Tenants in one Williamsburg public housing tower are livid because the city refuses to fix leaky roofs and cracks that are causing sickening black mold to grow inside the residents’ otherwise immaculate apartments.
Residents of the top floor of a 21-story tower at Jonathan Williams Plaza, a Marcy Avenue public housing complex consisting of five buildings, say its tower’s leaky roof has not been repaired properly by housing workers despite several calls and visits over the past three years.
The leaks have been so bad they have forced a 75-year old woman to stop sleeping in her bedroom and caused an accumulation of spotted black mildew in a 65-year old man’s bathroom, the one blemish in his otherwise immaculate home.
Sixta LeBron, who has lived in her apartment for 26 years, has been visited by Housing Authority workers three times in the past year to fix the cracks in her apartment, but all they have done is put plaster and paint on the walls.
“Within weeks, the same problem returned and the paint was peeling again,” said Lebron. “It’s been going on so long.”
The maintenance workers have done little to fix the bedroom, which has a hairline crack stretching the length of the entire Sheetrock wall. During heavy rains, water comes in through the cracks above her bed.
“I have switched where I sleep,” said LeBron. “It’s cold in here because of the cracks.”
Eduardo Soto, LeBron’s neighbor for the past five years, has a small crack in the living room wall, and dents in the ceiling next to the chandelier, which maintenance workers have painted over.
“These people never fix the roof, they only fix the wall,” said Soto, who has had this problem for three years. “The water still comes down.”
The biggest problem is his bathroom, where mold and mildew have proliferated on the walls above the bathtub. He has called NYCHA many times and has even tried to fix the problem himself, dousing the wall with bleach, but the mold returned a few days later.
“I want to keep my place clean,” said Soto. “I just want to be finished with this.”
A Housing Authority spokeswoman said that the agency has been “working extensively” to improve the roofs of towers at Jonathan Williams and that $3.5 million in renovations should be finished by later this year.
“Williams Plaza repair involves removing the old roofs and replacing them with new ones at each of the five buildings of the development,” said Miriam Ayala, a spokeswoman.
“This includes brick repair at the bulk heads.”