South Tucson tenants want Housing Authority director ousted

A group of South Tucson public housing residents and local tenant advocates are pushing for the removal of the city’s housing authority director, accusing her of neglecting properties, endangering tenants and retaliating against those who’ve complained.

Marisol Winfrey Herrera, an organizer with local advocacy group Tucson Tenants Union, said they’ve been working with residents of South Tucson Housing Authority properties since June to resolve several issues surrounding maintenance to buildings, including an inoperable elevator and air conditioning unit, and Housing Director Irma Gonzalez’s treatment of tenants.

Now, they’re calling for Gonzalez to either resign or be ousted by the city.

“That’s the first step,” said Winfrey Herrera, one of the group’s three organizers. “And I’m speaking on the things I’ve heard tenants saying over and over again.”

Veronica Moreno, South Tucson’s city manager, said in an email that she takes concerns expressed by residents seriously, and was working with Gonzalez to get information and respond appropriately. However, many complaints involve private tenants and city personnel, meaning Moreno was unable to say much on Monday.

“Our goal is to provide safe, stable housing and a community where residents can live with dignity and respect, so we appreciate residents bringing concerns forward,” she wrote.

‘This feeling of helplessness’

But tenants and the advocates say their trust in South Tucson city officials is broken.

Winfrey Herrera said Sunday that residents of South Tucson Housing Authority properties first reached out to the advocacy group in June.

She said residents have also reported being excessively surveilled through security cameras on properties and by Gonzalez surveying the housing authority area outside of business hours.

Both she and South Tucson City Councilmember Pablo Robles said things came to a head an an Aug. 25 meeting, which drew more than 40 and was held at La Tiendita, or a neighborhood clubhouse that shares a courtyard with Section 8 housing complexes Casa de Bernie Sedley and El Señorial Apartments.

“We were made aware that there are more than just a few tenants,” Robles said. “It didn’t really feel great to be hearing about all those things.”

The city of South Tucson runs those two complexes, another complex and other freestanding homes and duplexes. For the small city’s approximately 4,500 residents, there are more than 340 public housing units, ranging from studio apartments to three-bedroom homes.

Casa de Bernie Sedley, 411 E. 29th St., has one-bedroom apartments for elderly and disabled residents. El Señorial, 420 E. 28th St., has 50 studio and one-bedroom apartments for the elderly and disabled. Another 172 units are at a complex at 1713 S. 3rd Ave., with about 72 other units scattered across the mile-square enclave that is entirely surrounded by the city of Tucson.

Robles, who is also an employee at Casa Maria Soup Kitchen close to the Housing Authority, said he’d occasionally hear complaints from residents who stopped by his workplace for a meal.

He was previously a housing counselor at Chicanos Por La Causa, a statewide nonprofit that advocates for underserved communities.

“To see it happen again, even in a position where I can do something about it, for a moment, I had this feeling of helplessness,” he said of what tenants told him at the Aug. 25 meeting.

He was especially troubled when tenants told him the Housing Authority left a family without air conditioning for a week, causing temperatures inside their apartment to reach the mid-90s at one point.

“That’s an emergency. We live in the desert,” he said. “When it becomes 90-something degrees indoors, people can get sick.”

Heat can be deadly, even for those who have shelter.

So far this year, 182 people in Pima County have died in ways related to the heat, and 77 of them — 42 percent — have been indoors. Among the 114 people not classified as undocumented border crossers or those experiencing homelessness, 75 of the heat-related deaths — 65 percent — took place indoors, according to Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner data.

State law requires landlords to repair and maintain air conditioning in the units they own. Though the law gives landlords 10 days to make repairs, that time frame shrinks to five days if it becomes a health or safety issues.

Winfrey Herrera said the family went seven days with no cooling system, and were denied a hotel voucher when they asked Gonzalez for one.

‘An empathetic and honest director’

Winfrey Herrera said Gonzalez “laughed and scoffed” when tenants spoke on Aug. 25. That was confirmed by Lori March, who was present at the meeting and lives on the third floor of Casa de Bernie Sedley.

