2022 and 2023, right after the COVID pandemic and as I addressed in a letter to the council back in March and talked a little bit about at the budget hearing in May, that was a period in which it was right after the BHA and all public housing in the country and many more. The benefit to me in terms of being able to be here and talk to you about this today is that although the report came out in 2025, I got to see what the HUD OIG findings about 2022 and 2023 had been. Not long, like a few months after I had joined the Housing Authority as its administrator in sort of late 2023, and so really because of that we've spent the last two years focused on the ways to address these issues. So the good thing is that today some of the things that I'm gonna have an opportunity to talk to you about are things that we started before that report sort of formally came out because we had already seen the findings and we knew that we had to do work on it. Over the past two years, since that data reflected in the HUD OIG audit, we've really worked on addressing longstanding quality of life issues across our housing portfolio. As it says on the slide, by leveraging technology, new operational practices, and city resources, the BHA has made and is making significant improvements in the following areas. So there's elevator maintenance and modernization, work orders and physical inspection results, and then rodent reduction and trash management. If you go to the next slide, Cora. I wanted to start with elevators. And really, the first part of my presentation on elevators will be focused mostly on our elevators at Ruth Barkley. Ruth Barkley has... continue to be the site where we have the most challenges. And as lots of the residents behind me can attest, those challenges are ongoing. So I really want to focus on that first of all. Just a quick elevator snapshot. The BHA has 106 elevators across our portfolio in administrative buildings. and here's kind of a breakdown of them. In the elderly disabled portfolio, 49 cabs are doubles or triples. So we call those redundant elevators, aka if one is down, then the other one could be up. But and just two in the elderly disabled portfolio are singles. That used to be four. We just added through an ongoing capital project actually in your district, Madam Chair, at Commonwealth Elderly. We added two elevators to complement two non-redundant ones. And so since we've added these two new elevators, our total elevator count actually went up from 104 to 106. and we now are modernizing the two older ones. They don't have the redundancy yet, because since we put the new ones in, we've taken the old ones offline, but they will be fully redundant at that site. The place where we struggle a lot with non-redundant elevators, where there's just a single elevator, is in our family housing portfolio. So we have 37 cabs that are singles across four family sites. And then we have 10 cabs that are doubles, that are redundant, that are all at Ruth Barkley. However, as I'm going to address, one of our challenges is that a bunch of the Ruth Barkley We've had long-term outages of single elevators, which then makes that a non-redundant stack until it gets fixed. We go next to the next slide. This is about the BHA's sort of active ongoing elevator capital projects. We've got a number of active and recently completed elevator capital projects for more than $19 million. Our elevator spending comes out of two different buckets. There's the ongoing maintenance spending, and then there's the money that comes out of the capital budget, mainly the HUD capital budget. And this is in that second group. We completed this year elevator modernization at Hassan and Mattapan. I mentioned that we added these two redundant elevators at Commonwealth Elderly. At Torre Unidad, West Adam, Councilor Flynn and your district, both elevators the modernization of them was finally completed this month about a week or two ago which is huge for us and as you know that's a very large building and it's been very challenging to have this long ongoing elevator project happening so we're really excited that the And then at Ruth Barkley, we got funds from the city council to complement the funds we had from HUD. in order to commission modernization of all the tall elevators at Ruth Barclay. And what I'm very excited about is that, and I'll get into more of the details on this in a second, but basically we finally have the contract executed for the full modernization of those elevators for the benefit of the folks who are here. 14 East Brookline, 16 East Brookline, 23 Monsignor Reynolds, and 47 Harrison Archway. I'll go through this in a moment but basically the BHA had to first put out a design bid because each of the elevators is a custom width and height and everything had to be designed by an architect and so we were waiting on that for about six months and then we got that this summer. and that enabled us to put out the contract and get bids on it and now we've assigned it and we actually had the notice to proceed meeting yesterday which is the meeting with the contractor that gives them the green light to move forward. You'll also see on this in the capital projects list a portfolio-wide elevator assessment where we're planning to release the RFP this winter. This is really related to the fact that probably the most frustrating thing for me and I think the residents behind me and the councilors who are here and certainly for you, Councilor Flynn, is that, like, Where we've ended up with the Barclay elevators, with this many elevators all in a state of disrepair all at the same time there, is really not a place that we should end up. We've got to figure out, even with our limited resources, how we make sure that that we're doing advanced elevator replacement and modernization so that we don't get to the situation that we've been in. And so with that in mind, across our whole portfolio, we're doing this portfolio-wide elevator assessment so that the BHA can more proactively and many more. Thank you. So this is some context on Ruth Barkley. There's 15 elevators at the site. One challenge is I think I mentioned in the summary that a lot more of the family developments have non-redundant elevators. as opposed to the elderly disabled ones, but because the BHA adapted a number of units at Ruth Barkley for mobility now several decades back, we actually have quite a lot of elderly disabled residents at this family site. And so that means that the elevators that were not originally envisioning sort of the large mobility devices that we have today and that level of intensive use by an elderly disabled population has really been a challenge and is something that we're trying to address. I mentioned this already but all those elevators at Ruth Barkley are custom lengths and widths, which means that the design specifications for any elevator modernization They have to be done on a sort of time-consuming, custom elevator-by-elevator basis. But we are very grateful that the mayor and the city council approved capital funding to assist BHA in funding the modernization of these 10-, 10-story, and 13-story elevators which was well beyond what the HUD budget allocation would have enabled. So BHA commissioned the designs for the modernization of eight of those elevators and then We sort of separated out the two at 42 Harrison Archway so that we could get the work going on those this year. So 42 Harrison Archway, the work on both those elevators, fully upgrading them has just been completed and they're both online. I was just talking to somebody who lives there about another issue that just came onto my radar today, which is the question of not being able to tell whether the elevator that's going to come when you call is the large or the small one, which matters if you're in a mobility scooter. So that's something I'm going to bring back to my team and see what we can do about. But we're very pleased that those two elevators are back up and running. It took us a long time to get all the parts and to get them fully upgraded, but we're very, very excited they are. Designs for the other eight tall sites were all completed around August of this summer. However, in the meantime, what's been really challenging all summer at Barclay and into the fall is that one cab each at 14 East Brookline, 16 East Brookline, 23 Monsignor Reynolds and 47 Harrison Archway have had long-term outages. And those outages have been really due to like kind of core functional issues Thank you. Thank you. that puts more stress on the cab that is running and if they go down we have to use the elevator down protocols and it's very frustrating for the residents and for our staff and everybody. The good news is that All four of those stacks, as I said, those are the four pairs of elevators that we now have under contract to fully modernize. And at each of those sites, the first cab that they modernize will be the one that's been down. So that one will come on fully modern before the other one goes offline to be modernized. We will obviously have to stagger this, explicitly said in the contract that you could only bid if you were going to be able to work on multiple elevators at once because we don't want to have to do them one by one by one, so the teams are going to have to work on them at least two at a time, so at two of the addresses at a time. And we're going to accelerate that more if we can. Also, just a note that back in the winter of 2025, we signed an ongoing elevator service contract with Schindler Elevator. I know when we were last here, Councilor, we were talking about the long-term challenge we had had to get a permanent maintenance contractor on site. But we've also continued to have both United Elevator Corp and Motion Elevator Corp working on specific projects of the Berkeley site. and that's because there are so many elevators at the site with so many challenges that if we rely on only one company, which always has just a limited number of techs, then we don't get as much done as we need to. Go to the next slide. So I mentioned this, the design project was completed this summer. The modernization project for the eight remaining tall elevators went out to bid. We awarded that this month. and the eight elevators are going to be modernized starting in this last quarter of this year and continuing all through 2026. I also wanted to mention another project that we undertook over the summer. that was to put these fire keyholes we've now done it in all the resident elevators at Ruth Barkley except for 42 because it had that other project going on so we'll be doing it in 42 shortly what it does is the fire keyholes are An issue that we hit in the summer was that if there's an entrapment and the fire department comes and appropriately gets somebody out but uses axes to do it, the doors of this style of elevator are hard to procure. and so we ended up with a situation where because of that, the axes, we weren't able to replace the doors on an elevator for an extended period of time and that meant it was down, which is a hardship for our residents and stretches elevator down protocols out longer. The fire keyholes are a tool that you get in new elevators where there's basically a way for the fire department to sort of trip the doors open without needing the axes that deform the doors. So that's an exciting We want to make sure that it doesn't turn into it being down for weeks afterwards. I just wanted to touch on a couple other capital investments at Ruth Barkley. So in addition to the work on elevators, BHA is doing a major $12.9 million capital project there to replace windows and upgrade ventilation. This is really about providing greater comfort in terms of temperature and getting rid of drafts and also much healthier air to resonance with the ventilation. So this project is also already contracted and it's actively underway. We also continue to eliminate trip hazards at Ruth Barkley and other sites. We have a big BHA portfolio-wide project to repair and replace paved pathways and ramps. And this year, we've also been investing in refreshing community space at Ruth Barkley. along with the residential lobbies starting at the 42 and 47 Harrison Archway addresses. So I know folks will have seen that we put in new floors and fresh paint and did some work in those lobbies at those two Harrison Archway addresses so far, and then also in the community room that's used by the task force and others. If you go to the next slide. This is just a little summary kind of in a chart of the elevators that I've been talking about. So the first four are the shorter six-story elevators, so 19 Monsignor Reynolds Way, We did an upgrade of back in Q4 of 2024, and it's been operating well since then. We are doing a similar upgrade to its similar elevator at 29 Monsignor Reynolds Way. That's under contract and it's going to happen in this quarter. and then 10 and 20 East Brookline are also planned. We had hoped to get those done this year, but the elevator companies that we were contracting with didn't have the capacity with everything else going on. So we are hoping to have 10 and 20 also have that same upgrade soon in 2026. And then you see 23, 14, 16, and 17. Those are the four addresses, two elevators each, so eight altogether, where we've signed the contract for I believe it's H.J. Russell and United to do the modernization work at all eight of those caps. And the notice to proceed meeting to sort of launch that work happened yesterday. Then 42 Harrison Archway, which is our 13-story one, is the one where we completed the upgrade, both cabs, just a couple of weeks ago. And the only thing that we do still need to do there is add the fire keyholes into that one. And I'm also going to look into this question about the button and knowing which one's the large elevator and the small elevator. And then we have a little just sort of back office elevator that we use at the management office to get between the two levels of the management office. If you go to the next slide. This is just some photos of some of the, what I mentioned, some of the lobby and community space refreshing that we did this year. If you go to the next slide. This is more BHA wide, but it's definitely something that's been developed because of Ruth Barkley and the challenges we've had there. So these are our elevator down protocols, which we updated in early 2024, which kind of lay out for staff and residents how we handle when elevators are down for a prolonged period of time. or a short period of time. And we do a number of things. We'll offer residents an opportunity to stay in hotels for the elevators and the addresses where we've had prolonged outages. We've offered residence transfers to other sites or other addresses if that's something that they want. And it can also include in different situations us having We'll have paid BHA helpers at entryways and, like it says here, hotel stays and approved transfers, like I mentioned. We went through these protocols with the Disability Commission and the Architectural Access Board and we've really you know we feel like we've we've really strengthened them and what we've what we've worked on a lot since we put them out is training on them so we've really we've distributed them to all of our managers we've done regular updated trainings we're going to continue those on an annual basis And the Disabilities Commission and the AAB suggested last year that we sort of circulate a simplified version of them that's most relevant to residents. And we also posted them outside each elevator and inside the elevators. in English, Spanish, and Chinese at Berth Barclay. And it's just mentioned here for anybody who's watching at home, you can look at the detailed protocols at bostonhousing.org slash elevator. This is just a couple more notes. We have increased the daily inspections. One of the things we struggle with in all of our sites is people breaking entrance door locks, and so we're trying Thank you. Thank you. outside folks coming in and smoking that trigger those. And we're continuing to work on making the buildings more secure So one of the things that we've been working on portfolio-wide is putting in a system called ButterflyMX. It's a video intercom system. You may have seen it in many buildings. We've now finished putting it into all of our elderly disabled high-rise developments at BHA. We've also put it in at one building at Ruth Barkley, and we're continuing to install it. We're going to be installing it at other entrances at Ruth Barkley and other high-rise family public housing buildings in 2026. and continuing just in general to install cameras and lighting as needed on an ongoing basis. So that's what I have for now on elevators. I'll try to just keep moving through. Improve maintenance processes and procedures at BHA. Flynn. So basically a year ago, November 2024, I think when we were here, Councilor Flynn, for your last hearing, we had just made a whole bunch of major changes on maintenance leadership at BHA. So this details all the folks who got put into new positions at that time over the public housing portfolio. So David Gleisch, who's here with us, He's the Deputy Administrator for Housing Programs with Oversight over Public Housing Programs. Our new Chief of Maintenance and Inspections, Josh Uftring. We hired a new director of maintenance, John McDonough. He's not here. also our new chief of public housing programs and compliance, Kelly Cronin. And then, importantly, we created and filled a new regional manager operations position that focuses on overseeing elevator contracts and other contract management. to make sure that we're really getting what we need out of our contracts. So this was a big, big operational change at BHA in terms of leadership that happened a year ago. And it's really borne fruit. If we go to the next slide. So in January 2024, we reorganized our maintenance regions to allow for more efficient work allocation. And then, as I mentioned, we did this big change of leadership in 2024. And then we also on November 1st of 2024, which is a little less than a year ago, BHA fully transitioned to a new paperless work order system. So what that means is that now all of our work orders are digital and they actually all go to our maintenance workers' phones and folks take photos to show what they've done. and they're way more trackable than they were before and we're able to bundle them efficiently so we can like quickly identify oh there's three plumbing issues all in the same building let's send them all to the same plumber and tell them to go bang them all out today and it has really just meant to see change in our maintenance operations. So on October 11th, 2024, a year ago, we had 17,059 open work orders in BHA units. That's a very large number. There was a huge backlog from COVID. and on October 14th when we pulled this data two days ago, that number has dropped to 655. So it's a huge cut in the number of open work orders. and also it's a huge decrease in how long work orders are outstanding. So you can see only 12% are aged more than 30 days, only 2.6% aged more than 60 days and since I am always bothering our team about what is going on with any ones that are in that over 60 day. Those ones are always ones where there's some great complexity. There's some part that we are waiting on or something else going on that is preventing us from finishing it. Really watching those numbers of aging work orders because our goal is not just to have cut the backlog down in this enormous way that we have, but also to keep ourselves permanently at these much lower numbers. Flynn. BHA annual inspections, they're now conducted by trained inspectors instead of site managers. Councilor Flynn mentioned that one of the HUD OIG findings was that because we had the same folks who were managing the units inspecting the units. Sometimes that just means that you don't have quite the same eye for the details of things that need to be addressed. And also, frankly, our site managers weren't being served well because they didn't have inspector training. That wasn't their primary role. So what we did was we took our inspections department and just had them be the inspectors for our public housing units. So now our public housing units are being looked at with the same eyes as the private landlord units that get inspected by our team. And it's really just meant that catching issues and getting them into the work order system and then getting us to resolve them has really improved. So you saw that this year in our HUD inspection scores So there's a HUD inspections system called NSPIRE, which we do every year with all our public housing units. And this year, the BHA units averaged over a 90% score. Way up there, like 95, 96. And those were the highest marks that BHAs received in decades. And they were also, interestingly, better than the average results we saw this year at the privately managed public housing sites that we don't operate anymore. So even though those sites have generally seen investment more recently than our sites, because we've Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We had a few that saw enormous year-to-year improvements. Mary Ellen McCormick had a very low score the year before, 39. For 34, it was the lowest by far across our whole portfolio. and it went up this year to an 89. That was just a huge effort by the maintenance team. And I think it reflects the fact, Councilor Flynn, Mary Ellen McCormick's in your district, I think there had been a little bit of an orientation at the Housing Authority that Because Mary Ellen McCormick was going under redevelopment, it didn't make sense to spend so much money on continuing to fix it up. But the reality is that the redevelopment process takes so long. and that there are people who are going to live at Mary Ellen McCormick for another 10, 15 years in old buildings. And so the BHA absolutely needs to be keeping those up to the same standard as the rest of the site. So that's really the ethos that we've taken Now, at both Mary Ellen and Charlestown and Mildred Haley, all the big sites that we're doing redevelopment at, and you really see that in the improvement in the scores. And those improvements came in spite of major electrical upgrades that had to be completed for the new inspection standard. So the... Basically, just want to shout out our electricians. There was a huge change in the grounded electrical outlet need and also in the way that... that smoke detectors are distributed throughout the apartments and our electrical team at BHA did a ton. If you just go to the next slide. We've also, this is just a slide to show that we've also been doing refreshing of community spaces across the portfolio and elderly disabled sites in addition to the ones I talked about at Berkeley. I'll skim really quickly through the last slides because I can tell the council is eager to ask questions. So if you go to the next slide. Yeah, there we go. Just to say that We have a big waste management initiative at BHA focused on collaborating with the Zero Waste Boston targets. Really thinking about the fact that we're a huge proportion of the city's housing and so we generate a lot of the residential trash and that means anything that city's gonna do better on that front needs to happen better at the BHA. Go to the next slide, Cora. Our A really basic quality of life concern for all residents in the city of Boston, and I know the councilors hear a lot about it, is rodent control. And it's something that we see at BHA, just like in all the neighborhoods. So we've really been focused on new trash management strategies in partnership with Public Works and new rodent mitigation strategies in partnership with ISD. Go to the next slide. I won't go into this in detail because we talked about it at another council hearing recently. But we have been an active participant in the Boston Road in Action Plan, developing these new partnerships. One are these Extrasense AI-powered cameras to track rat activity that we talked about when we were here before. Another thing is, thanks to the Participatory Budgeting Award, we're doing a containerization pilot where we're changing the whole way that we do our trash corrals out in Brighton. And that's going to be paired with a PWD pilot Service them with commercial level service because what's gotten in the way of enclosed trash at BHA is that they have to be serviceable by the city trucks and the city trucks don't unlock things. Like they won't unlock a dumpster so you can't have a sealed dumpster. But we're trying a partnership with PWD to do something different that's more commercial level out in Brighton. We're getting the containers now, and the upgraded service is going to come in the spring. And we've also been piloting onsite composting, partnering with Bootstrap Compost at our Bunker Hill site. It's been really successful. Residents love it, and we're hoping to do more of that. Go to the next slide. That's just a picture of the pilot that we did in Charlestown around composting and different trash corrals in general, but we haven't been able to replicate this across the whole site because it It involves us pulling them out by hand because it's not compatible with the city trash service So that's where we're trying to come up with a more sustainable solution and then if you go to the final slide I just wanted to highlight that we have a new rodent prevention team at BHA. This is their logo. We, under the advice of ISD, we purchased two Burrow RX machines, which are these new These new machines for eradicating rat burrows. They're environmentally friendly. They're safe for use at our residential complexes. And we have this new dedicated rotor prevention team that's actively using these machines very effectively. We had a big comprehensive training for them on how to operate them. And they're going around to all of our sites. And they've knocked out a lot of burrows. And we've seen a lot of improvement in the number of 311s we're getting on rats. And we actually have that whole staff preparing to take the Massachusetts State Pesticide License Exam. to become licensed exterminators so that their capacities will be even more expanded beyond the use of the machine. They don't need the license for the use of the machine, but we want to combine it more with baiting and some other activities that they do need the license for. So that's exciting. So now I will go to the last slide. Just says thank you so much for all of your time and attention. And now happy to answer questions and discuss further.

