Residents of a housing complex for seniors and people with disabilities in Malden are protesting what they say are unsafe living conditions, not limited to insect and rodent infestations, flooding and heating issues. Tenants also say they’re fearful of being retaliated against if they complain.
The 90-unit, privately owned and federally funded building at 59 Green St. is known as Robinson Cuticura Mill Apartments, and has residents ranging from their mid-60s to late 90s. Tenants told GBH that property manager Beacon Communities set sticky traps for mice — which they told residents to remove themselves — and sprayed for bugs. They said the property management company also sends someone on Wednesdays to look around.
Several residents said Beacon’s team have told them that rodents are ”all in your head.” They want to see formal fogging and remediation of the issues, and for retaliation for their complaints to stop.
Sally Williams, 82, has been living in her apartment for 15 years. About a month and ago she started noticing black bugs — and her neighbors have them too.
“They attack you. They was all in my hair. I had to go to the [property management] office because they were all in my clothes and in my hair, and my shoes. They were everywhere,” she said in a phone call. “I was afraid, so I had to sleep under a sheet because I didn’t know what they were going to get in my ear or in my mouth or my nose.”
A man affiliated with Beacon Communities sprayed some chemicals in her apartment with a bottle, she said, and told her to continue doing so herself. Williams followed those instructions, but once she started feeling unwell, her daughter told her to stop.
Mary Sawyer, 80, has heard scratching and the occasional squeal in the walls for much of this year. One day she was laying in bed, when she felt a very sharp sensation on her toe. It wasn’t bleeding, but the toe eventually turned black and blue.
“I even even told them that I had this bite. And he says, 'well, it’s probably all in your mind,'” she recounted of someone at the company.
Sawyer spends her nights with the lights on, tapping on the walls, and sleeps on a recliner to be higher off the floor. She’s been in the building for 23 years, but is moving soon due to the rodent issue.
Dara Kovel, CEO of Beacon Communities, said in a statement to GBH News that their team “addresses maintenance issues and residents’ concerns, including issues such as pest control, in an expeditious and thorough manner.”
Tenants also say they can’t organize or socialize, because management has closed off common areas. Residents created their association in 2022, and started having meetings with Beacon, they said, but within a few meetings, those were “commandeered,” and the company avoided discussion of significant widespread concerns.
Tenants stopped attending in response. With the support of City Life/Vida Urbana, they asked the company to allow a third-party moderator to attend the meetings, and to reinstate an eviction diversion program. The letter to the company went out in July , but they say there’s no agreement to meet.
Tenant association President Sissy Raney said not everyone is waiting for that meeting.
“We’ve been trying to get a meeting with a mediator to get across to them because we have people that are literally moving out because they don’t want to live in these conditions at all,” she said. “And they’re elderly people — it’s not fair.”
Beacon Communities CEO Kovel told GBH News the company has been working to re-establish meetings.
“We welcome the resumption of meetings with the residents and we are committed to resolving these misunderstandings,” Kovel said in a statement.
Tenants are also concerned about retaliation. They said the company will give out “write-ups” for those who complain.
One example, said Eduardo Palacios, an organizer for City Life, was of a tenant who burned herself on an allegedly faulty stove.
“Management, their response was 'learn how to cook,'” he said. “Well, she went ahead and called for an inspection. They retaliated by giving her a notice to quit, telling her she had to leave within 30 days. So we think that is retaliation for her organizing here.”
Kovel contested that claim, saying “Beacon Communities works every day to ensure that residents in our properties are stably housed. Retaliation for any reason has never been nor would ever be a practice of Beacon’s.”
Palacios believes that if a company chooses to work with seniors, they need to be accommodating.
“We were able to fight back those evictions. We saw the pest problem get worse, and we saw more and more tenants get more frustrated with the way things were going,” said Jake Taber, organizer for Mass Senior Action Council, which has been support the tenants.
