click to enlarge - Derek Brouwer ©️ Seven Days
- Decker resident Cathy Foley, left, and Burlington Housing Authority commissioner Jane Knodell
Decker Towers residents on Monday implored the Burlington City Council for help with urgent security issues that have overwhelmed their low-income high-rise.
Councilors and Mayor Miro Weinberger pledged to look for ways to assist and signaled a willingness to help pay for security measures that the Burlington Housing Authority says it can't afford.
"The conditions in the building have to be reversed as quickly as possible," Weinberger said, adding that his administration, in its waning days, wants to be a "supportive and responsive partner." In recent weeks, he has
clashed with Burlington Housing Authority management over Decker Towers.
The council dedicated the first 90 minutes of its regular meeting to Decker Towers, which has become a hub for drug use and distribution and a warm place to go this winter for the surging number of Burlington residents who are homeless.
Monday's work session was by far the most substantive discussion the council has held on problems facing Decker since conditions there began deteriorating a year ago. It came on the heels of a vote earlier this month by Decker's elderly and disabled residents to form a tenant council and armed neighborhood watch.
Seven Days spotlighted the problems at the high-rise and residents' activism in a
February 14 cover story.
Since then, nearly every city councilor, as well as Weinberger and other city officials, have toured the building at 230 St. Paul Street and met with members of the new tenant council.
Brian Pine, director of Burlington's Community & Economic Development Office, said he watched as people trespassed into the building during his recent visit. “What Decker is seeing, day in and day out and night in and night out, is really some of the failures of our society and our social safety net," he said. "It’s really quite striking.”
Representing the tenant council, Cathy Foley said its most urgent request is to station private security guards or a paid doorperson to control access. "Without securing the front doors, there can be no security at Decker Towers," she said. She urged the city and the housing authority to "find a way to come up with the money."
Foley said the resident council strongly supports housing authority executive director Steven Murray, who has been at odds with Weinberger's administration over how to resolve the security problems. Murray has complained that Burlington police don't do enough to thwart criminal behavior at the building and said his federally funded agency can't afford to shoulder the cost of private security guards.
click to enlarge - Derek Brouwer ©️ Seven Days
- Burlington Housing Authority executive director Steven Murray
Weinberger, meanwhile, has said the housing authority, in addition to hiring security, should be taking other steps to control access. The mayor recently installed his former chief of staff, Brian Lowe, as a member of the housing authority's five-person board of commissioners instead of reappointing longtime commissioner Mike Knauer.
On Monday night, another housing authority commissioner, former city council president Jane Knodell, emphasized that the board would be giving renewed consideration to ideas put forth by Weinberger's team, such as disabling a call box that enables infirm residents to buzz guests inside without going downstairs.
"Those ideas are not dead. They are still under review," she said.
The "revitalized" board meets on Tuesday, Knodell said, and expects to put forth a new plan "that we're prepared to go out to the community with."
Pine, in turn, mentioned that the city could tap its longstanding housing trust fund to support security-related improvements at Decker. In a memo sent to the housing authority ahead of the Monday work session, Pine also alluded to the possibility of providing "time-limited, coordinated enhanced police support" to complement a more comprehensive security plan.
Councilor Melo Grant (P-Central District), meanwhile, apologized to Murray for Weinberger's actions, specifically an email the mayor's office sent to the housing authority that Grant said she considered "deeply" offensive.
Grant then seized upon the "all hands on deck" campaign slogan of Democratic mayoral candidate and South District Councilor Joan Shannon to argue that the problems at Decker have been allowed to fester because low-income people live there.
"All hands have
not been on deck," Grant said. "We continue, in this city, to have these issues of class that interfere with how people are serviced ... I think this is a glaring example."
Grant urged the council to solicit regular updates on Decker Towers. Councilor Ali Dieng (I-Ward 7) called for a task force to examine the issue more broadly, noting that Decker Towers is not the only apartment complex suffering the effects of wider social failures.
Shannon and Councilor Zoraya Hightower (P-Ward 1) both emphasized that improving security at Decker Towers, while necessary, may merely push the same challenges elsewhere in the city.
“It doesn’t address the root causes," Hightower said. "It just means there’s going to be a homeless person looking for somewhere else to sleep.”
Several Decker residents spoke during the meeting's public forum to express appreciation for the sudden swell of political interest in their living conditions.
"We've been feeling kind of hopeless, exhausted and trapped," resident Abbie Wolff said, "and it's really nice to have some hope and feel like there's steps taken."