Thank you, Director Bach, for a very comprehensive review of all things that you folks have been working on. I'll hand it over now to Councillor Flynn for your questions.

Councillor Flynn Yes, Madam Chair, before I speak, Don Oates is also speaking.

Do we want to give her the... We're going to do the first panel first and then we'll go to the second panel.

Okay, I didn't really even get to ask the question.

Yeah, I understand you had a second panel, so... Flynn. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Administrator Bock, I think you spoke for about 35 minutes. There's a lot of information you provided. I had an opportunity to listen to the residents before, and you painted a rosy picture of what's happening at Ruth Barclay Development. And I'm over there frequently in talking to the residents. They don't agree with that administrative block. I have to be honest with you. I have to do what I think is best for my constituents. and my constituents are not happy with what is happening at Ruth Barkley. You paint a very positive picture about the elevator system at Ruth Barkley. That is just not the case. I can't accept that. However, I do want to hear from my constituents that put me into office, that hold me accountable. I want to hear from them directly. So I'm a little disappointed. I know some progress has been made, but we have to be honest about what is happening at Ruth Barclay. We just can't say everything is going very well at Ruth Barkley and it's time to move on. That's not how I conduct myself as a city councilor, as a district city councilor. I fight like hell for my constituents.

Flynn, if I can address it. Don't intend to paint a rosy picture. I think I tried to be clear about the fact that we've continued to have an elevator down at each of those addresses that I mentioned, the tall ones, and it's been very frustrating for residents. I totally agree with you. And the good news that I I'm eager to share is the fact that we have this full modernization under contract now. And I'm super grateful for your advocacy and everybody in this room's advocacy to help get us the money to do that. But of course, I agree with you. that until those elevators are actually modernized and replaced, people are not going to experience it as an improvement. And I know that and agree with it. I think that we have been pushing as hard as we can to get to this point where the work actually starts. It's certainly been both an education and frustrating for me that we had this six-month period of getting those designs done in order to be able to bid out that work. And I totally agree with you that if I were a resident continuing to deal with an elevator that keeps going down and one that's down a long time, I had a firefighter.

Tell me and a resident tell me that a firefighter had to carry a resident down the stairs because that resident couldn't access the elevator system. That resident had to go to a medical appointment. Administrator Block, do you keep track of the 911 calls that go into Ruth Barclay as it relates to Elevator system being down or EMS response or firefighters response or police response.

The BHA doesn't get the 911 call logs, no. We do keep track of elevators going down and going back up.

Okay. Through the chair, I'm respectfully requesting All 911 calls that go into Ruth Barclay over the last four years. For any reason, I want to look at those 911 calls. and what the reason those calls were about. I just can't accept elderly people and persons with disabilities waiting for an elevator When they have a, one person had a cancer, a cancer appointment to get chemotherapy and that person, elderly person, couldn't get to their appointment. One woman said to me, That she was waiting for the elevator to go up to her apartment. The elevator didn't come. She had to go to the bathroom very bad. That's why I take these issues very seriously. So, can you tell me how many elevators, briefly, just tell me how many elevators are down right now at Rooftop?

I think right now it's those four that I mentioned. So one each at 23 Monsignor Reynolds, 47 Harrison Archway, 14 Brookline Ave, and 16 Brookline.

The elevators are consistently breaking all the time and then the elevator companies come and fix them, but it's kind of a process of breaking down and then fixing them and then we pretty much use two

We've had one contractor, Schindler, but we've also We've also had sort of specific like emergency work stuff that we've given to United and to Motion.

Yeah, okay. And the reason The reason we were using those two companies is why Administrator Block.

So the, you know, we bid out, sorry, do you mean Motion and United? Yeah, so we bid out the overall maintenance contract. and the maintenance contract is kind of the like respond when something is down but when we find out that you need like a whole like you know maybe a whole bunch of parts need to be ordered and and work needs to happen over a series of weeks if Flynn. Because we have so many of these elevators that are in need of service at Ruth Barkley, if only one team was responding to that, we wouldn't be able to do all the work as quickly as possible. And I agree with you, Councilor Flynn. We need to address these issues as soon as possible because each one affects. So I don't want it to be like, oh, this one's down, but we're waiting for the same tech team in order to fix this other one. So that's why we've been calling on others as well.

What is the average time an elevator is down?

I don't have that number. It's all over the place.

Okay. How fast is the elevator fixed?

Again, it totally depends. We get very quick response on the initial folks showing up. But if it's an easy fix, it's an easy fix. This is actually one of the reasons that we added the fire keys holes that I mentioned is because, for instance, at one of the elevators this summer, I think it was 23, but it might have been 29, Monsignor Reynolds. We had an issue where because a number of the doors were broken by the axes, It took weeks for the replacement doors to come, and in the meantime, we were stuck with that elevator down.

