No heat, no hot water, mold, mice and cockroaches. Those are the conditions hundreds of residents say they’re living in at Stanley Holmes Villages in Atlantic City. NBC10’s Karen Hua shares how the major and the housing authority plan to keep the complex warm and safe as winter comes.
From no heat to mice and mold, residents of one Atlantic City housing complex are fed up and want change.
City leaders and the Atlantic City Housing Authority (ACHA) claim a lot has been done to improve Stanley Holmes Village, a 420-unit complex located downtown. However, the tenants' association told NBC10 that they haven't seen any change, and there are currently more than 100 compliance violations.
"We should have clean air. We should have clean water. We should not be in hell and mold. We should not be in there," said Ravina Scott, a resident of Stanley Holmes Village for nine years. "The mice are running around like they paying rent up in the house."
Scott added that last year, she didn't have heat or hot water, and that's still the case today.
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Stanley Holmes Village, built in 1937, is the oldest public housing complex in New Jersey. Most of the pipes and builders are from the 1960s.
Atlantic City Mayor Marty Small and ACHA held a news conference Wednesday to share their plan of action to help residents this upcoming winter and beyond.
The meeting had gotten heated, and city leaders mostly blamed underfunding.
"In a world where we all want instant gratification, you know, things that happen like that, sometimes it's a process," said Small.
The housing authority has a 3.36 million yearly budget, but they need 20 million in emergency fixes. So far this year, they have put in temporary boilers and replaced more than half the plumbing pipes.
Since July, they've moved some residents out of the worst buildings and hope to move everyone out of the whole complex by 2027. They plan to demolish and rebuild completely.
"Every dollar has to be spent with a purpose, and repairs must improve existing systems, not just patch isolated issues," ACHA manager Mike Brown said.
There are currently a few temporary boilers until the housing authority can replace them completely.
"All we get in this promise is we haven't seen any action," said Tammy Bethea, a resident of Stanley Village Holmes for over 50 years.
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