Recently, Northampton Housing Authority workers came to Hampshire Heights to fill trucks with old mattresses, couches, toys, bicycles and other items that were littering the public housing complex.
The move, along with a related letter asking tenants to clean belongings out of common areas, has pleased some residents and irked others. It also has stirred confusion about whether tenants need to remove items such as bikes and furniture from porches, and whether they can continue to cultivate small gardens and flower beds beside their apartments.
“My kids love to garden and all of a sudden they can’t have that as an enjoyable hobby,” said one resident, Lori Schmidt. “It’s just one thing after another.”
We applaud the authority’s effort to create a tidy place to live for the adults and children who make their home at Hampshire Heights and other housing complexes. But concerns such as the one about the gardens show the need for officials to communicate more clearly with residents about the cleanup effort.
Schmidt and some other tenants said that Housing Authority employees told them individual gardens must go. Cara Clifford, executive director of the authority, seemed to confirm that in an interview last week with Gazette reporter Rebecca Mullen. “They shouldn’t be digging up the property that they don’t own or rent,” Clifford said.
Clifford was away from the office Wednesday. But Jeffrey W. Jones, chairman of the Housing Authority board, said that residents need not be concerned about neatly tended individual gardens (nor about the community gardens at some other complexes). “None of that stuff’s going to be torn up and ripped out,” he said. “I don’t see any reason to take up somebody’s garden.”
Jones said the Hampshire Heights cleanup effort came in response to some people using areas outside of their apartments to store such items as a snowblower and rain-soaked mattresses. It also aimed to clean up clutter such as bikes and shopping carts from nearby shopping centers.
On Wednesday morning, Housing Authority crews were mowing lawns and trimming weeds at the complex, a collection of brick-walled homes and broad lawns that sits near the intersection of Bridge Road and King Street. A few adults sat in chairs on the small concrete porches in front of their homes, while most of the children were at school.
The lawns and sidewalks were clear, although a sizeable collection of shopping carts remained. On many porches, residents had placed chairs in which to pass the time in the soft summer air. Children and adult bikes leaned on kickstands. Toys ranging from small yellow dump trucks to pink play kitchens awaited the return of their young owners.
There was some clutter: a blue-and-white inflatable pool dominated the porch of one home; an abundance of playthings spilled out of another. But for the most part, the porches were tidy. Some were ringed with flower beds, including one tended by an older Vietnamese man who said he had grown the brightly colored roses, pansies, marigolds and other flowers from seeds.
Aryceli Salinas, 41, stepped out onto a porch she has neatly decorated with a couch, plants and an American flag. She applauded the effort to clean up the complex. “They’re doing a great job; you don’t see any bikes around, you don’t see any trash. I like it.”
Some residents told the Gazette earlier this week that their requests for clarification on which items needed to go were met with a lack of response by Housing Authority executives. Salinas countered that Clifford paid her a personal visit recently, helping her sort through such questions. “I’ve lived here for 10 years and I’ve never seen the place this clean.”
Jones acknowledged the need for clearer communication. He said Clifford works long hours and tries hard to be responsive, but that the resident complaints about the Hampshire Heights cleanup show, “We need to work with our culture and our communication skills.”
It’s no small job to manage a sprawling collection of housing complexes, each filled with a wide variety of residents. But building and maintaining any kind of community is a complicated job, one that requires tenants and housing officials alike to open the channels of communication and give one another the benefit of the doubt.