March, who has lived in South Tucson Housing Authority properties for around 14 years, labeled the meeting on her calendar as “Irma in the Hot Seat Day.” But at the meeting, she felt city officials weren’t paying attention to her neighbors’ concerns.

“I hope all of this will help the tenants’ union successful in all of us getting an empathetic and honest director and her staff,” she said.

She said there have always been issues with the city agency and its care for its properties in the entire time she’s lived there. But they seem to have gotten worse under Gonzalez.

Though she loves living in Southern Arizona, she said, she’s looked at moving into public housing as far away as New Mexico.

“She’s a bully. She’s blaming the tenants for things that housing never asked of us before,” March said of Gonzalez. “The way she calls it, ‘I’m applying the rules.’ But to us, it’s a big change. And it comes with the threat of eviction.”

According to her, the rules around providing proof of income and documents for the two cats that live with her changed under Gonzalez, though there is little guidance for what housing officials actually need.

She said this is the first time she’s needed to give evidence that her Social Security and pension checks have actually cleared her credit union.

“She suggested that, after having lived in two public housing facilities in two different states, I wanted to commit fraud on the Housing Authority and my credit union,” March said.

Meanwhile, Gonzalez has threatened to evict her and other residents, March told the Tucson Sentinel. She’s also recently spotted something new on the notices she gets from the Housing Authority: They often come with warnings of a hefty fine.

“Every notice for pest control now has a notice at the bottom that says, if you don’t let them in or you need them to come back later, there’s a $250 fee,” she said. “Some of us don’t even pay that much in rent. That’s insane.”

And according to Winfrey Herrera, Gonzalez’s behavior has already pushed several people out, though she doesn’t know where they went.

Moreno did add that the city doesn’t take the prospect of evictions lightly, and always wants to keep its tenants housed. But the city is required to act when legal or safety issues arise.

“That’s the balance we try to strike,” she said.

‘Change right now’

The 70-year-old March walks with a cane, suffers from chronic pain and struggles with anxiety.

Though the first notice that the elevator would be shut down came in early August, she said, and that notice came in Spanish.

She was first informed in English of the upcoming elevator shutdown 10 days before it started, when second and third floor tenants were offered transfers or unspecified “other accommodations.”

Four days prior, another notice came. This one offered March and her neighbors a chance to permanently move to a first-floor unit or a spot in another building, which would have given her little time to pack and move.

But the third floor is quiet, she said, and she’s been settled into her current apartment for about two years.

But it was still difficult for her to get up and down the stairs.

“I’m afraid of falling, and those steps are steep,” she said. “Yes, there’s a rail on the wall and a rail on the open side, but they’re too wide to hold onto both of them.”

Robles said Thursday the elevator back in service that morning.

He expected South Tucson councilmembers would have discussed tenants’ concerns at their regularly scheduled Sept. 15 meeting, but it was cancelled. The next meeting is slated for Oct. 6, and Robles said he expects the council will deliberate on how they will look into their complaints.

He said current Arizona Rep. Betty Villegas, once South Tucson’s housing director, sent the council a letter suggesting that they could use a third party to investigate the matter.

Winfrey Herrera said Tucson Tenants Union members met with each councilmember afterward. All except one seemed receptive to what members had to say, she said.

She said the Tucson Tenants Union still hopes to meet again with the councilmembers ahead of the planned Oct. 6 meeting.

Robles said he was on board with the idea of a third-party investigator. But Winfrey Herrera has her doubts.

She said she worried the process would take too much time, especially when the South Tucson tenants and advocates are demanding immediate improvements.

“What is a lengthy process going to do for the tenant?” she said. “It doesn’t give them change right now”

On Sunday, Winfrey Herrera said the union hadn’t yet contacted an attorney. She said she was hoping to get the tenants’ needs met through community organizing before it reached that point.

But what happens later depends on how the city’s response is at upcoming meetings.

“Hopefully, this lasts, tops, three months,” she said. “The tenants are tired of waiting.”