Here's my problem. If an elderly person is in a wheelchair, needs to get to a medical appointment, The elevator is not working. What is the protocol to help that elderly person get to her medical appointment?

When an elevator is down, there's two different situations. One is it's already down. So then if the elevator's been down, then we've called through the entryway. We've offered people, if it's going to be down for an extended period of time, a hotel stay. If they know, oh, I'm going to need access to other things to get off-site. We also, I think I mentioned before, we offer transfers to folks who are just tired of dealing with this. And so we have moved a number of folks, although a lot of folks want to stay at Ruth Barkley because it's a great community. If somebody's at a site and we have an elevator that's down and we get 24 hours of notice, we will schedule somebody to come and help them get down. One of the challenges we've seen since the pandemic is that a lot of the ambulance companies that used to offer that service of carrying people down in chairs have stopped offering that service? That's something that's been covered in the news.

Yeah, that's my question. If someone has a medical appointment and they're preparing to get there, They're leaving their apartment, going to the elevator, pressing the button. The elevator is not coming. And they're on the fourth floor. And that person needs to get to their medical appointment for an important meeting with their doctor or nurse. How are we getting that person to the medical appointment that takes place in 40 minutes?

In some cases, the fire department has been able to respond in those situations, but it tends to be either that or there's a failure of counsel.

Or most likely is the person doesn't go to their medical appointment. And for a senior or a person with disability to miss their medical appointment, as we all know, that's life and death, in my opinion. A senior should not miss their medical appointment. A person with Disabilities can't afford to miss their appointments either.

Absolutely. And so we do have a company, as I mentioned, that we... that we call when we know about these in advance. The fire department does come and do it, especially in situations that are an emergency. We've also worked with people to reschedule medical appointments. But you won't get any disagreement from me, counselor, that We need these elevators to be reliable for our residents, and that's why we're undertaking the modernization.

Thank you, Councillor Flynn. Move on to the next. Councillor Murphy, you have the floor.

You talked about accommodating residents when there have been times that they needed to get to maybe an appointment or their apartment. They needed to move out. And you mentioned maybe there's hotel stays. If you could just be more specific about how residents get that communication, who they ask for that support if needed. And do we provide it 100% of the time? And who makes the decision of how we accommodate?

Yeah, so our managers will call through when we're in the elevator down protocols or have somebody on their team do it. One of the things that we really worked on was, you know, Standardizing this, to your point, like making sure that we were making the same offers to everybody and that people knew what the protocol was across our portfolio. So if we anticipate that an elevator is down for more than 48 hours, a host health stay will be offered. and there could be situations where somebody says, hey, I really need this even if it's less than that because I'm expecting to go to a medical appointment in the morning and I can't be stressed about that.

And is that shared? Like, how do we communicate? Is it an email? Is it a flyer that residents are given? Is it posted somewhere?

So we have a one call now system, which is like a robocall system where residents can sign up to get those notifications as soon emails, texts, or phone calls. They default to phone calls, and then you can pick the other options if you want, and then we also do them in translation.

And so how do we... How many times have we been able to accommodate residents that needed this support? And how much does that cost us?

I don't have exact numbers on that, but we've been doing a lot of it because of the challenges at Ruth Barkley, and it's certainly expensive. I mean, that's one of the reasons that obviously we're thrilled about getting to actually modernize these elevators. It's both expensive for the authority and not good for residents to have life disrupted in this way.

Like someone with a disability or a senior, I could have two, three doctor's appointments a week minimum. Does that mean they're staying at hotels? Is it common? So I didn't think it was common that BHA residents are often staying at hotels so that they can get to their appointments safely.

Only if the elevator that they're in their entryway is down for a prolonged period of time, then we would I mean then it's important for us to make that happen because it's exactly what Councillor Flynn was saying about how important those medical appointments can be.

Okay. How are we ensuring that the residents' voices are part of the solution process?

Yeah, so I think that It's really been resident advocacy that's helped us, frankly, I think, get the council support for the funding. And also, we have a state year mark. I think it's held up right now in the As you know, the state's sort of holding some of the monies because of budget issues. But we did appreciate the state also coming in on this. And that's really been because of our residents raising their voices. We had it once when we were getting the elevator maintenance contract online in the winter, finally having selected somebody My team went out and had a big meeting with residents to sort of lay out where everything stood and what we were still working on. I had a letter that went out in August to give folks an update In part because, as I said, and just acknowledging the Councilor's point, it's continued to just take a long time to make these changes, and so it's been frustrating. We've continued to hear from residents, so we continue to try to give people these updates about where we are.

And how are we prioritizing funds across the developments? I know we're here to speak about the Ruth Barclay specifically, but we know there's elevators down in maintenance needs that are life-threatening across all of our BHA developments. So how do we prioritize that?

Yeah, for sure. That's one of the challenges. So Ruth Barclay is about 5% of our total federal public housing. That's really why I mentioned on the slide that we're doing this portfolio-wide elevator assessment, because that's one of the things that I said as well, Councilor, when I came in, is why didn't we already have this on the and so on. And so because of that because we don't want to end up in this situation again We're doing a full all of our elevators portfolio-wide assessment so that we can get those modernizations in the queue to the extent that we're able with our resources before we're in the situation that we're in at Ruth Barkley.

So I had a question about how many formal complaints. And I know Councilor Flynn already requested all the 911 calls that came through. How many formal complaints were filed by residents in 2024 and so far in 2025?

Sorry, by formal complaints, do you mean specifically about elevators at Barclay?

I would like all of them at Ruth Barclay. I know many of them, I would think. And what is the protocol for you? Keeping, because sometimes it's just a phone call. It could be a message to me.

Yeah, so there's a bunch of different ways that the housing authority sort of tracks things that come in from residents. There's obviously work orders, which is a specific thing that needs to be fixed, right?

But that's only after you got a complaint and you're going to actually fix it.

Well, as soon as somebody makes a complaint about a physical thing, there's a work order opened, right? So there could be a work order opened, whether we fix it yet or not. There's also anything that just sort of comes in as a complaint, a question. We get that and we track those in another system we have called Zendesk that lets us just track have we gotten back to people about this. So there's the Zendesk complaints as well. And that's usually... Because to your point, things that you might call a complaint come in in a lot of different formats. So most of those are in Zendesk. The exception to that would be we also have a totally separate formal process for civil rights issues. So civil rights complaints are dealt with

We have civil rights complaints, Zendesk, and then we have the work order system. If we could get the information from all three of those, that would be good.

I will say that I'll work with my team around what we can provide. The BHA has Strict PII requirements. So there's a lot of personal information in some of those requests. So we just have to figure out what we can give you that's summarized.

Yeah, you can give the description of what's wrong without, I don't need to know which apartment, who it's coming from. Okay, I have one minute to go. It was said, but what current protocols for responding to life-threatening deficiencies that have been brought up? And Councilor Flynn had mentioned some serious ones that he knows from being on site and speaking to the residents directly. Electrical hazards, smoke detectors, what is the protocol for responding to those types?

Yeah, so those things go in as emergencies and they get responded to as emergency work orders and those are not aging to 30 or 60 days. Those are 24-hour issues and I would say The issue in the OIG report where there were some of those deficiencies that were not being responded to in that way, that was one of the things that really pushed us to this digital work order system because with the paper work order system, it was possible for things to sort of go missing. and for the BHA and in some cases some of the ones that HUD flagged the BHA had actually dealt with But the paperwork that demonstrated that they've been dealt with had been lost. And so we were just like, we can't have that. We have to know that we're dealing with these 24-hour deficiencies in 24 hours. And that was part of what pushed us to the new system.

Who's the one who codes a work order as an emergency?

So there's a whole set of categories that are automatically emergencies. It's not like a human judgment so much.

If you could share that too. Yeah, there's a whole bunch. Because I'm glad to hear it's not just a decision.

No, HUD's quite strict about what counts too.

And would that be a separate list of work orders, the emergency ones, or would they be included and they'd just be flagged as?

They'd be included, but they're flagged as emergencies, and the way that the data gets sorted, they sort of pop to the top.

And on that? Data, do you track the time if it's still open, kind of like 311 calls? Yes. If it's completed, when it got completed? Yes. Are there descriptions of what is the status if it's in progress?

Yeah, so the work order system tracks exactly like, you know, has this been assigned to somebody, right? And as I mentioned, that's been another nice thing about the change to the digital system is that now when work orders are assigned, it's like, literally it gets sent to their kind of handheld and it's with them.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Murphy.

So I had a few questions. I'd love to dig more into the whole question of custom design and why that's such a problem for the elevators. Like, have we any elevators that are like standard design and are the new elevators that have been and so on.

When we are able to build a totally new elevator in a totally new building, then yes, one of the things that we really try to do is make sure that we're just building things to the industry standard. I think the problem is a lot of our buildings are so old that they predate a sense of, oh, we should have an industry standard here. And so when we modernize an elevator at one of these buildings, It's still going to be custom because we can't change the sort of width. Yeah, exactly. The shaft is a fixed thing. And if we change the shaft, then we're going to be losing apartments most likely. Or at least bedrooms in apartments. So we don't really have the ability to standardize those existing ones, but where we're doing new, yeah, one of the things that we're thinking a lot about, because this is such a hard problem for us, is how do we make sure that we're putting in new systems that are I will say that a frustrating thing about the elevator industry right now they've gone to all of these kind of like computerized controllers that although they have a lot of like kind of bells and whistles of diagnostics and like they'll tell you what's wrong and they have all these safety checks in place, it's software basically and so it's basically like a computer in each elevator and so if it becomes obsolete like you When elevators were all mechanical, you could have the right guy on staff who could fix the pulleys. I'm exaggerating, but not really. Whereas for now, it's all proprietary software, and so you can end up in situations even with new elevators where You know, a sprinkler goes off and douses the controller. It's down and suddenly like you just can't do anything except for commission a new controller and wait for it to come.

As we found in our elevators.

Oh yeah, City Hall had exactly that problem. So I wouldn't say that even the newest elevators are without challenges these days. It's a challenging industry.

In terms of supply chain, I know that during COVID we had a lot of supply chain issues. Does that apply to elevators as well? And also the impact on the current Federal policy about tariffs and things. Is that impacting anybody?

Yeah, in a huge way. So often we will commission work and sign the contracts for it and then still be waiting for parts for many weeks, sometimes months. We actually have One set of elevators, not at Ruth Barkley, at another site of ours where we have long been trapped by the fact that they have this jack in them that's only made in Germany. that we're like constantly experiencing delays whenever it has an issue. So we're actually trying in one of those elevators changing to an American-made different system. And we're doing that in one first. And if it goes through smoothly and we feel like it's working well, We're going to make that same change in the other ones that are dependent on that German part because it's become so unreliable.

And then I had a question about the inspections. You have more... Are you responsible for doing other inspections? Do you have to inspect properties for VHA vouchers? That's right. I'd love to know just exactly what the landscape looks like for your inspectors.

Yeah, so we had an existing inspections team whose job was to inspect private apartments that are being used by Section 8 voucher holders. And so what we did, the change that happened in the last year and a half is that we took that team and we had them add to their portfolio of work, inspecting all of our own units. So they're a different team from the team that manages the public housing units. And they are trained inspectors, so they know the building code, sanitary code, all those things really, really well.

And then the waste management, I know we got some money from participatory budgeting to do some interesting innovations out at Commonwealth. What exactly are they doing out there? And then also the other question we hear a lot about is just illegal dumping. Like people drive onto a BHA property and dump all their stuff. And it impacts the quality of life for the residents.

Yeah, it's a huge issue for us, the illegal dumping. And the thing that's been really hard for us to address about it is that we're very grateful to be served at BHA by the city trash service, but the city trash service only can operate open dumpsters of the kind that don't like shut up and that's because they're covering so much ground in a day that those teams need to be able to just dump like they can't They can't do what private commercial trash services do where they keep a ring of keys and they come and unlock your dumpster and they dump it in and then they close it back up. But that is a much better system, that commercial grade level service, Thank you for joining us. It's better. It means you can have more secure dumpsters when it comes to rodents. So that's why what we're testing at Brighton is not just like upgraded dumpsters, but also this commercial level haulage service to go with it. and we have a theory that even though that involves, that's sort of more of a, it's an upgraded service so it costs a bit more per visit for them to do it, that if we can reduce the illegal dumping volume at the BHA sites that actually will reduce the tipping charge. So we think it's going to come out in the wash, but we have to test it.

