July 11, 2002
When Susanna Goenaga moved to Fairfax County from Argentina several years ago, she thought her quality of life was going to improve. After all, she was moving to one of the most affluent counties in the United States with her husband, a carpenter, and their two children.
But what she found in her new home at the Vista Garden Apartments complex in the Culmore area near Baileys Crossroads were living conditions worse than the ones she had left, she said.
"In my house in Argentina I had no cockroaches," she said. "In the U.S., I have cockroaches."
Idalia Pereira, a native of El Salvador and a current resident of Olde Salem Apartments, also in Culmore, has a similar problem. She has waited eight years to get her ceiling repainted, and her three children have contracted asthma from the falling paint chips.
HEALTH PROBLEMS caused by poor building maintenance often go unaddressed, said Edgar Rivera, a project coordinator with the Tenants' and Workers' Support Committee, an advocacy group.
"They are afraid to go the doctor's because of economic reasons," he said. "They're afraid to end up with a big bill."
"People of color live in this community," he added. And "people get treated based on who they are in this community."
Building managers are often reluctant to make the necessary repairs, said Rivera, forcing the tenants to contact the Health Department for inspections.
But managers dispute this. "If we knew about [a problem] we would have taken care of it," said Elsa Bauer, assistant manager of Parkwood Apartments, which Rivera said has been the target of many Health Department inspections.
"We are not afraid of the Health Department," added Bauer. "If [tenants] call the Health Department we don't put them on the black list."
Bauer added that many of the problems with roaches or mice are caused by tenants who do not keep their apartments clean. "Sometimes, they're just dirty people," she said. "Some, not all of them."
Sometimes, Bauer said, tenants will move out of an apartment without cleaning it which can roach problems for the surrounding apartments.
"I'M NOT AWARE of any of that," said Supervisor Penelope Gross (D-Mason), when asked about problems in apartment buildings. Gross, whose district includes Culmore, said she was "quite surprised" to hear about tenants' problems.
"I'm hearing nothing about this" from constituents, she said. "It's not come to my attention for several years. … This is very puzzling to me."
Gross said she was aware of serious code violations 10 years ago but that the number of violations has gone down since then. Most of the problems she hears about, she said, deal with outdoor problems, such as public drunkenness, front doors that won't close properly or missing window screens. She also said she has heard about broken windows.
Gross has a multilingual staff to deal with concerns from recent immigrants whose command of English is not very good yet. She and her staff, she said, are very active in the community and try to hear about all constituent problems.
She attributed her ignorance of serious code violations to the reticence many recent immigrants feel about contacting their local civic groups or county officials.
"You've either got someone who's new to the area or we've got somebody who's not following the procedure they need to follow," she said.
But tenants said they had never heard from Gross' office.
"We don't even have her phone number," said Aida Manalo, a Filipino native currently living in Culmore.
Rivera said lack of communication from the county is a big problem in immigrant communities. There was no notice about last March's public hearings on the county budget, he added.
WHEN APARTMENT managers do not make the necessary repairs to bring their properties up to code, tenants can contact the county's Health Department. Health Department staffers conduct inspections and give managers a certain amount of time to make repairs. If managers don't comply, the department can take them to court. Fines range from $25 into the thousands of dollars, according to Patricia Petro, senior environmental health specialist with the Health Department.
"We're trying to work with people," she said. "Most people do comply. It's a very tiny percentage of people who don't comply."
Petro said the department would like to do spot checks on apartment buildings but with 10 inspectors on staff they are often overwhelmed just trying to respond to complaints.
"We are just inundated with phone calls," she said. "Especially in the warmer weather," when people notice problems on the outside of buildings or when power goes out because air conditioners are overused.
Petro said the department gets all kinds of complaints, including a high number of complaints about peeling or lead-based paint or rodents, the problems affecting Susanna Goenaga and Idalia Pereira.
"Every conceivable type of issue comes up," she said. "In the parts [of the county] where there's a higher density of population, we do get more calls from those parts."
While the department does not release the names of tenants, Petro said that it was very possible many more people experienced problems with their apartments but were afraid to report them. While the department is "fully loaded" with its current workload, she said, the problem might be more widespread than it seems.