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Work Orders Pile Up as Durham Housing Authority Faces System Breakdown
Henry Haggart/Ninth Street Journal
A storage trailer infested with rats sits by the Hoover Road public housing complex in October, before it was removed.
In Sasha Passâs three-bedroom unit at the Hoover Road public housing community, toilets keep clogging. Because of a broken showerhead downstairs, Pass must trek upstairs every night after caring for her seven children, an inconvenience, but one of many in a long day.
Then thereâs the ceiling, still leaking after three repairs, a constant reminder of the Durham Housing Authorityâs failure to help her.
Stipends and accommodations for those residents totaled $4.5 million.
While the units were being repaired and empty, DHA paid $383,000 for security to guard the property from vandalism and theft. At 35 acres, it was necessary to protect the units from break-ins, especially because everyone knew that residents were evacuated, Scott wrote in an email to ABC11.
DHA spent $3.7 million on making the necessary repairs including electrical work, plumbing and fixing appliances.
Part of repairs also included around $602,000 for inspections.
The city of Durham contributed a little more than $900,000 for electrical repairs from its Dedicated Housing Fund.
A majority of the costs (77%) were funded through DHA s operational funds.
ABC11 returned to Durham s McDougald Terrace public housing complex one year after the carbon monoxide crisis upended the lives of hundreds of residents. I want to move and I want to be stable, Bass said. I m not too good for the projects. I love everybody, but the gun violence is terrible. I don t got anything going on in my household, but I can t control what goes on outside that.
She said the year has been rough for people here.
She believes about 60% of the people whose apartments had to be fixed by DHA came back. I do have some people who call me and tell me they have gas leaks, she said. I do see the fire department out here and checking. We try and tell people here to follow all the precautions.