Okay.

It's good to try it out. Yeah, definitely. I think for us, it's so unfair to me that public housing tenants get tagged with The fact that there's a lot of trash at sites when it's actually a lot of people coming from outside of the public housing developments and dumping the trash. So we really have to fight back against that.

And then in terms of the HUD funding, like I know we're in this sort of very tenuous moment right now that we don't, there's no predictability about federal funding for anything really at the moment. What are you anticipating in terms of cuts to HUD funding for public housing in the future?

Regular October funding despite the shutdown. So that was good news. And we're hopeful that we will get our November funding even if the shutdown continues. But because the way that HUD works, they already have the money in hand. and so on. In terms of the overall outlook, we were very concerned when the White House proposed budget cuts of 40% to HUD programs, both public housing and vouchers, in May. We were really relieved when the House and the Senate really rejected that. So the Senate proposal, it would basically be to keep us whole. And even the House proposal, I think there is a 10%. Cut to the public housing operating budget that's proposed So we really want to see that come out by the time they reach a final budget But it isn't that draconian 40% that we were talking about when I was here in May. Okay fingers crossed Fingers, all the fingers crossed.

All the fingers crossed. That's all my questions for now. Councillor Flynn is the lead sponsor. Do you have any other additional questions?

Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'll give you another four minutes there.

Thank you. Administrator Block, what is the status of the lawsuit by Attorney General Campbell on public housing in Franklin Field?

So that is in litigation. It's in discovery right now, and I can't speak further about an active case.

Okay. After the HUD audit, Did BHA take these actions on its own? Did they comply with the HUD recommendations? Are we in compliance now?

Yeah, we're fully in compliance. HUD has closed out the entire audit on both the leased housing and public housing side. And so that means both that we addressed the specific issues they mentioned, but also that we implemented all of the recommendations.

Will you commit to presenting a complete budget, a budget book to the council appearing before the Ways and Means like all other city departments do during next budget season?

Unfortunately, Councilor, our budget doesn't run on the same cycle as the city. So like the federal budget, to be honest, we, to some extent, find out how much money we're getting from the federal government, which is 90% of our funding on sometimes a month-by-month basis. Certainly been that way for the last couple of years. So we don't have the kind of traditional, it's kind of crazy, but basically the federal government doesn't provide us with the type of budget outlook that the departments are able to provide you at the city level.

I've been hearing about windows for a long period of time at Ruth Barclay. When are the windows going to be done?

I'm going to ask Rick, do you know when the window ventilation project at Ruth Barkley is active right now? It's a whole, I think we're doing, obviously it's a lot of units, so we're doing it in stages. And how long is the installation gonna take us? That's what I thought. 14, yeah, okay, so a little, so. So I'll just repeat, because for those watching at home, they can't hear off the mic. So at Ruth Barkley, the windows have all been ordered for this project. And they're coming in in the next two or three weeks. And then they're being installed. Not simultaneously in all apartments, obviously, in stages across the site. It's probably going to take a little more than a year for all of them to come in.

My recommendation, I want to see Ruth Barclay be the next Thank you very much. Thank you, Councilor.

So I think that's actually something I'd love to explore more with you and with the residents at Ruth Barkley. I will say that a long time ago, Ruth Barkley was proposed for redevelopment, and actually Ruth Barkley herself, who it's named after, and Mel King, at the time were against the redevelopment because what they were worried about was privatization. So that was what caused the BHA not to move forward with the redevelopment at Ruth Barkley at that time. I think what's changed now is that there are more tools for us to do that kind of heavy reinvestment, redevelopment while maintaining public ownership, which wasn't true when Ruth Barkley and Mel King were fighting it decades ago. I do think especially Councilor with the parts of the site you know how at the four corners we have those non-redundant elevators and the six-story buildings I think that you know when we think about how to kind of for the long term really have the ADA accessible units with redundant elevator service that we'd really like to have at the site. I do think we should start to explore it, but that's something that the BHA is never going to make a decision about without a lot of conversation with residents, and it would be great to have you involved in that too.

When can that conversation start? I think the conversation should have started yesterday, but Ruth Barclay should be the number one development where we invest significant amount of money into. We should have put federal ARPA funds into Ruth Barclay like we did other developments across the city. My constituents deserve a little bit of respect. It may be one of the biggest developments with the highest number of seniors and persons with disabilities. and I want to do everything I possibly can to ensure that they are treated with respect and they live in a safe and healthy apartment. Is that something you are committed to?

Absolutely. And I do think we have some ARPA money going into this windows and ventilation project, so I do want to say I think we do have some ARPA money in Ruth Barclay, but I would love to work with you, Councilor, Get More Money Invested at Ruth Barkley, and I'm happy to start that conversation later this fall.

Okay. I hope there's no delays with the window installation at Ruth Barkley. Me too. Because if there is a delay, I know the residents are going to let me know about it that minute. And then I'm going to call Kenzie Block two minutes after that.

Sounds like a plan.

Look forward to your call. Murphy, did you have any further questions?

I'll wait for the next panel.

Okay. It seems, Director Bock, that we have exhausted all our questions for you. Thank you so much for your testimony.

Thank you so much. I want to thank the counselors for being here and for raising these issues and for caring about our residents. And I want to thank the residents behind me for all of their work and also just say that I know to the councilor's point, we're not there yet on the Ruth Barkley elevators. I'm really, really looking forward to the day that we have all 15 elevators at that site up and running. We actually will go to taking some public testimony

This new number thing, I'm trying to figure this out here.

Do we have anybody?

She's on.

Well, she's on Zoom. She's the next panel. Okay. Just these two, actually, are here.

These two?

On Zoom, just these two. These two on Zoom?

Are they here now?

They're on Zoom. Okay, well... She's second here on Zoom.

Yeah, okay, we'll take these two Zoom and then we'll go to the second panel. So we have two folks waiting on Zoom for public testimony. Kimra Minniti. and Lisandra Montes. So is Kimra ready to testify?

Yes, I'm available.

Welcome, Kimra. You have two minutes. I'll start the clock and you have the floor.

Okay, thank you very much for allowing me to testify this morning. As City Councilor mentioned, the situation at Ruth Barkley is not good in any way, shape, or form. Ms. Bach may not be able to sleep at night, but we're actively being harmed every time the elevator breaks down. I've just come from a round of runs through the ER because of the stress and strain of the elevator breaking down so many times this summer. and the business of people being able to go to hotels is actually very much untenable because It takes three months or almost four months to get reimbursed for the money that you spend while you're in the hotel. It's not sustainable. So instead of going to a hotel when you desperately need to, you can't even go because the amount of money that it costs you to be there doesn't get back to you until you've already been depleted multiple times. And this is what's been happening ever since I've moved into this apartment complex. I moved in about 18 months ago. It's debilitating my health. Continuously, I'm getting actually sicker living here, and the rats and the rodents are not being reduced. And so I'm very stressed out about the level. I'm very happy to hear that some of these things are going to be improved, but the time span in which it takes For all this to happen, people are already being harmed. I'm being harmed. I continue to be harmed. I can't even be there physically today because my health continues to deteriorate. I live on the sixth floor, I'm disabled, and... and I'm sick. I'm really sick and it's not getting better. And now I need to try to find a way to move out of here. When we call the people to tell them the elevator is broken, we need someone to come bring our Our grocery is up to you. Then they're not even understanding what we're asking them for. They're being rude about it. They're closing out work orders before We even get a chance to get them taken care of and you have to go back in and call and make a work order again. People are even tired of making work orders because they don't believe that they're going to get taken care of. So this is very problematic. The people at the Work Order Center need to be retrained in themselves because they're not responding appropriately to these conversations. It's very stressful, very, very stressful.

Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. Next up we have Lizandra Montes. Can you hear me, Lizandra? There you are. Welcome, Lisandra, you have the floor. Can you hear me? Lisandra? Oh, here she comes. Can you hear me?

Can you hear me?

Yes, I hear you. Can you hear me? Perfect. Very good. You have the floor. You have two minutes. Thank you.

Okay, well, as the person before me was saying, I'm also trapped in my unit and I've been trapped for a couple, Um, months now because of the situation of the elevators, it breaks down and they fix it and they, um, it gets messed up in minutes or hours, even days. and also when we call, they give us rude comment. They're really, really rude. And it's not fair to us that We have to deal with people like them saying, yeah, they'll fix it. And then we have to wait hours before they come and actually fix the elevators. So I would like to like, I understand when will that be fixed? Because at the end of the day, I'm the one inside my unit. and most of the time I'm scared to go down and unable to come right back up. I have missed a couple activities due to the situation because I can go down And when I come back, I'm afraid that it will break down again. So to be honest, I would like to understand how long is this going to be Thank you for joining us. to the 29 because of that same issue. I moved from a fifth floor to a second floor and I'm still having the same issues and I at this point it's not fair.

Thank you. Thank you for your testimony, Lysandra. Thank you.

You're welcome.

So we're gonna move on to the second panel. Don Oates, who's a disabilities advocate. Don, if you'd like to, Don's going to be testifying remotely as well. Let's see, set the timer. Okay, Don, you have the floor.

Madam Chair, first, thank you. I'd just like to ask for equal time as Administrator Bock. I was told I would be a panelist as well, and she had 35 minutes, I think, from what Councillor Flynn said. Pardon? I'm requesting respectfully that I have equal time to speak as Administrator Bach. Councillor Flynn said she spoke for 35 minutes.

Do you have a presentation?

I do. I was told that I was invited as a panelist, so I was hoping to get equal time. I don't anticipate using all of it, but if needed.

Very good. On you go.

