By SANYA WASON
Photo credit: Kit Slack
“It’s been four years since the fire and the building still isn’t back to what it used to be. The residents are exasperated,” said Vallorie Watson, who has been a Friendship Arms resident for 12 years. On the morning of Oct. 1, 2020, bright, smoke curled from the seventh floor of the Friendship Arms Apartment Complex on 42nd Avenue in Hyattsville.
The fire appeared to be electrical, according to firefighters, and caused over 160 residents to be temporarily housed in hotels. There was an estimated $10,000 in property damages, as previously reported by the Life & Times.
The subsidized housing complex, which is filled with senior citizens and residents with disabilities, was established in 1979 to help marginalized groups by having families pay 30% of their gross income for rent, according to the management company’s website.
Once a nice, safe place for these residents, according to Watson, Friendship Arms no longer lives up to its warm name. The amenities, security and cleanliness promised to the tenants by management have slowly disappeared.
For years, residents have filed complaints with the apartment complex management, claiming that the apartments are full of rodents, bedbugs and similar pests. At least five residents have told the Life & Times that they have experienced issues with bugs and rodents in the past few months. Multiple residents have described concerns regarding traces of mice and rat feces in their kitchens and walls (see December’s “Rewilding Route 1” for the health hazards of mice feces).
According to Friendship Arms resident Corey Brown, management knowingly relocated him to a pest-infested unit after the fire.
“Upon moving into [unit] 313, I was met with not only a mouse infestation, but also a roach infestation. They moved me into a unit that they knew … was infested with roaches and mice,” said Brown, who has reportedly lived in the complex for about 25 years.
Supportive Housing Program (SHP) management took over Friendship Arms from AIMCO, a multifamily investment real estate company, in 2009, making things significantly worse at the complex, according to Brown. He said that the racial demographic of residents under AIMCO was more Caucasian-dominated and claimed that these racial dynamics might have been a factor in the better treatment of residents by management.
“When SHP took over, they started turning this community into a prison,” he said.
Residents raised many more concerns about safety, cleanliness and overall accessibility after SHP became the new management company, according to Brown.
Brown, who identifies as a gay Black man, explained that the conditions of his unit have caused him serious emotional distress, as he said he feels racially discriminated against by SHP management.
Brown said he expressed his concerns about rodent issues to management multiple times, but was ignored. “If I had been another color, they would not have done this,” he said.
Paulette Johnson, caretaker for her disabled daughter, Robin, who lives in Friendship Arms, said she also feels discriminated against by upper-level management. She claimed that the complex management does not provide proper accommodations for her daughter’s disability.
Johnson explained that the way management has pushed her and her daughter aside, despite their consistent requests for proper accommodations, feels like a personal attack. She said her efforts to voice her safety and accessibility concerns have been disregarded.
Johnson said that many things in the building are no longer up to Americans with Disabilities Act standards, and that her daughter’s apartment unit isn’t as accessible as the one she was in prior to the fire.
Frustrated by the lack of management’s help, Johnson reached out to Congressman Glenn Ivey in August, regarding the structural issues in her daughter’s apartment.
While Johnson said Ivey provided some assistance by identifying specific problems with her unit’s structure, including helping with the unit’s accessibility, Johnson’s main problem still stands: Her daughter’s wheelchair cannot fit inside her closet, rendering her unable to reach her supplies.
In addition to enduring unhealthy living conditions, residents say they are unable to use the amenities they pay for.
Johnson, whose daughter has been a resident for over 15 years, reminisces on the older times, where they had access to a gym and movie room.
She explained that the complex’s residents used to gather together in the movie room to play games amongst themselves, sometimes challenging other senior homes to competitions.
“Ooh, we used to have so much fun,” she laughs. “We had people coming in from the outside who were gifted in dancing and singing … to entertain the elderly.”
Now, residents no longer have access to the gym they were promised, and the movie room is only open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Johnson said.
She also explained that their former arts and crafts room is now filled with renovation company supplies, leaving the room dusty and unusable, despite SHP’s website still listing it as a functioning amenity.
Some residents of the apartment complex said they feel hopeless, but aren’t giving up their journey to make their home better.
”We have to fight to make this a better place,” Watson said. “We are ready to go beyond complaining, and we are going to end up with legal action.”
Matt Brucker, SHP management’s president, emphasized that residents should voice their concerns to the company’s corporate offices.
“We respect that residents are free to seek legal counsel should they feel the need to do so,” Brucker wrote in an email to the Life & Times.
The residents are aware of their rights, Watson said. She said they’ve been researching Maryland laws and plan to begin taking the major steps to restore their home back to the safe and hospitable environment it once was.
Sanya Wason is an undergraduate journalism student at the University of Maryland.
