Departments
|
Week of 14 November 1997 |
Vol. I, No. 12 |
Feature
Article
|
|
BU Physical Plant electrician
Al Copithorn helped secure a $21.2 million HUD
grant for Charlestown's Mishawum Park housing
project. Photo by Kalman
Zabarsky
|
BU worker fights to put house in order for housing
by Brian Fitzgerald
By day Al Copithorn is an electrician for Boston University's Physical Plant. But by night he is a tenant activist, battling for the rights of 337 families in one of Boston's largest housing developments. It is a fight that he has taken all the way to Capitol Hill.
And now he is rising to another challenge. Copithorn and his neighbors are the new owners of Mishawum Park Apartments in Charlestown, thanks to a $21.2 million grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), under the Low Income Housing Preservation and Resident Home Ownership Act. The grant, which was awarded on September 29, "will fund much-needed repairs on buildings that have suffered from more than 20 years of neglect," says Copithorn, vice president of the Mishawum Park Tenants Association.
Mishawum Park will get new roofs, windows, siding, insulation, plumbing, heating systems, electric wiring, and flooring. And that's just to start. "They're basically going to gut out each building, one at a time, right down to the studs," he says. It won't be easy. Temporary housing has to be found for displaced tenants. It will probably take the entire summer of 1998 to complete the first phase of the repairs.
But Copithorn and his fellow tenants are used to waiting. Al-though HUD ordered its owner to sell Mishawum Park to the tenants three years ago, HUD's budget was cut, and then the Clinton administration wanted to do away with the federally funded tenant buyout program, also known as Title VI. A report from the General Accounting Office (GAO) had attacked HUD's Title VI program, arguing that Congress should not be offering such large grants while trying to balance the budget.
"The government thought that it was a waste of good money. But the fact is that if tenants own a housing development, chances are that they are going to take good care of it," says Copithorn, whose persistence paid off -- in the nick of time. The grant to Mishawum Park was not only the nation's largest under Title VI this year, it was also the last. Although Congress recently shut down the program, Mishawum Park will undergo long-overdue renovation.
"Mishawum Park has been the eyesore of Charlestown," says Copithorn. "After the repairs, it will be the icon of Charlestown."
Occupying six city blocks across the street from Bunker Hill Community College, Mishawum Park makes up 7 percent of Charlestown's housing stock. Longtime residents say that the development began falling apart shortly after it was built in 1974. Copithorn joined the first ad hoc tenant committee in 1991, a year after he and his family moved in. Tenants with complaints were rebuffed by the owner, who "always insisted that he didn't have enough money to make the repairs," says Copithorn.
The tenants' first victory came in 1992. "We protested a rent increase, and we were successful," he recalls. "But after that, the committee sort of waned. People lost interest." However, after Copithorn was elected president, the Tenants Association learned that the owner allegedly had diverted funds out of Mishawum Park's budget. A Freedom of Information Act request for a year-old HUD audit revealed that there was indeed a $477,000 shortfall at the housing development.
That year Copithorn went to a national HUD tenants conference in Washington, D.C., and talked to Helen Dunlap, who was HUD's deputy assistant secretary. Dunlap had just given a speech on the Clinton administration's crackdown on landlords who let their buildings fall into disrepair. "I spoke to her in a corridor about Mishawum Park, and she said, 'Well, we need proof of this.' I told her that HUD had the proof, and I faxed her a copy of the audit when I got back."
Dunlap visited Mishawum Park in April of 1993. After Copithorn gave her a tour of the housing project, she informed him that the case would be referred to the Justice Department. Both of them knew that getting the owner to sell Mishawum Park to the Tenants Association wouldn't be easy -- there had never been a forced Title VI sale in the history of the program. "But she was disgusted at what she saw, and it was obvious that she wanted to help us," he says.
Meanwhile, Mishawum Park was not only unsightly, it was getting unhealthful. "Many tenants have breathing problems, and the rate of asthma is unusually high," says Copithorn. "We couldn't pinpoint the cause until we did some research and found out that all the insulation in the walls is damp because of the leaky roofs. There is mold in the insulation."
Flood and fire
Water heaters also leak, often to the point of flooding apartments. One Sunday afternoon Copithorn and his wife were playing cards in their kitchen when they heard water splashing on the living room floor. Sure enough, flowing from the ceiling was Mishawum Falls. "I was able to find the water heater's shutoff valve," he says. "But other people weren't as lucky when it happened to their water heaters. Some of them have had a lot of their property damaged."
Mishawum Park's vinyl siding was undoubtedly immaculately white when it was installed 23 years ago. Now it is stained, dented, and missing panels. "Not a pretty sight," Copithorn says as he unlocks the door to a vacant apartment that was burned out and boarded up three years ago. Inside, not much has changed since the fire was put out. It's still a mess. The charred walls have been removed, but there is no sign of any repair work.
There are good landlords, and there are bad landlords. And Mishawum Park, like all housing developments, has responsible residents and irresponsible residents. Although it hasn't experienced the kind of racial tension that has flared up in New Towne, the neighborhood's other large housing project, Mishawum Park keeps the Boston police busy. Drug dealing is a problem at the project, and Copithorn is fighting for more of a police presence. On a recent afternoon, the sight of a reporter and a photographer, clearly out of place there, prompts two hooded teenagers to walk hurriedly across a courtyard and around a corner, out of sight -- for now.
But giving up the struggle and moving his family somewhere else never occurred to Copithorn. He is a lifelong Charlestown resident who has several relatives in the neighborhood, and he refuses to give up on Mishawum Park. His four daughters, aged 7, 9, 12, and 14, "have lots of friends here, and they like the schools," he says. "I wanted to see this buyout go through."
Although the Tenants Association had the drive to succeed, it was not a smooth ride. The sale was approved in August 1996, but Mishawum Park residents had to wait for funds from Congress. They had originally applied for a $29 million grant; however, the amount was scaled back to $13 million because of the budget cuts.
Copithorn took another trip to Washington, joining tenant leaders from across the country to lobby for more funds for direct sales to their groups. Then last June, two other Mishawum Park residents went south, joining 300 HUD tenants in a demonstration at the gates of the White House. These efforts were successful enough to persuade the government to immediately release more money for its Title VI program, including the $13 million that was already set aside for Mishawum Park.
But the tenants were not finished. Awaiting the fate of the second half of the grant, Copithorn and his neighbors wrote letters to Senators Edward Kennedy and John Kerry, urging them to protect the endangered Mishawum Park funds. In turn, the senators cosigned a letter to the GAO defending Title VI.
HUD ended up funding the bulk of the grant. "We've got to bring the apartments up to code, so landscaping will be put on the back burner," says Copithorn.
His term as Tenants Association president expired in September, but as vice president he's still determined to make Mishawum Park a better place to live. "We're trying to build a sense of community here," he says. "On Halloween we had a costume party for the kids, and it was a big success."
At present the Tenants Association is pursuing city and state funds to help close the $6 million gap in funding. "After all this time, it's pretty satisfying to get most of the money," he says. "But we're not going to give up until we get the rest."