Thank you so much. Good morning, everybody, or close to afternoon. Councilors, Administrator Bach, and guests from Ruth Barkley, I thank you so much for coming all the way out this morning for this important meeting. And thanks for inviting me to speak on behalf of the residents of Ruth Barkley and all Bostonians living in public housing that's become unsafe and inaccessible. I want to note that I have COVID. I would be there in person, but I am very ill, but I did not want to miss this. So I'm on medication. So I apologize. This is not going to be my absolute best performance today, but I'm going to. Tell you what I can, and I hope it helps. My name's Dawn Oates. I'm a disability rights advocate. I'm the director of a nonprofit dedicated to equity and inclusion for people with disabilities. I've never before discussed my credentials to this council or any of the access board hearings that I've attended, but it sort of makes sense, I think, to do that now for a minute, given the presentation that you've heard today, which I agree with Councillor Flynn. It does focus on more of the positives of what's happening at Ruth Barkley and in PR speak, which you'll see from my credentials, we call that sometimes polishing a turd. My apologies for the crude comment, but that is That is what it looks like to many of the residents and to me. I did study public relations at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. I have a master's degree from Harvard Graduate School of Education where I studied disability law from Harvard law professors and community organizing at the Kennedy School. So I've spent 13 years navigating accessibility systems and often The failures of those systems and this Boston Housing Authority handling of the Ruth Barkley apartments is one of the clearest examples of that failure that I've seen in recent years. and that's after spending nine years of my early career managing college dorms in Boston including all of the maintenance issues like elevators, and I've worked as a project manager on two commercial elevator installations in residential buildings and those were completed inside of three months. That said, here's a little bit of the history that led us to this point. I began visiting Ruth Barkley 10 years ago. I started noticing ongoing elevator issues six years ago when a close friend of mine who lives there was unable to keep appointments and engagements with me. on a regular basis. And then I launched an organizing campaign three years ago after efforts to educate the residents on how to report work orders and follow up on those work orders failed. Not for any of their actions. After more than 50 media impressions which I assume most of you if not all of you have seen at some point including Local and national media and all forms of media, including People Magazine, The Globe, The Herald, you name it. Ruth Barkley elevators were in it. 13 architectural access board complaints nine of them are still open the HUD audit two city council hearings including today's it feels like we are still very much at the starting line Today, I'm really here to plead with you on behalf of the residents to take whatever action that you can to intervene, to look beyond what you've heard today, the testimony or the The update that largely denies and discounts and misleads even you into believing that the efforts that the BHA has outlined today have really meaningfully improved the residents' ability to have equal, safe, and accessible homes. That's required by state and federal law. I'm going to walk through a little bit of the history, the reality on the ground, and the accountability gap, which looks like a systemic pattern, and the violations of civil rights and other laws and regulations. And I really hope that this council will engage in specific questioning of Administrator Bock today and discuss what concrete steps can be taken next to expedite what everyone should be considering an emergency. And I apologize, I am short of breath due to my illness, so please bear with me. So starting with October of last year, because I think everyone knows the history up to that point, I presented Administrator Bach in person with a detailed letter documenting many of the very conditions that HUD would later flag in its audit report. These conditions BHA had known about for months. I didn't know that there was a HUD I didn't know that there would be a report coming out. I actually found out when the Boston Herald called me to comment on it. So Administrator Bock at that meeting with her attorney down on Chauncey Street immediately asked me to postpone if she could postpone responding to the letter about how she was going to address The items in the letter are the pests and the mold and the rodents and the windows and the heat and the elevator and the ramps. All of it outlined along with the legal reasons that they needed to be fixed and the timeliness that was urgent at that time one year ago. She asked me to postpone that until December 5th. Of course, I complied. I had asked for a November 5th one-month deadline. She asked for two months. I said, that's fine. Later, realizing that perhaps that was to move past our last scheduled city council meeting about this. Those who attended noted at that meeting my collaborative and collegial posture with Administrator Bach. She then ignored the December deadline entirely, and I followed up several times. She ignored all of my follow-up emails. until I finally coordinated a January an NBC Boston investigative piece to run and I asked the reporter to notify her office that it would be running despite that I had told her that in good faith I would hold that and not run with a story that I had disclosed at the October meeting was underway if she would sit with me and collaborate with me on details timeline proper communication with the residents Transparency is what we were asking for. And we agreed that it was reasonable that dates could move, and that was fine. But that timeline, residents need to know when, what's the budget, When is it planned? What is the progress at this moment in time? That's what I asked for, okay? Didn't hear back from her until the reporter contacted her. She responded that day without acknowledging the prior correspondence. Apologizing, blaming the change of administration, the death of President Carter, while requesting yet another extension to January 24th. I simply reply back to her that I can't stall advocacy efforts for deadlines that don't materialize and that residents deserved much better than this. And I wasn't going to stop.

Excuse me. In light of Director Bock's presentation this morning, have you identified any outstanding pieces? You have to acknowledge there's been a lot of progress been made. Can you just get into the details of the outstanding pieces?

I'd like the opportunity to present my testimony as I prepared it in the time frame that I was given. I do address the main issues.

But I would like to understand the outstanding pieces that you've identified.

We'll understand.

Thank you.

When her letter finally arrived on January 24th, which was four months after our meeting, it appeared to me defensive, dismissive, and it didn't have any details or accountability that were specific that I asked for. It avoided the central questions. It failed to acknowledge the legal obligations and it read more like a press response or a legal response. She vehemently denied any wrongdoings in all the areas that I had raised. including the Rodent and Pest Control, Heating, Elevators, any wrongdoings. I first learned about the HUD audit, I said, from the Herald. When I view the report, I clicked the link and I was astonished that the Herald Reporter sent me the link and when I read the report, There was a letter from Administrator Bach, sent the exact same letter she sent me a letter saying she vehemently denies any wrongdoing. But this letter to HUD on the same day said she generally agrees with the very allegations that she denied to me. So two letters, two versions of the truth, one for the residents and one for the regulators. So this appeared duplicitous. It captures the pattern that we've been fighting. There's this PR spin that you heard today. All the great things we're doing. Why do we need to know about... New buzzer systems. We're talking about people who cannot get in and out of their homes. We're talking about people who sleep in the hallway, who are afraid to leave. You heard from Lissandra, who didn't say this, but she is a wheelchair user who moved from one building 19-month senior that got all the publicity when we did the 50 PR hits and she moved to 29 across the street and she's been contacting me since the summer saying she's trapped on and off on and off on and off. And I'm happy for her to call me and let me know. But here's the thing. This can't go on forever. We need problem solving. The reality on the ground is that unsafe at Ruth Barkley means that the elevators repeatedly fail. You don't always have 48 hours notice to decide to stay in a hotel. And you can't always give 24 hours notice to set up a wheelchair van. I've heard of residents telling me that the fire department told me that they're over there almost every day. and it's never a fire and that's taken away from actual fires and I heard a resident tell me a couple weeks ago last week that they called the fire department to get access to an appointment and the fire department said no they weren't going to do that. So this is leaving residents, many elderly and disabled residents, trapped for hours or for days. It means they have to crawl up the stairwell or down the stairwell. Missed chemotherapy, I know somebody who missed chemotherapy three times because the elevator was down, three different times of the year. We know that somebody slept in his wheelchair in the hallway one night. In the hallway. And you heard Administrator Bock testify that the locks on the doors are broken. That could present an unsafe situation. Even a resident... This upsets me to even talk about because it just happened either last week or the week before. I heard three people tell me about a resident who was trapped in the elevator at 47 for up to two hours who missed her son's funeral. She arrived only in time to throw herself over his casket, maybe 10 minutes before it ended before they were leaving for the cemetery. I'm sure you can all imagine how atrocious that is. Residents have to live with that, but also with persistent leaks, flooding. There's one resident who I'm sure will speak to the fact that she reported inspectional services, and they came and said that her apartment could not be—it was not— It was not inhabitable. It was flooded and it did not receive the response that it deserved. Vermin, bedbugs. Two residents I'm aware of who have been constructively evicted, told that they had to leave their homes that they have lived in, one for 16 years, one for 30-something years. came back and were locked out of their homes and no expenses for moving and moved to a different public housing area against their wishes. Instead of exterminating properly, storing their things and allowing them to return to their homes, to their friends, to their pharmacy, to their doctors, to their neighborhoods, to their grocery. and people who are sick and couldn't even come and speak with me and couldn't come out because they're sick with mold from leaks from rubber roofs that leak all the way down. These are not mere building aging issues. They're violations of civil rights laws. And if you did not hear the detail in Administrator Bach's very positive hey look at how far we've come and what progress we've made then i hope that you'll hear it from the residents today and i hope that nobody will candy coat anything because i walk around those buildings i have known I know people in every single building and I'm an invited guest there. And when I go into those buildings, I see what happens on every single floor. I've seen it firsthand, firsthand. It's still happening. To my knowledge, there is no person that handles it like we used to do in the dorms where someone's on rounds and they walk around every single floor. Every single building, every single day, and they make note. Is the door lock broken? Is the door off the hinges? I reported that work order last week myself. I don't even live there. So, the accountability gap. You heard Kimmerer testify about that work orders were closed on paper while hazards remain. You heard Administrator Bock testify that People misplaced work orders, and in the transition to one system to another, things were lost.

That's unacceptable, especially- We actually, Administrator Bach, we had time for questions. So can you wrap it up so we can ask questions?

So how much time did you give me to testify?

You said you got 35. Yeah. Another five minutes.

So you give Administrator Bock as much time to testify as she needed, but I'm limited to how much time?

Five minutes.

Is that equal time, Madam Chair? Madam Chair, is that equal time? Are you trying to silence my testimony?

No, I'm not, no. But I feel that we need to be having a more productive conversation if we can ask questions.

I would like to have equal time with Administrator Bach.

Okay, then go ahead.

