“Nothing is getting done,” she said inside her home this month. “That work order’s been in.”
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Here, among the residents of Franklin Field’s 400-plus units, it’s a common refrain. The population of the public housing development is overwhelmingly Black and Latino, and many live below the federal poverty line. Anecdotally, more than a dozen Franklin Field tenants say they have had experiences of shoddy maintenance, that long waits for major fixes at their homes are the norm. For relatively minor work, like painting or bush trimming, some tenants do it themselves, saying it would not get done otherwise.
Earlier this year, allegations of disgraceful living conditions at Franklin Field drew the attention of the state’s attorney general, who sued the authority, the city’s largest housing provider, over its handling of a tenant’s complaints about a unit at Franklin Field infested with mice and mold. Specifically, the tenant alleged that the housing authority had failed to fix unsanitary problems in the apartment, despite the tenant’s report that conditions in the unit were hazardous to her and her nieces’ health. That litigation is ongoing.
A Globe review of work orders for the Franklin Field complex shows the scope of work that the BHA, which oversees about 10,000 public housing rental units in the city, has to undertake in its attempt to maintain an antiquated complex in the midst of an ongoing housing crisis. (The housing at Franklin Field dates to the 1950s and ‘60s.)
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Between Jan. 1, 2022, and the beginning of March this year, there were 3,261 work orders filed by tenants at Franklin Field. In defending its maintenance track record earlier this year, the BHA said 94 percent of those had been closed.
Among the complaints were broken door locks, loose faucets, and caved-in shower walls. Doorbells that did not work. Clogged tubs, clogged toilets, clogged sinks. Broken windows and busted vents. Nearly 190 instances of a stove or oven in disrepair, and scores of cases of that essential appliance not working at all. More than 500 complaints of leaks of one sort or another. One hundred and thirty-one issues with refrigerators.
More than 210 complaints of no heat, another hundred more of no hot water. There were at least 250 gripes about rodents, 130 or so regarding roaches and 15 more of bed bugs. Residents complained of mold 191 times.
For Kenzie Bok, the administrator of the Boston Housing Authority, the many complaints at Franklin Field reflect not a failure to care but a shortage of resources.
“People get tired of hearing how underresourced public housing is, but it really is,” she said.
The authority’s work, she said, is happening in the context of a rampaging housing crisis, a low vacancy rate for affordable housing units, and a limit to the number of families the agency can relocate to another unit in the system at any one time. BHA staff, she said, are constantly put in a position where there are “too many urgent things to do,” she said.
“Everybody on the BHA team cares tremendously about residents,” she said.
The Franklin Field site was built on marshy land, which causes all sorts of problems in the buildings, particularly when it comes to issues linked to moisture, such as mold. The key challenge is to make the buildings tight against moisture while also well ventilated. Keep the water out and the heat in. And Bok said there are plans to fix some of those issues at Franklin Field: New windows for some units and upgrades to ventilation systems are on tap.
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Bok said it feels like the authority has never had as much financial support from local, state, and federal levels of government as it does now, but it’s still not enough.
Some of the buildings need to be fundamentally transformed, she said, to fix some of the core issues caused by moisture. But capital grants on both the federal and state levels, she said, offer “pennies on the dollar” when it comes to what developments like Franklin Field need. BHA officials have concentrated on doing more with less, she said, noting that the authority is transitioning from a paper work order system to a computerized system that utilizes tablets, with the hope of better and more quickly organizing needed maintenance requests.
“There’s no way around saying that the level of investment that the Franklin Field buildings ... need is millions of dollars and it has to come from all levels of government,” she said.
Earlier this year, the BHA and National Grid unveiled details of a plan to convert the heating system for 129 public housing units at Franklin Field to an electricity-powered geothermal system. The project would replace the 20-year-old gas-fired boiler, and offer a fossil fuel-free way of heating residences. The initiative would also see HVAC system upgrades.
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While that announcement garnered headlines, several residents recently said they feel neglected.
One tenant who has lived here for decades said it took more than a year for her balky toilet to be fixed. A busted pipe in her kitchen was another months-long ordeal. She requested a transfer out of her unit years ago, but is still waiting. She declined to be named, as more than 15 residents did when they spoke of the problems they live with. Some said that while their housing situation is deeply imperfect, it offers them some modicum of stability and they don’t want any blowback from BHA staff if they were to attach their names to criticism.
A Franklin Field family said their tub has needed new caulk for more than a year. They put in a work order and someone came to check it out, vowing to return and fix it, but never did.
“You kind of expect it,” said one woman, who declined to be named. “If they actually show up, it’s a nice surprise.”
Another resident said when she asked property management for a new window screen for her bathroom, she was told that Franklin Field management simply didn’t have any more screens. The windows are old and drafty, she said. She paid for a storm door herself, she said, because of the harsh winters here.
“Nothing is going to change until they put white people in here,” she said.
The vast majority of Franklin Field’s 1,000-plus residents are people of color. Only 30 identify as white, while 406 identify as Black and 571 say they are Hispanic, according to statistics from the BHA.
Technically, there are three separate housing programs that make up Franklin Field. For all three of the developments, the average household income is below $30,000 a year, according to the BHA. For one of the three, it is below $14,000. It is home to the working class, but even more to the poor.
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After utilities are paid for 335 federally funded units at Franklin Field, the BHA says it ends up receiving a little more than $250 from federal authorities per unit per month for that cohort of residents. The BHA said it actually operates at a $180 monthly deficit for each unit, meaning the agency is spending more than it receives to manage the property. The deficit is covered by taking “expenses out of federal capital funds, which then unfortunately reduces the funding available for large capital projects,” said authority spokesperson Brian Jordan in an email.
Unlike others interviewed for this story, Rosalyn Russell did not hesitate in offering her name. She is beyond caring about any potential blowback. She is upset about the mold, and she predicts that if it ever gets fixed, maintenance workers will likely just bleach the wall and repaint it.
“But it comes back again, so that’s just a Band-Aid,” she said.
She points to her new cabinets in the kitchen. Those were only installed, she said, after she stopped trying to mitigate a leaky sink. She had put in maintenance requests and was trying to deal catch the leaking water with pots and pans as best she could, but eventually she gave up. The water, she said, seeped into the basem*nt of her building. It was only then that the sink was fixed, and, along with it, new cabinets were installed.
She likes the cabinets, but the delay in the repair was unacceptable.
“They are just slacking,” she said.
She has a large celebration planned for the weekend, a memorial for her nephew, Derrell Russell, who was fatally shot on the day of the Boston Caribbean Carnival Parade in 2022. He was born and raised here, in Franklin Field, she said, and she expects close to a 100 people to show for the memorial. Flawed as it is, this is home.
Talking about her nephew brings tears. On top of the lackluster housing conditions, she said, she doesn’t feel safe in the neighborhood anymore. She rails against large bushes that aren’t trimmed or maintained; she said that shooters can stash guns there.
She was asked if she would like to live somewhere else.
“Yes,” she said, “I would.”
Danny McDonald can be reached at daniel.mcdonald@globe.com. Follow him @Danny__McDonald.
