In the heat of last summer, tensions boiled at a City Council meeting heavily attended by Crescent Halls residents who had been experiencing a major air conditioner failure, leading Mayor Mike Signer to temporarily suspend the meeting. Residents brought new concerns to a December 20 protest outside the Monticello Avenue apartment complex.
“I’ve seen roaches like crazy in the building,” says Phyllis Ellis, a 58-year-old resident who has lived in Crescent Halls for four years. “Some people have bed bugs. They try to control it, but sometimes it’s hard to control.”
At the protest, Ellis held a sign that said, “$20 million for parking garage, $1 million for rich people condos. Elderly/Disabled?” She’s currently on the city’s Section 8 housing choice waitlist and says she’s working toward relocating to Region Ten housing soon.
“I like my apartment, but I don’t really want to be in this place,” she says. “I’ve been trying to get out of this place for a long time. I feel sorry for some of the others that don’t have what I got, going to Region Ten. I hope some others can go, too.”
Crescent Halls, located near the IX Art Park, is designated as affordable housing for handicapped and elderly people. Ellis, who pays $234 in rent per month, has a heart condition that requires her to take blood thinners, and says they cause her body temperature to run cool. It’s often hard for her to stay warm in her one-bedroom handicap apartment, because when she shuts her bedroom door, the heat often doesn’t reach her.
But other residents say excessive heat is one of the complex’s biggest problems.
“On the eighth floor, if you go up there right now, you’ll probably pass out,” says Deborah Booker, president of the Crescent Halls Resident Association. Though hotels and apartment complexes are springing up all over town, she says, “It’s nothing we can afford.”
Aside from the overzealous heater, Booker says leaking ceilings, overflowing washing machines and an overall uncleanly living space are at the top of the list of things she’d like to see fixed.
‘We are humans, we are people, we live here,” she says.
Among other concerns were two used condoms allegedly found in the elevator this month. Resident Glen Roach produced a photo at the protest that he had taken of one for proof, time stamped December 17.
Several residents, like Ellis and Booker, brought up poor oversight from management at the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority, and the length of time it takes for someone there to address residents’ concerns. Last summer’s air conditioning malfunction wasn’t repaired until it was already cool outside, they said.
“The people that work in the system, they don’t really come into the building and see what’s going on in the building,” Ellis says. “We have no one working in the building.”
Grant Duffield, the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority’s executive director, says he visits Crescent Halls frequently, most recently a few days ago to make sure residents were prepared for the winter months ahead.
“I have a great deal of respect, admiration and concern for my friends at Crescent Halls,” he says. “They’re great people. I’m sure it’s frustrating at times, but we really are doing everything that we possibly can to help address the concerns that they have.”
His organization serves approximately 2,000 residents in 376 individual homes across 11 properties, and he says his priority is the health and safety of the residents.
And yet, those who live at Crescent Halls, many gripping wheelchairs and walkers, take to the sidewalk in front of their complex to make sure their voices are heard: “No more silence, no more silence, no more silence, no more silence, no more silence.”