Thank you. The work orders close on paper. The hazards remain. The elevator outages are hidden behind bureaucratic excuses. Deadlines are coming and going without consequence. This is happening right now. The BHA can tell HUD it agrees the conditions are safe, then failure to act? It's not delay, it's deliberate neglect. And this is not one property's problem. It's systemic across all properties portfolio. Delay, deflection, denial. And it's falling hardest on black, brown, elderly, and disabled residents. Violation of Law and of Civil Rights. What's happening violates multiple binding statutes, which I communicated one year ago to Administrator Bock. ADA, it requires equal access to public entity services programs or activities, maintenance of accessible features, designation of an ADA coordinator, adoption of grievance procedures. Repeated elevator outages and inaccessible routes effectively exclude disabled residents from using and enjoying their homes and building services. Failure to plan for outages and evacuation, poor maintenance, lack of transparent processes for accommodations. Each day that these barriers persist is a continuing ADA violation. Remedies could include injunctive relief, damages in some cases, and attorney's fees. I will not go through all this legally because I put it right in administrators' box hands. October 5th last year. But I will simply state Section 504 of the Rehab Act, Fair Housing Act, HUD's Public Housing Physical Conditions Standards, Massachusetts General Law, Chapter 151B, Section 47A, Housing Discrimination, Massachusetts Architectural Access Board, which Administrator Bock is all too familiar with from all of the and many more. The public procurement allows for emergency procurement procedures where health or safety is at risk. Documentation of the emergency and rapid procurement to protect public safety. That's implicated here because life safety elevator access justifies accelerated contracting and parallel vendor mobilization. What we heard from Administrator Bach is that we have the same old vendors, the same timeline that keeps moving and shifting. There are not... Parallel processes, we are stopped with just these two, and if they need more time, they get more time. The 42 Harrison Archway elevators, The last deadline I heard was March 24th. That was six months after the initial deadline, and they just actually finished last week. This is moving very slowly. You have a deadline of, we're hearing, 2026. It took one year to get a contract on emergencies that first came to Administrator Bach's attention in 2023. So now we're talking about a deadline of 2026, which, if history repeats itself, will also move into potentially 2027 instead of exercising those emergency procurements and having parallel Parallel teams working on all of the elevators immediately. And then there's housing authority. You know, MGL 121B, they must manage and maintain safe sanitary housing, comply with codes and civil rights laws. Portfolio-wide maintenance failures and oversight of neglect falls under this and... and then local Boston laws, state codes and ordinances. The city can and should issue orders, deadlines and penalties. and failure to enforce can expose the city to scrutiny. So while we're talking about the BHA, we're also talking about the city being complicit in not doing enough to make sure that this moves a lot. So that can expose the city to scrutiny, but also potential Title II ADA claims for deliberate indifference. And for me to be back here a year later, Having the same conversation and asking these residents to come back again and tell essentially the same stories, we're talking about the practical consequences. You have civil rights harm where residents are denied equal use and enjoyment of their housing. increased health and safety risks, which you've heard from two of the residents so far, isolation, and missed medical care, There's legal remedies here that we haven't exercised yet, but we're certainly almost there. ADA Section 504 and FHA claims, AAB and sanitary code enforcements, potential HUD and DOJ complaints. I do have a fair housing complaint. that I initiated in the summertime and I'm in conversations with them and supplying them with information and they're investigating the claim. The immediate needs here, which we do not have, despite that 19 was completed and that 42 was just completed and is still experiencing outages, Even though we're calling it completed, we need reliable elevator access or we need alternatives immediately. We need transparent timelines. We need emergency egress plans because you have a situation on your hands That if a fire broke out in any one of these buildings, you have no way of getting disabled residents out of that building. No way at all. And nobody's thinking about that. We're just hoping that a fire doesn't actually happen. And in fact, I've had conversations with people inside the BHA and inside the fire department that noted that I walked across Washington Street one day and I could hear the fire alarm going off at 19. When I got in, I could hear the alarm on two floors. The flashes weren't working. By the time I got up to the third floor, I couldn't hear the alarm, but it was still going on. I had to call the fire department myself 11 minutes later for them to respond. Some disconnect in the alarm panel. I don't know what it was, but they showed up and they did not treat it like it was really that big of a deal because they thought it was the boy who cried wolf. So God forbid a fire actually break out in any one of those buildings, everyone's dead. There is no emergency plan. The residents don't know the plan. I don't know the plan. No one's ever discussed what happens in a real emergency even though every day getting in and out of your house is an emergency. For the BHA, operational risk, legal exposure, governance risk, we don't want to be in a position where there's state oversight and federal enforcement if noncompliance persists. I'm just going to leave that one right there. For the City of Boston, you have a duty, ADA Title II is your obligation, to ensure that city-administered programs including public housing and code enforcement are accessible. The risk is legal and political exposure if you know that the violations are there and you fail to act. And you can compel compliance through enforcement orders, deadlines, and public reporting and support emergency procurement. So I want you to remember that behind every citation is a person, and you're going to hear from those people, okay? I want to mention one more thing before I wrap up, and that is that I asked for public records I asked, why is this moving so slowly? Why can't we get vendors in if you have $8 million now that you didn't have before this campaign started to fix the elevators? What is going on? Why is this being treated like, oh, it's going to be next year or the year after or the year after? And then I started asking around and I heard, Oh, well, BHA doesn't pay their bills, so nobody wants to work with the BHA. So I followed up on that with public records, and I just requested the last two years from the two vendors BHA worked with. And what I found that was the first time there was an RFP to fix 42, there were no bidders. And I went, huh, maybe they don't pay their bills. I got that public records request. Two years of unpaid invoices, reasons for non-payment, proof of payment for those that were paid, and instead of transparency, I got another round of delay tactics, and what actually happened, I was told on record, by email, That... Joey, the onsite manager, personally called the elevator vendors to arrange hand delivery of old invoices to evade a paper trail. Potentially, it looked like an attempt to bypass the public record. Those invoices were paid, you guessed it, in late January, right around the time of the HUD letter and Administrator Bach's letter to me. where I was told there are no outstanding invoices. But when I reviewed the documentation, dozens of invoices up to two years overdue all cleared that month. The BHA cleaned up the paper trail, but not the problem. So now we're looking at a two-year elevator modernization plan with two vendors, same players. It's just... You have four remaining modernizations projected for a minimum of two years from now. And minimum is doing a lot of work in that sentence. If this are truly an emergency, and it is, Why aren't multiple vendors working simultaneously? Why are no temporary external elevators or emergency procurement protocols, which state law allows for, Life safety emergencies, why aren't those being explored? Could this dragging out also be budget manipulation to avoid the 30% capital expenditure threshold that would trigger HUD's 30% rule oversight? And as someone who managed residential dormitories for nearly a decade, I understand what competent property management looks like. Because I walked nightly. I wrote the work orders. I've overseen all of this. I just don't understand why Ruth Barkley residents are waiting now two to four years for equal access. The excuses have, I'm over the excuses. The pattern is clear. I'm looking at, is this fiscal gymnastics to deflect responsibility and protect image? over resident safety and security? I don't know at this point. It could be multifactorial, but what I do know is this is a BIPOC community who has struggled for too long and their rent remains the same. They're living in substandard conditions. And you've just heard today from Administrator Bach that so much has changed. And you're going to hear from and have heard from residents saying, no, it doesn't. So what should be done? Treat it like an emergency now, invoke the emergency procurement to mobilize the work on the elevators immediately, and run multiple vendors in parallel. DePuy, Temporary Accessibility if you need to. They do this at IndyCar races. You can put an elevator up. I mean, I'm not saying that's the best solution. I'm brainstorming ideas because it seems like nobody is really looking into what is the short term. We can't wait two years to get in and out of the house. House, and published building-specific evacuation plans for residents with mobility impairments. I would like you to make access and accountability visible. A public elevator outage dashboard with start and stop times, causes, vendors, info, and repair timelines. I say this because with the development of the protocol last year as a result of the Access Board hearing, That protocol is not being followed that protocol is different than what the residents see and experience. I would like to ask that you seek Detailed information of how many times besides the one time I know of was there actually an employed resident Stationed at the doors of any building when an elevator went down, they're ready, willing, and able to help residents to get their mail, to get their packages. Instead, they're told, call the office. Well, when elevators are down and people are upset, the office doesn't answer the phone. So how can they get help? Call the work order line. Okay, work order line gets called, and there isn't a work order always generated for an elevator outage. Again, it looks like an attempt to manipulate the data. Instead, somebody from the office will come over and attempt to reset it, and that's not captured anywhere that I can see. We've gotta fix that compliance backbone and designate, I'd like to see an ADA coordinator over there. I'd like to see all the vendor, Relations Repaired, and a paper trail for that, paying everybody, not just the two years that I went back. Pre-qualifying additional elevator contracts to expand capacity using escrow or milestone-based payments to attract qualified bidders. I'd like to see independent oversight with residents at the table. I believe one of the councillors talked about that. Whether it's a resident safety and accessibility oversight panel or Thank you. Thank you. Whether that's a corrective action plan with specific dates for interim access procurement and modernization or some other plan, something that ties city supports and awards to on-time performance. and imposes penalties for missed milestones and then escalation if the deadlines keep slipping like they did with 42. If BHA misses milestones, the city should involve HUD and DOJ and consider state intervention. Like I said, I reported a fair housing complaint, and I'm responding to their requests, but I'm also investigating potential constructive evictions of several Ruth Barkley residents who were forced out. So each day of inaction is continuing ADA and Section 504 violations at the very least. The reality check here is Administrator Box Deck, while it did have many things that I'm sure are very useful to some residents, the most pressing concerns for the residents that are before you today will look at that deck and see that it paints an upbeat, and many more. and a huge gap between the Dex message and their lived reality. They can't rely on these protocols or hotel vouchers as substitutes to access their own homes. What's happening is it's not misfortune and it's not, oh, the pandemic or, oh, the long process for procurement or, oh, the parts and the supply chain and all those things that, Madam Chair, you asked Kenzie some questions I was present in her life And first it was, we don't have the money. And now it's all these other excuses. This is a pattern. and it appears now to be bordering on maladministration. Promises made, deadlines missed, truth withheld, violations of federal state law, but most importantly, violations of basic human dignity.

Thank you, Ms. Oates. Thank you. Time's up. Thank you. Thank you. Councillor Flynn, do you have questions?

Madam Chair, Will we be going to do public testimony? Yeah, we can go to public testimony. Or will we ask in public testimony?

Well, I'm happy to take public testimony at your suggestion. That's fine. I can do that.

Madam Chair, I was just asking a question.

Oh, I thought you were a request, sorry.

No, no, I'm just, I just wanted to know.

We have several folks who are in attendance who would like to make public testimony. We can take public testimony if that would be helpful. Thank you for every, I think that would be good actually because people have been waiting. Okay, so Denise Campbell, would you like to come down? Thank you, thanks for being here.

Thank you for your patience, you've got two minutes. Good morning to you, Kelsey. My name is Denise Campbell.

Bring it up close.

I live at 47 Harrison Archways. I live on the eighth floor. The elevator breaks down constantly. The other day, the elevator broke down for two days. Had to stay in the house because I couldn't get out. You call, they don't answer because they know that we're calling for the elevators. Okay, just like Mr. Flynn said, she's making it seem rosy. It's not rosy. I mean, I was the one who had my apartment flooded. I live on the eighth floor. My apartment shouldn't even be flooded. I got videotaped. of the Flood. My apartment floods four o'clock in the morning, two o'clock in the morning. What do I supposed to do? I'm not gonna call no man to come into my house when I'm by myself. But I do call, they don't come. The elevator issue is too much. I was stuck in the elevator for a whole hour. When the firemen came and got me, I was on the floor. came out the elevator drenched with sweat. Don has the video. If y'all need any videos, I have them. you know and she's talking about they do the floors they change the floor it's only on the first floor they only painted the first floor walls they only did the floors on the first floor so from the from the second floor up It's the same. It's dirty. It's nasty. I don't understand. And the firemen issue, when we call them and say, oh, we can't get upstairs, they say that's not their problem. They can't come get us. So what if I left, went shopping, and came back home? How would I get my food upstairs? So I would have to stay outside and wait for the elevator people to come and fix it. They don't come all the time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Rentis, is it Sue Rentis? No? Anybody? Frank Baker, former Councillor Frank Baker?

Thank you, Madam Chair, for allowing me to speak. My name is Frank Baker. I live in District 3 in Dorchester. Flynn, and Councilor Murphy. Thank you for your continued support for people that are underrepresented. We hear a lot from people that say they grew up in housing developments. I think the biggest, the glaring fact that I'm seeing here that there's only three councils here advocating for people that are in dire need. If this were a private owner, the pitchforks would be out. But because it's politicized and because we own it as the city, people are not here to voice their concerns. The fact that we have a HUD report that's alarming and people aren't here raising that I think we should really question some of the councilors that talk a good talk. You know, we need to, real action here, a couple things. Administrator Bock basically said no when there was any oversight on the budget. We've just heard Don Oates talk about the budget, Something's happening over there. The bills are not being paid. So that should happen. Even though the feds don't give them money on the same schedule, that doesn't mean they can't come in and answer questions to this party. Because remember, as the council, you are the balance. to the powers that be in this city. So it's incumbent on this council to hold them accountable. and the other thing is I think it's time to bring in, whether it's monthly, bimonthly, or at least quarterly, a report that The administrator comes in and reports out to this council. And there should be 13 people here. To only have three people here and one person to show up for five minutes and leave, that's unacceptable for this council. So show up and do your job. Thank you.

Next up is Alan Chamberlain. Have I got your name right? You need to bring the microphone down so you can reach it. There you go. Thank you. Welcome.

Madam Chairman, Councilor Flynn, I'm sorry I can't see you. Thank you for having us here today and taking the time to listen to us. No one listens. We call this person, we call that person, we call this office, we call that administrator, we call this manager. Not to be repeating what's already been said is, oh, we're working on it, there's no money, it's in the process, the contracts have been let out. I was at a meeting... Yesterday, that's specifically for the elevators. And yesterday was the start date, the official start date. And it's going to take six months minimum for the equipment to be delivered so they can actually start work on 14 and 16. That doesn't take into account 47 and 27, I believe it is. There was no mention about those two buildings. and I was invited just a few days before this event happened. So I shoehorned it in and I really wasn't prepared for what was going to be going on. and it was all like everybody knew everybody else and what was going on and I was clueless so I was not able to ask the questions why weren't You knew it was coming. The designs were in place. Why wasn't the equipment ordered months ago? So we don't have to wait yet another six months. I live in a two-elevated building. I moved from a one-elevated building to a two-elevated building. But it might as well be a one-elevated building. Because the other one hasn't worked in years. Years. And again, it's an equipment issue. Oh, we can't get parts, we can't get this. Well, if you know there are certain parts that are going to be needed, why not get a couple of them and have them waiting Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for your testimony. I'm the president of the task force at Ruth Barclay. And... people are tired of being ignored they don't participate because they hear the same things all the time and it's always, oh, well, this is being worked on, that's gonna be taken care of, we're doing this, we're doing that. We had a huge meeting where they explained how all these work orders were taken care of and they, But the fact of the matter is that a lot of those work orders were so old that the people had moved or passed and the apartments were basically renovated. Thank you. Thank you for your attention. I wish I had much more time because there's so much that I want to say. Thank you.

Councillor Flynn, would you like to Your first round of questions for the second panel?

Yeah. Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to say thank you to, first of all, say thank you to the residents for testifying. The story you told were heartbreaking and difficult to hear, but it was the honest truth. And now Government knows exactly what is going on and will government stand up and support residents is the question. Or will we continue the status quo by ignoring things? That's the choice we have to make, is ignore residents or support residents. I take issues impacting persons with disabilities and seniors very seriously. I think many people here highlighted, including Dawn, In my opinion, violations of state law and violations of federal law. The most significant piece of federal legislation, I think, is the ADA, Americans with Disability Act. I think we are in violation of the American Disability Act. When I heard the story for a second time, about a mother that couldn't get to her son's funeral because of the elevator. We can't ignore that. Imagine burying the son Your son, your child has died and you not being able to go there because of the elevator broke down, has broken down, that's inhumane. There's nothing more disrespectful in my life than I heard with that story. So I want us to go forward today With a plan, and I don't know if we have a plan on how we go forward, but the status quo for me just can't continue. And whether it's a state investigation, whether it's a federal investigation or asking BHA to do their own investigation about the complete breakdown of quality of life issues of Public Safety Issues, and Ruth Barclay, I think has to take place. We can't ignore it. I think there has to be a written report on the complete breakdown and A written report as well how we go forward in writing when things are going to be accomplished and fixed. So my questions, I'm going to ask a couple questions too. To Dawn at this time. Dawn, you highlighted a lot of issues impacting residents, especially on elevators and rats and Quality of Life, and Mould. And I've met with you, Dawn, half a dozen times and with residents. But, Dawn, do you have this information documented in terms of is this in writing or Is this just stories that you have heard or do you have the evidence of all of the challenges that you highlighted?

