Mercy Martin had lived in her apartment at 267 Mill St. in Worcester for 17 years before the building’s roof collapsed, now she’s on the verge of living in a shelter.
Martin has been staying at a hotel since the collapse on July 15 and is pleading for her and her fellow tenants’ stay to be extended.
“The city says we have to get out by Friday,” Martin told MassLive. “Most of us are very very nervous.”
Eighty of the 110 tenants that were displaced when the roof collapsed didn’t have a place to stay and were put up in a hotel, at first paid for by the United Way of Greater Worcester, then by the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development and finally by the city.
- Read More: Almost 3 months after Worcester roof collapse, ‘handful’ of 267 Mill St. tenants still homeless
Worcester Acting City Manager Eric Batista announced on Aug. 23 that the city would extend the hotel stay until Oct. 1 to give the families, who have “been through so much,” more time to secure long-term housing.
The majority of tenants have been able to secure housing since the collapse, according to Leah Bradley, the CEO of Central Massachusetts Housing Alliance, but a “handful” of displaced tenants still haven’t been able to find housing.
Martin said there are seven or eight tenants still staying at the hotel and that they’ve all actively been looking for a new place to live.
Martin along with tenants Florence Nyarko and Rockson Obeng said either the rents have been too high for them to afford, at around $2,000/month, or the waitlist for an apartment is one to two years long.
Nyarko said she will be turning 65 and become eligible for retirement in a year and a half for her job at Fallon Health and “can’t make more.”
“We’re very confused, we don’t know what to do,” Nyarko said through tears.
Nyarko said she’s been experiencing anxiety, hasn’t been able to sleep and has even contemplated suicide.
The drastic feelings are the result of not knowing where you’re going to be able to rest your head at night, Obeng said.
“There’s only two days left (of the hotel stay) we get up in the middle of the night thinking about where we’re going to be, it’s tough,” Obeng said.
The remaining tenants aren’t just looking to stay at a hotel for a longer period of time, Obeng said. The hotel hasn’t been very comfortable, he said, there’s no circulation and there are issues with rats, but they want to continue to stay at the hotel so it will give them time to find a place of their own.
“We are looking, we want to be in our house and cook our own food and get comfortable,” Obeng said. But, with the higher rents Obeng, who works in the medical field, said it will take time to line up the roommates they would need to afford it.
Obeng said the possibility of staying in a hotel in Leominster that has been designated as a shelter has been raised to them, but they all work in Worcester and with high prices they are afraid of what the commute will do to their ability to afford an apartment.
The rent for Obeng’s two-bedroom apartment at 267 Mill St., which he had lived in for eight years, was $1,100/month before it the new property owners raised the rent just before the collapse to $1,500/month.
Obeng called the rise in rent “a big hassle” with tenants going to the property owners with their pay stubs in an effort to get them to keep rents at a level they could afford. Now the only apartments Obeng and his fellow tenants are finding have rents of $1,800 or more.
“We need help,” Obeng said, once again calling for an extended stay at the hotel. He pointed out that all the tenants had been reliably paying their rent when the roof collapsed and called on the property owner to help them.
Bradley has also called on the property managers, Michelle and Bechara Fren, to help the tenants.
When asked if the city would be extending the hotel for the handful of tenants that don’t have housing by Oct. 1, Bradley said the state and city have done the best they could to fund housing when there isn’t money at the state or federal level to support it. The funding the city and state have been using is going to run out, Bradley said.
“I think the property managers (of 267 Mill St.) are really the ones responsible to make sure these (tenants) are OK,” Bradley said. “Really the property manager needs to step up and make sure they have a place to stay whether it’s a relocation to another one of their properties or a stay at a hotel.”
The relationship between the tenants and Frens has been fraught since the collapse, with the Frens taking the tenants to housing court 10 days after the collapse.
The tenants had to return to court on multiple occasions to determine when and how the property owners could enter the property and remove the tenants’ property. A housing court judge required the manager to pay for the tenants’ property to be moved and, if necessary, stored.
The court case is still not closed, with a hearing scheduled for Oct. 5. Many of the tenants have expressed a desire to file counterclaims against the Frens for things like damages to their property and lost wages.
The city manager’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment before this story was published.
Ad Choices