“We’re Still Waiting” – My Years As A Community Health Worker In NYC

I have a very intimate relationship with New York City. Although many claim to know the city like the back of their hand, they don’t know it the same way I do. My New York is very different from everyone else’s. You may pride yourself in knowing the bouncers at your favorite club, but I pride myself in knowing the key code to some of the buildings up in Wagner Houses. You may know the sights, smells, and sounds of each neighborhood, but I know who’s cooking what at any given time in hundreds upon hundreds of apartments throughout the city. You know every art piece in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I know at least thirty Jesus faces imprinted in mold in bathrooms across Upper Manhattan. My city is full of roaches, bed bugs, mice, shady landlords, corrupt government agencies, and frustrated tenants. Yet, it’s the New York I love, the one I saw in my years as a Community Health Worker.

If you ask me for names, housing projects, or even neighborhoods these families lived in, you won’t get it from me. I’ll tell you right now – I’m sworn to secrecy. I would use the word “confidentiality”, but that word seems a little cold and formal. You see, I developed a bond with many, many of my families. We would talk mold and repair request ticket numbers during my first visit, talk family and memories by my third knock on the door. Some of them have known me from before I got married and had my daughter. I tell you, my kid has many unofficial grandmothers who have seen her grow from sonogram.

Even the dealers and shady dudes lingering in the lobbies would open up the building door for me, since they knew I was cool. One time, they helped me carry my equipment up the piss-drenched stairs when the elevator was taking far too long. They knew I was going to check on the problems in their own bedrooms. They would call me “The Housing Man”, even though they knew I wasn’t part of the housing authority. On the contrary, I was there to start shit against it. If you had issues with your apartment, Housing Man was your friend. Whisper “Housing Man” three times in front of a bathroom mirror in the dark and he’ll suddenly appear and check the walls with his moisture meter.

Often times, we dealt with the New York City Housing Authority, or NYCHA for short. They were one of my arch villains in my profession, and the worst landlord in the city. Mold and vermin were rampant in each building and apartment, worsened by the inefficiency and indifference of the agency. One of our families had a leak falling on their heads every time they took a shower, a leak caused by a cracked toilet pipe from the bathroom upstairs. As a result, they had urine and feces water raining down on them any time the upstairs neighbors flushed the bowl. A leak whenever someone takes a leak. The bathroom ceiling was reduced to hanging shreds of paint, black mold, and crumbling concrete; with an ecosystem made up of spiders, flies, and roaches enjoying the deluxe accommodations. Whenever the family would put in a repair request, it was marked as “Fixed” by NYCHA, despite the only action taken was a worker coming in to see it and making it a “be right back” job with no follow-up. When I asked her when was the last time NYCHA was in her apartment, in an exhausted, exasperated voice she answered “Close to a year, we’re still waiting.”

We worked alongside local agencies and hospitals that were in need of our specialized services. They would send us referrals for patients within their system, as well as a description of their housing issues. Sometimes we would be part of an intervention process, part of a team effort between nurses, social workers, and even other fellow community health workers. So we worked with some of the more intense caseloads on their end. One of my very first cases was a lady whose husband walked out on her in 1989. In order to cope with her loss, she kept the apartment just the way it was the day he left her – right down to the food in the cupboards. The cans all had the old labels from my childhood, with expiration dates almost as old as my younger sister (who is now a mother of two with a completed Master’s Degree). One set of Chef Boyardee cans looked particularly lethal, swollen and deformed to the point of bursting. Removing them from the cupboard felt like bomb disposal. While we were emptying out the kitchen’s contents, mice darted from underneath the sink. The lady’s cat quickly caught them and formed a gory pile at my feet as I handled each can like a live grenade. The pile reached eight dead mice by the time we were done. My coworker, who was into health and martial arts at the time, spotted a Joe Weider protein shake and actually asked her if he could take it home to use it. I guess he has never seen Raiders of the Lost Ark and was not aware of the dangers of opening up ancient artifacts. Luckily, I convinced him that wasn’t such a hot idea.