Yeah, so actually, this is a binder with the Architectural Access Board complaints in it. I have notes on my phone of many going back A few years. If you're asking do I have a formal CRM software that I'm tracking everything, no. I have my personal notes on it. I know who I talk to, when I talk to them. And then at the point that I started filing the Access Board complaints, That has just been most of the documentation. So I investigated this. I have about two years of data before I started doing a formal organizing campaign. The answer is this isn't just made up stories. This isn't just, you know, I can go find any resident in any building and have, they know what the lived experience is and we have, Timelines documented for, if you said, talk to me about Super Bowl Sunday four years ago, absolutely, I'd be able to go and tell you, okay, it was snowing that day, I don't know if it was four years ago, but It was snowing that day. The elevator went down. A resident was trapped outside after midnight and couldn't get back in, missed the Super Bowl, was in the snow, had to go to Whole Foods to use the bathroom. I remember all of these stories. If you ask me to quantify everything and build a database, I could absolutely do that, especially in places where, for example, I pay particular attention to When the Architectural Access Board asked BHA to provide monthly reports on elevator outages for 19 months senior rentals way and they did not provide those elevator reports and then four months later said, for reasons beyond our control, we could not provide I can get details of how often the elevators were down simply by going through text messages of all the residents who texted me when the elevators were down in the past however many months.

So Dawn, are you saying that the Architectural Access Board mandated Boston to keep track of When the elevators are down at Ruth Barclay and we didn't keep track of that,

that's correct so they were mandated to provide their lawyer wrote a letter recently they were mandated i was at the hearing they were told they must provide every 30 days reports on how many elevator how when the elevator went down how long it was offline they defined offline anytime it was not in good working order not if it Thank you. Thank you. and they provided, initially they reported and then they missed four months of reporting and then the week that the attorney wrote a letter saying she was retiring and sent it to the Access Board. She said, for reasons beyond my control, I have not been able to provide the reports. And then it looked like the final report, some of the reporting that the Access Board has been getting from BHA was not consistent with the reporting that the residents have given to me. and what I've observed firsthand about elevators. For example, 19 months senior Reynolds Way, their BHA has requested to close out that complaint. Well, 19 Monsignor Reynolds Way still has had what appear to be now undocumented elevator outages, given that the work order doesn't exist, the elevator will stop Thank you for watching. Maybe it's in that new system that Administrator Bock mentioned but I don't know. It's not been documented. It's been told to the Access Board that everything's fine at 19, and I know from speaking at residence at 19 that there have been hiccups Albeit not as severe as what led to this whole thing starting and the whole kickoff of the campaign, but still hiccups. For example, the one-call system will send out a message I might be saying the name of the system wrong. I'm sorry, I always get that flipped in my head. But sent out a message to residents saying, we have to make an emergency repair and your building in the elevator will be down for an hour. And they don't say what day. or what hour it's going to be down and that's a disruption and you know things like that having to press an elevator button on the third floor at 19 months senior Reynolds way to be able to go to have to press the down button in order to catch an elevator to go up. When I reported that in this binder with the very first Access Board July 2023, I think I reported that, to the Massachusetts Architectural Access Board as part of a problem of being out of compliance with the MAAB's regulations.

Thank you. Councillor Flynn, your time's up.

No, I understand. Madam Chair, I'm not going to ask a question, but would we have the opportunity to ask BHA, why they're not in compliance with architectural access board mandates since they're here. But again, I don't want to take time away from my colleagues either.

No, I think Councillor Murphy, you have some time. We'd like to also acknowledge that another lead sponsor, Councillor Mejia, has just joined us. I was unaware that Councillor Worrell was sitting behind me, so he's been and gone. Welcome, Councillor Mejia. Murphy.

Sure.

So I'll use my first few seconds then to ask that question that Councilor Flynn wanted to. So if we're not able to have the administration answer it here, I'd like to put it on the record. Why the mandates for the Architectural Access Board mandates have not been submitted, if I could ask that through the chair?

Yeah, certainly we can ask that question. Okay, just making sure. In writing, yeah.

Okay. Thank you. Or we could get it before we leave. So thank you, Don, for being here. I know when we were here probably a year ago, I said the same thing. The residents at Ruth Barkley and the residents across the city are lucky to have someone like you who is willing to have the uncomfortable conversations. And I know that the years that Our colleague, Councilor Bock, then and now Administrator Bock knows this isn't personal. This is the questions we need to ask. In some instances, life and death, not just uncomfortable situations that our residents in the city of Boston are living in. And we do talk about it. It's been brought up. And thank you, Councilor Baker, for We do say oftentimes on other issues that we need to call out the bad actors. We need to go after those who are not doing the right thing. use our political will and as a body as a council use that power to enforce rules and enforce violations and make sure the residents are getting exactly what they need but when it comes to other Departments like BPS or when it's in this case BHA, it seems as though this body doesn't want to work together and really demand... May I interject, Councillor Murphy?

Is there... No, I just want to say that we had a hearing on this issue last November. This issue was addressed during the budget process again this past year. And I think we've spent a lot of time discussing this.

Are you answering the question I was going to ask? No, I just want to say that, you know... We can have differences of opinion, Chair, so if you don't want me to speak, it's clear, so you can go on to counsel.

It's fine, I want you to speak, but I really do say...

There's often times you say things I don't agree with. I always am respectful, always, and so I am asking to move on. As the chair, you can do what you want, and interrupting colleagues is what you have chosen. Murphy.

I do not think we should insinuate that there are bad actors.

There are bad actors in the city of Boston.

There are bad actors in the world.

I'm not saying any personal person in this room. I'm saying when this body uses that word often, when I referenced other things like Rodents and trash pickup and contractors and when we're fighting for things. For you to interject and make an assumption is unprofessional, but I'm asking for my time to end.

Yeah, absolutely. I will add time to your thing, but I really do. I just want to be clear that we shouldn't be insinuating that in this context, of this hearing that there are bad actors.

I'm not even sure what you think I meant. So maybe offline we can, or maybe online so people understand what you're referencing. Who is it you think I'm calling a bad actor?

Well, you used the term bad actor, and we're talking about this situation.

But who do you think I'm speaking about? I don't know. But you interrupted, which is so wildly unprofessional. So I want to know. I beg your pardon. Because it absolutely isn't a person I'm referencing.

Okay. But it never was. I'm going to add to your time, but I really just want to be clear that there's no bad actors in this conversation today. Thank you. That's your opinion. I've added two extra minutes. I'm sorry.

But I keep asking you not to give me more time, just to give respect. But I'm at a loss. I'm sorry to the residents. I'm just going to let my colleague go.

Mejia. Councillor Mejia, you are a lead sponsor. You have eight minutes. Councillor Mejia.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to my colleagues Allowing me to be a co-sponsor on this hearing order, I just want to say and note for the record that our office has been working alongside residents now for two years. regarding all of the issues that have been happening on BHA. And we did a tour, hold on, let me tell you, we did a tour called Dying to Live where we investigated what was happening in BHA. People were living in rote and infested apartments, things that were crumbling down, apartment requests that had been gone, neglected, This was two years ago. And here we are, having the same conversation, right? and people still demanding justice, right, at the end of the day because whether BHA fixes your case concern, they still want to get paid. And that's what we have come to realize with a lot of the cases that we've had to help, right? Is that there was a mom at BHA at Bromley Heath, Mildred Haley, whose home was rat-filled and roaches, that the roaches and the mice were eating her daughter's food. And she would go food shopping, a low-wage worker, and every single thing that she bought was spoiled. They literally were eating her out of her home. But yet, she still had to pay her rent. And so that's, for me, why I decided to be a co-sponsor for this particular hearing order. Because the world is upside down right now. and it's not about calling people out for the sake of calling people out because nobody wins when we play those games. That is not what my mission is. My hope is in this hearing is for us to get things on the record, to understand the discrepancies so that we have a place to start when we're talking about accountability. because it is very easy for people to come here and spend 45 minutes talking about all the things that they're doing. Then we hear all the things that are not happening and there's a contradiction there. And so for me, right, my hope is in our time together that we can move to a place of resolution. and not about pointing fingers, because accountability is everybody. And here on the Boston City Council, we utilize our platform and our microphone to push for more money, For inspectors and for tickets to get processed sooner, but there still seems to be a bottleneck when it comes to producing results. And that's what we're here to discover today is figuring out what those roadblocks are so that we can get a tow truck to move them, right? That's what we wanna get to, yes or no? Okay, so that's what we're gonna do together, right? And we're not gonna be adversarial, right? I don't know what happened before the ground rules, but normally y'all have to sign up to speak. They did that? Okay, so we're not going to engage because normally they have a little gavel. So let me finish my part. and then you can come back if they let you. But let me finish my part because I don't want to y'all get in trouble here. So I'm going to ask a question.

Give me... Who are you directing the question of?

Well, we don't have anybody here from the administration.

It's...

They're listening.

If you have questions, we'd like to put them on the record. Yes, I'm going to put my questions. We'll have them follow up with answers.

Okay, so now that I've done my dissertation and the time that I have, let me finish my thought and then I will ask my questions on the record. I think it's important for us to Hold ourselves accountable to what needs to happen and apologize for the conditions which you're living in. And if nobody has done that yet, allow me to say I am sorry. Thank you. OK? Thank you. All right. So my questions for the record are the HUD Office of Inspector General Audit revealed major inspection and documentation failures that left residents living in unsafe conditions for years. While we know the audit has been closed and BHA has implemented reforms, how are you rebuilding trust with residents who lived through that neglect? And how can tenants now see in real time that inspections and repairs are actually being completed? Second, many residents, especially elderly and people with disabilities, have shared that the elevator outages leave them feeling trapped and isolated. Even with modernization projects underway, repair can take months. What short-term supports are in place for residents when the elevator goes down? And we already know if you live on the fifth floor and you've got a whole bunch of groceries, it is not easy to go up and down. So what is the short-term plan for that? Are you going to have some young people who are going to wait for you at the hall to bring your food up? Something's got to give. The presentation highlights community room upgrades and new systems, but how are residents included in this decision making? Are there structured Opportunities for tenants to share feedback and help shape how maintenance and modernization are carried out in their buildings because after all, they're your buildings, right? You are paying rent and people are living off of your backs too, just so you know. While reported turnaround times for work orders have improved, residents say that some issues are marked quote-unquote resolved, but they are not. How is BHA ensuring accountability, quality control, and follow-up after a work order is closed? Thank you very much. Many tenants still don't know when repairs are scheduled, who to contact, or why projects are still delayed. What steps is BHA taking to improve communication, especially for seniors, non-English speakers, and working families who may not know how to use online systems? Hello, not everybody got a smartphone. When we hosted the Dying to Live Tour, which I mentioned earlier, residents showed us severe neglect of rodents overflowing trash, outdated common spaces, and foul odors that made homes unlivable. What new accountability systems are in place to ensure residents never have to reach that level of desperation again just to be heard? Like, literally, we had to bring the news in to expose this. Okay? And so the fact that we have to go all out just to be heard demonstrates how much work we need to do to make sure that what we are hearing we're actually acting on. And so even though I'm late, I'm sorry I had a prior engagement this morning. I wanted to show up here because it is important for you to see that we are here not just to listen but to advocate on your behalf and it is my hope that the questions that I've asked get answered and that those answers come to the residents that are here today who have taken the time to be here with us. And I'm sad that the administration is not here and that I missed the 45-minute dissertation. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Mejia. You have 20 seconds left. Any additional comments?

