A slippery slope: Housing authority residents resent ice removal's glacial pace
By Jared Newman
Hour Staff Writer

When their complaints about thick layers of ice on their walkways went unanswered, Rodger Lord and other residents of public housing said they felt trapped at home.

The Norwalk Housing Authority leases apartments on 17 sites to residents with low incomes, some of whom are elderly or disabled, and is obligated to remove snow and ice from its properties. Residents from at least two of those complexes weren't happy with the service after Sunday's storm of sleet and freezing rain.

Lord, who is 63, walks with a wooden cane and lives at John Shostak Apartments, 65 Ward St.

He has called the authority's emergency maintenance number every day since Sunday. A crew salted his apartment building's backyard Monday, but it didn't remove the ice on the walkways in front of his apartment until Tuesday afternoon.

"They don't have a problem taking your paycheck, but they have a problem cleaning the sidewalk," Lord said.

Some residents didn't get their mail in the meantime. Bob Morgan, a U.S. Postal Service carrier whose route includes the Shostak Apartments and the Irving Freese Apartments next door, said his supervisor told him to stay off the ice, even if it meant holding the mail.

"I don't expect to come off of Ward Street and find myself in the middle of the mountains somewhere," Morgan said. After hearing complaints from residents, he called the authority to complain as well.

Bonita Hoyt, who lives in the Washington Village housing complex and uses a wheelchair, also had a tough time reaching the authority. After a big snowfall on Thursday, she called the authority "easily 20 times" and even claimed to City Hall that the neglect violated the Americans with Disabilities Act, but the ice wasn't completely removed until yesterday.

"It's like being in jail," Hoyt, who is 61, said. "You can't even get food."

Workers melted some of the snow outside Hoyt's apartment with road salt over the weekend, but they never cleared away the slush that later turned to ice, Hoyt said. Eventually, she paid another resident $25 to clear a ramp from her apartment. A crew from the authority cleared the remaining pathway yesterday afternoon.

The housing authority's executive director, Curtis Law, said crews have been working on cleaning ice on all the authority's properties since the weekend, and the job can't be done immediately.

"We have an obligation as a landlord to remove it," Law said, "but the question is, how fast do you remove it?"

Nicole Ruffin, an administrative assistant at the authority, said 14 maintenance workers removed ice Monday and 13 workers were on the task yesterday. Since the weekend, crews have worked more than 200 hours.

"They've been out there working overtime," Law said. "That's the only way you can get it done."

On Monday, Nancy Pastore slipped and fell on the ice outside Shostak Apartments. She was leaving the apartment after visiting her sister when the next thing she knew, she was sitting on the ground.

"I have a bad hip to begin with, and that's just where I landed," Pastore said.

Last year, a women died from a heart attack while shoveling ice and snow to clear a path from her apartment at Colonial Village. She needed to leave for kidney dialysis treatment and couldn't wait any longer for the housing authority to clear the snow that had fallen two nights earlier.

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