{"id":4465,"date":"2020-10-30T19:34:43","date_gmt":"2020-10-30T19:34:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/9thstreetjournal.org\/?p=4465"},"modified":"2023-03-27T15:52:58","modified_gmt":"2023-03-27T15:52:58","slug":"hoover-road-residents-want-rats-cleared-from-where-children-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/9thstreetjournal.org\/2020\/10\/30\/hoover-road-residents-want-rats-cleared-from-where-children-play\/","title":{"rendered":"Hoover Road residents want rats cleared from where children play"},"content":{"rendered":"
Residents at Hoover Road public housing knew much-needed repairs to their roofs would begin in June.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n But they didn\u2019t expect the project, not yet finished, would bring rats to the space where children play near their front porches.<\/span> Since July, Hoover Road residents have been grappling with an outdoor rodent infestation under a storage trailer and a makeshift dumpster. The containers, full of materials and bags of waste from the renovations, were placed in the middle of a grassy corridor between two apartment buildings where multiple families with young children live.<\/span><\/p>\n Community activists and residents want Durham Housing Authority, which runs Hoover Road and other public housing complexes, to fix this problem. They want the trailer and a growing rodent colony underneath removed.<\/span><\/p>\n In a brief phone conversation Friday morning within earshot of a 9th Street reporter, Emanuel Foster, DHA\u2019s director of housing operations, reassured community organizer Ajax Woolley that the agency was aware of the problem. He said the roofing contractor would be moving the trailer, which workers were still opening and taking materials out of on Friday, and the agency would retain another company to fill in the rodent burrows.<\/span><\/p>\n When pressed on if it would happen soon, Foster wouldn\u2019t say. \u201cI can\u2019t give a timeline,\u201d he said. <\/span> Some Hoover Road residents say their complaints have long been brushed aside.<\/span><\/p>\n Shaneeka Marrow, who has lived at Hoover Road since 2015, said that maintenance workers first alerted Cheryle Roberts, a long-time DHA employee who is property manager for multiple complexes including Hoover Road, to the rodent infestation in mid-July. <\/span> \u201cThey\u2019re not doing their job,\u201d Marrow said. She described a host of long-standing complaints, including black mold in bathrooms, possible lead exposure, insects in her home, and a screen door that has been falling off its hinges for three years.<\/span><\/p>\n Multiple calls and emails to Durham Housing Authority and its CEO, Anthony Scott, went unanswered on Friday. A prerecorded message informed callers to the Hoover Road property manager\u2019s office that only emergency maintenance requests would be considered at this time. The voicemail inbox was full.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Hoover Road is one of Durham\u2019s oldest public housing complexes, built in 1968. After hundreds of people living at McDougald Terrace, another DHA property, were evacuated last year due to unsafe conditions there, city officials <\/span>blamed<\/span><\/a> inadequate federal funding. <\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>He promised to update Woolley, part of a team of activists working on housing issues at Durham Congregations, Associations and Neighborhoods, a community group, by noon Friday. Woolley at 5 p.m. said that he has not yet heard back from Foster and that he plans to raise the matter with the joint city-county Environmental Affairs Board and City Council members.<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>Marrow, whose front porch is a few feet from the trailer, said DHA employees told her in July that they would handle the situation when they could.<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\n