And I just want to say thank you for the record. I really do appreciate all the efforts that we have made. and I know that budget season is around the corner and as a council body, my hope is is that everyone here who is advocating for improvements when it's time for us to look at that budget that we are putting money into BHA so that they can deliver because we can't expect people to do things without the resources. So if you want BHA to be set up for success, then we're gonna have to put our money where our mouth is. No more complaining unless we're providing the money for it, period.

Thank you, Councilor Mejia. Councilor Murphy, any additional comments?

Who's that person?

I have it here. Denise, she's been...

Rentes.

Rentes, I have your name here. Would you like to come up to the microphone? And then there was somebody, is it Larissa? You want to add your name? Okay. Well, hold on. We'll send the list out again. You can sign up.

Me?

Yeah. Rent us. You're good. Come on up to the microphone. Come on up to the microphone.

Yeah, you're good there.

Just come on up. and make sure that the mic is close to your mouth so we can hear you. Very good. Can you hear me? Introduce yourself for the record.

Okay, my name is Lisa Smith. And I have a question. My question is, how does somebody go about moving somebody out of their apartment and putting them somewhere else?

We don't have the answer to that question, but we'll certainly submit it.

Because I was moved out of Boston housing, I mean out of Ruth Barclay Estates, because I lived in 2304 apartment. and now she moved me all the way over to Douglas. But I didn't go to court for any of this, and I don't remember going to court for any of this, but all of a sudden she's trying to say that she had the right to move me, and I left. Thank you, thank you.

Come on down, introduce yourself.

Hello, how you doing? My name is Shanita.

Can you speak close to the microphone? I know it's very awkward there, but yes. Can you hear me now? That's lovely, thank you.

So as I was saying, my name is Shanita Grace. But you can call me Shanae. I've been living now in Ruth Barclay for two years. The first year was really rough for me because I The elevator was like stop working at first once a week, then it started every other day. And I was stuck in it for at least five minutes myself, which was not really good at all. I live on the 9th floor and I have AFib. I was diagnosed with AFib because of all my health going up and down stairs previously before I was born. Thank you. My first time going up the stairs, I literally felt like I was about to have a heart attack like at my door because I couldn't make it that far. I was only used to going up three flights of stairs. Now I had to go up six more. So it was really rough on me. And I know if it was rough on me, it's rough on other elderly people. At times, where the elevator would get stuck on floors, we would run to that floor trying to, you know, Push the button to fix it. Try to do anything to try to make it work again. Sometime it works, sometime it didn't. But again, Every time we tried to call, every time that we tried to do something about it, it wasn't really, it wasn't taken care of immediately. They took their time. And yes, they did fix the elevator on, you know, now, but before they fixed it, they took away, they covered where we could see which floor the elevator was on. and the little security room that they have. Now we don't have no way to see which elevator is coming down. We don't have no other system to press which elevator we gonna need. because the big elevator is good for when you have bringing stuff from bringing down trash, bringing up groceries. The small elevator on a good day fits maybe four people. if not five, squeezing in. And it don't really fit a lot of people when there's a cart that someone have in it. It don't fit a lot of people if they have someone with a wheelchair. So how is it that they fixing a problem, but it's still another issue?

Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much for your testimony. We have Carmen. and then the next one on the list is Seth. If Seth would get ready to come down, that would be great. I see you there in the front row. So we'll start with Carmen.

Mi nombre es Carmen Aponte. Yo vivo en el 16 de la isla Brooklyn.

Besider, maybe. Okay. Thank you, Councillor Mejia. Councillor Mejia will help you there. Thank you so much.

Okay, my name is Carmen Aponte.

I live in 16 East Brookline. In the south end. I live on the sixth floor. And we have two elevators. The smallest elevator They fix it and then two days later it's broken again. En el sexto piso da bien duro al cerrar. Okay, the...

The smaller elevator... The smaller elevator makes a really awful noise and then sometimes it's really hard to close the door.

The other elevator that is in front of my door It's been broken for more than nine months and they haven't fixed it yet.

because the piece that needs to fix it is too expensive and they haven't been able to fix it.

And because of that, she's stayed stuck twice in the elevator.

oh my god it's been so difficult that she's got an anxiety that she's because what she's been locked inside that she's taking even off all her clothes that is that scary

Pono, Pa, Pa, Pa.

It's gotten so bad that sometimes when she has a doctor's appointment or any type of appointment that she can't even go to them because she can't go down all those nine flights of stairs.

Because to go down is easy.

Right, but to go up 14 flights of stairs to come back up. For every floor is 14 steps, so she would rather just not go. And she came to live here in 1987. and the South End. And she loves her South End. Yes. Thank you, Carmen.

Thank you, Carmen. Thank you.

You know, I used to be the official translator for my mom, and I feel this brought me back to that life.

I appreciate you stepping in. Thank you so much. Good afternoon, Seth. Welcome.

Good afternoon, everyone. You have the floor. Boston housing people. My name is Seth K. Roberts. I came into Booth Barclay in 2009, so I've been here like 15, 16 years or more. My issue is with... The insects that are permeating the apartment buildings and they really don't know what to do about it because Now they're trying to tell me the reason why they moved me is because they could not exterminate my apartment correctly. It's not that I had stuff piled up everywhere, it's just that I don't know what it was, but the whole thing is this here. Ah, those elevators, that's an issue because I was on the 13th floor. As you can see, I struggle with my legs because for some reason, I'm in my third quarter of life, 74, and it's getting tough. And anyhow, I had to walk up and down those steps Ten times, from the 13th floor, because the elevator wasn't working. I mean, it felt good going down, but it doesn't feel good going up. Trust me. The other thing is the move with the bugs. Now, it's not like I brought the bugs here. When I came, I was bug-free. Those bugs in that building... I believe they're all in the building because who brings bugs with them? If I had brought the bugs with me, They would have been there from the beginning. I was there for years and it just started happening this year. So, it's just frustrating and, you know, it's frustrating to see that you have so much... So many resources to get things done, and only things get done is when they want them done. That's my time.

Thank you so much. Thank you, Seth. Heinzler, Flynn. It seems we've had a public testimony. Would you like to wrap up at this point? Flynn, would you like to make a closing statement and we'll also offer our other colleagues an opportunity to close up as well. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair, for hosting this important hearing. Thank you to the BHA Administrator, Kenzie Block, for being here. Thank you for the residents of Ruth Barclay, especially for being here. and to Dawn Oates who's a disability rights advocate for testifying and more importantly for your leadership and supporting and speaking for people at times that don't have a voice. And that's what, in my opinion is what government is all about is being there for people without a voice. And that includes people in public housing. And Councilor Mejia was helping a woman Translate. Someone told me that they weren't able to get here today because they were having trouble with their wheelchair, but it's our job as city councillors to speak for them. to advocate for them to work within city government, state government, federal government to solve their problems. And that's what we're doing here today. We understand and know that There's significant problems at Ruth Barclay. We admit that. We acknowledge that. The question is how do we go forward in providing short term solutions and long term solutions. But I also know that the status quo is not an option. I'm focused on this issue. I'm going to continue to work on this issue. I'm going to continue to meet with residents, work with BHA, work with disability rights advocates, but I do expect answers. I do want solutions. I want infrastructure improvements now. Not in a year from now, not in two years from now, I want them done now, and I'm not going to take no for an answer. And as long as I'm a city councilor, I'm going to continue to fight and advocate for my constituents, and that's my job. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Councilor Flynn. Councilor Mejia, you're the second co-sponsor. She's the lead co-sponsor, and then Councilor Murphy, okay? Councilor Mejia?

Thank you, Madam Chair. And I didn't realize that former councilor, is that you? Because I don't got my glasses. Is that Administrator Boggs still up in the building? So sorry. I was like, is that you? But I'm happy now that I am going to take some of my stuff back because the administration is here, they're just not there. So I'm happy to know that you are still here listening. And so that speaks volumes to the residents that are here. So I just want to acknowledge the fact that you are here. I didn't realize that you weren't until I was trying to squint. But thank you for staying as long as you did and for listening to the constituents because I think, you know, For me, I know what it's like to not have a voice and not to be heard. And I know how disempowering it is when you have people who have power over you, and literally it's our livelihood. People make decisions every single day about whether or not we're going to get to eat or if we're even going to get to sleep. And I think that that is very scary, especially for people who grew up in spaces that rely on public support. And I think because of those things and because of the way I grew up, I know that no matter how afraid I am, I'm still going to speak up. And I'm so happy to see you all here doing just that because it is not easy to speak truth to power. especially when you think that it can cause you harm. So I just want to say thank you for showing up the way that you did and for putting everything on the record. And I'm also going to say that our job As city councilors, it's not to just listen. It is to do something about what we hear. And so if we really want to improve the conditions that you're living in, Then what we need to do when it's time for budget season is we need to go really hard and fight for those line items that are going to trickle down into our housing development. because that is part of the equation, that is part of accountability. So I just wanna note that for the record, for as much as I'm out here barking about everything, trust me that I'm also gonna be barking when it's time for you all Thank you for joining us. Y para la gente que no entiendan hablar español brevemente, les voy a decir que me alegro que están aquí. Sanando la alarma y hablando de todas las cosas que ustedes están pasando, porque es bien importante que nosotros no solamente escuchemos, pero que hacemos algo con lo que oímos. Y tenemos que, como concejales aquí, tenemos que de verdaderamente darle los resultados Thank you for watching. Y ustedes merecen vivir una vida de alta calidad también. Yo me estoy dedicando a hacer ese trabajo con mi gente, siempre. Y gracias.

Thank you Councillor Mejia.

Councillor Murphy, you have the floor. Thank you Councillor Flynn and Mejia for filing this important hearing order. This chamber is one way to get our voices heard. I know that you've included me in many of your round tables when you meet with Residents at their places and let them speak and share their stories and if we don't hear from you and listen directly about what you're dealing with there's no way we can advocate effectively and I think it's clear, and I hope people are listening, that we're not talking about changing the color paint in your living room here. We're talking about rats, insects, flooding, broken elevators, which lead to so many Other health and just quality of life issues. And like I was trying to say earlier, we advocate and talk about making sure that the quality of life for all of our residents, and we can say that, but as politicians, sometimes we just like to say things, but if we're not really Thank you for being brave. Thank you, Carmen. I know when I went over to see if anyone else did want to speak, you said to me that you did but you needed help and I knew that Councilor Mejia would help you so thank you for being brave but also for Councilor Mejia for making sure that everyone's voices are heard so It matters to me that we continue to fight for you. What is the point of being elected? We work so hard to get elected. and for me it's to make sure that I can continue to lift up your needs and your voices and then try my hardest to get you the basic what you deserve, right? We're putting in beautiful parks and Speed Humps and all these other things that do matter but at the same time you know we're giving out and many more. That's something I'll continue to advocate for. So thank you, and know that I'll continue to be out there with you.

Thank you, Councillor Murphy. I want to thank you all for coming in this morning. and thank you Carmen especially and thank you to Councillor Mejia for helping with your translation. It's really important that your voices are heard in this conversation. This is your lived experience and it's really important for us to hear about it. We will be sending follow-up questions to BHA to answer some of the questions that we weren't able to get to this morning. And BHA and our public housing in the city of Boston provides an incredible, it's a critically important piece of our housing infrastructure across the city in every neighborhood. It's really important that we ensure that we act adequately funded as far as possible from the city budget and we continue to advocate at the federal level to get money and also at the state level. Many of the BHA properties are old buildings that were built 70 years ago. They need repair, they need upgrades, sometimes they need replacement completely. and that's an ongoing project that we will be talking about for the decades to come because you can't knock every house all the places down at once and replace them but that's an ongoing conversation and a plan that needs to be rolled out over time. But in the meantime, you folks are living there and we have to try and help you address the challenges that you're having right now. So I thank you for coming in and thanking you for your advocacy this morning. I also, yes, thank you. I want to thank my colleagues for attending this morning and for the lead sponsors Councillor Flynn and Councillor Mejia. I also want to thank the central staff. There's Cora back here who's been helping But also behind the scenes is Ethan, who's been doing the link up and doing the televised piece on the other side. So they're sometimes behind the scenes, but they're always working. So thank you to our central staff. With that said, let me see where my notes are. With that said, This hearing on dockets 0259 and 0769 is adjourned. Thank you all. Have a good day.