BHA says "not my job"

Posted by John B. Kelly

In light of Andrea Estes' pending Globe story, the city frantically tried to solve the immediate problem of Eileen Brewster not being able to leave BHA property for our holiday party.

Although Eileen has complained many times before about access around her apartment on Ruggles street, little has ever been done. Now, suddenly, she receives a personal telephone call from Sandra Henriquez, Administrator/CEO of the Boston Housing Authority. Henriquez wanted to know what was wrong, so Eileen told her the same thing she later told Andrea Estes, that she could see blocked sidewalks from her window, and the curb cuts for crossing Leon street towards northeastern and Ruggles Station were impassable, and have always been impassable.

The manager of the Alice Heyward Taylor apartments showed up next, the walkway and Eileen's parking space were cleared, but the manager then told Eileen that the curb cuts for the Leon street crosswalk didn't belong to the BHA, but to the city of Boston!

So even though employees of the city of Boston were out at Alice Taylor shoveling sidewalks, they were not going to touch a nearby curb cut -- because it belonged to a separate agency within city government. My goodness.

Eileen called back Sandra Henriquez, who said that she would try to get those curb cuts cleared. (Now Ms. Henriquez may be completely sincere in her desire to get Eileen to the party, but I hope that as an administrator she immediately investigates how pervasive this problem is, and asks for the money to solve it)

So Eileen still doesn't know whether she can make it to the party or not, because the personal intervention of city officials, done in the service of avoiding an embarrassing newspaper story, was nevertheless ineffectual.