Broken Door May Hold The Key To Queensbridge's Much-Needed Fixes

[UPDATE: Following the publication of this story, workers fixed the front door to Tina Williams' apartment.]

LONG ISLAND CITY, QUEENS — The morning of Aug. 8, 2018, Tina Williams jolted awake to a dozen-some strangers breaking down the front door of her Queensbridge Houses apartment.

They had a warrant out for her brother's arrest, they shouted as they busted through her deadbolt, and a crowd of cops spilled into Williams' one-bedroom apartment.

The police left with empty cuffs, but the door never closed behind them: It had taken a beating and now hung so askew that it couldn't slide back into its frame.

"I was shocked how it was still standing," Williams said in an interview.

After a year and a half, Williams' front door still won't close properly. She has repeatedly called NYCHA's centralized phone line to put in a ticket to repair it, but she told Patch that workers have done nothing more than measure the doorframe.

"I just stopped calling, period," Williams said. "I got tired."

Williams' door is on a list of nearly 200 issues across 45 apartments that Queensbridge tenants are compiling in an effort to pressure NYCHA, the agency that oversees their public housing complex, to finally make the much-needed repairs.

In some cases, like with Williams' door, tenants sent in work orders but found that NYCHA kept closing their tickets without fixing the issue.

"There were various issues in repairing this door, including scheduling difficulties," a NYCHA spokesperson said in an emailed statement Wednesday evening. "Maintenance staff is visiting the apartment today to repair the door."

“How can a person live like this?”
Queensbridge Houses resident Tina Williams’ broken door is on a list of nearly 200 issues that Queensbridge tenants are compiling in a campaign to get NYCHA to make much-needed repairs to their apartments.https://t.co/Rf8u1UHH53 pic.twitter.com/XHwCJcSw2e
— Maya Kaufman (@mayakauf) March 4, 2020

Organizing under the name Queens Community Action Group, the tenants say their campaign has secured more than 50 repairs in the last year, and this month they're preparing to dramatically ramp up their efforts.

"We are showing residents that they deserve and can fight for a better world where being treated with respect and dignity can be the new normal," Ian Gray-Stack, a community organizer who's working with the tenants, told Patch. (Gray-Stack works for the Jacob A. Riis Neighborhood Settlement, a nonprofit based at Queensbridge, but is assisting the tenants independently.)

Many of the issues on the Queens Community Action Group's list — flooding, peeling paint, rampant mold — are not new to Queensbridge Houses, which has more than 3,000 apartments across 26 buildings.

But that's precisely the point, Gray-Stack said.

"We want to show federal and city officials that the problem is not just political or financial but also a moral issue that is their personal responsibility to resolve," Gray-Stack said. "We want each of them to lose sleep until decent public housing is finally, and sustainably, normal."

The Queens Community Action Group is taking a grassroots approach to tackling issues that extend far beyond Queensbridge Houses.

Last year, under a sweeping oversight deal, the federal government appointed an independent monitor to track NYCHA's progress addressing systemic problems like heating failures and hazardous lead paint that have long plagued the 316 developments the authority runs citywide.

Tenants like Williams, fed up with waiting for long-promised repairs, are instead taking matters into their own hands. They plan to send their list of apartment issues to NYCHA's compliance department and Lynne Patton, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's regional administrator for New York and New Jersey.

Williams' apartment also has mold issues and chipped paint, but it's the door that troubles her most.

Queensbridge Houses tenants are organizing under the name Queens Community Action Group in an effort to finally get fixes for chronic issues, like this mold seen in Tina Williams’ bathroom. @NYCHA @LynnePattonHUD https://t.co/Rf8u1UHH53 pic.twitter.com/zFLZqZhpa3
— Maya Kaufman (@mayakauf) March 4, 2020

Nearly 24 hours after the police broke it down, NYCHA workers installed a sliding latch that allowed Williams to lock the door from inside, but not if she left her apartment. So she stayed inside, missing two days of work as she waited for the carpenter that NYCHA staffers had promised to send.

Her uncle eventually came by to install a lock that would allow Williams to leave her apartment locked, but, 18 months later, her door still doesn't close all the way.

From Thanksgiving to February, she kept Christmas paper taped to the front door to hide the dents and bruises the police left.

Her worst fear?

"That somebody's going to kick that door down and take what little I have," she said. "Every day I come up the stairs praying, looking at the door, hoping nobody's kicked it in."

This story was updated to add a statement from NYCHA. Following the publication of this story, workers replaced the front door to Tina Williams' apartment.