New York City is never short on horror stories, and I saw a few of them. One particularly creepy visit involved going into an apartment formerly occupied by an immobile, bedridden elderly tenant. From what we gathered by the agency who referred us, he spent his entire day alone in bed in a bare room. With no television, radio, books, or any other form of distraction. A relative came a few times a day to feed him, change him, and generally check to see if he was still alive. The rest of his day was spent laying there – while being devoured alive by a massive horde of bed bugs. Laying still, not being able to speak or move, itching in agony as they crawled over him, sucking on his blood. It reminded me of that “Sloth” scene from the movie Se7en. After someone removed (or rescued) him from that fucking torture chamber, we were called in to help deal with the infestation. We went full-tactical for that one (or at least our department’s version of Special Forces gear): paint suit, face mask, shoe covers, gloves, two vacuums, and four guys. I even let out a “Go! Go! Go!”, as we ran into the room with vacuums howling, taking out bugs everywhere. Every surface of that room was severely infested, bugs running everywhere, giving the illusion of hundreds of moving dots which gave me vertigo the first few seconds in. Even the speckles on the tile pattern turned out to be scurrying blood-suckers. We ended up vacuuming bugs off each other’s protective suits, since the fucking things rained down on us from the ceiling as well.

Aside from roaches, mice, and bed bugs, the other biggest vermin in the city were the slumlords. Honestly, I have more respect for the former than the latter. I really saw the worst of humanity when dealing with these assholes. One patient on my caseload was an elderly patient with HIV and diabetes. She had her first floor apartment broken into, bedroom window smashed while she was out on a doctor’s appointment, her bed slashed as the intruder searched for cash hidden in the mattress. The landlord’s son was the main suspect, but no evidence could link him. He lived upstairs, so he knew whether she was home or not. He had previously threatened to break in and throw her belongings out on the curb, in order to get higher rent with a new tenant. Her locks were constantly tampered with, not only to try to gain entry but also to leave an ominous clue for her. Once she filed the police report after the break-in, she contacted the landlord. He came in the next day, and rather than boarding up the broken window, decided to seal off the bedroom door instead. As a result, the tenant had to sleep in the living room. That was just the opening act. He not only left the bedroom completely sealed off, he also proceeded to shut off her heat during the winter. Meanwhile, the landlord’s son went out to the back of the building where the broken bedroom window was and ran some extension cords from HER outlets to his window upstairs, most likely running high energy appliances such as a washing machine or a dryer on her electricity bill. Then the landlord added a finishing touch: a letter informing her of a monumental rent increase, ending the letter with a warm, fuzzy “Please do give us a hard time for our Rent. Anyone who give (sic) us a hard time will be evicted.” When I wrote up the wish-list of items she needed (bed, space heater, etc.) while we figured this mess out, she told me: “You don’t need to get me any of that. Just get me a blanket. Nights are very cold.”

Slumlords were the assholes that brought out my inner Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver; the ones who had me entertaining revenge fantasies in my mind on the subway ride back home. The ones who kept me thinking and made me miss my stop. They were the city’s cancer; eating away at communities, families, and individuals. They crushed the spirit of New York, drove out its poor and even middle class. They would drive me out too in time. Even my Brooklyn-born daughter would not be able to enjoy her own city because of them. Even our Bedford-Stuyvesant apartment was owned by a fucking slumlord. Sure, I did a great job of keeping him in check, but where would we go? Where would my families go?

Regardless, it was the best job I ever had (and hope to have again someday).  I miss my boss, my team, and the agency. They were my brothers and sisters in arms, my comrades. There are nights when I dream of my families, the smells of their homes, their voices. I even dream of the walk or bike ride from my office to their apartments. It creeps up on me in the most unexpected moments. The very first time I visited Paris, I took a nighttime stroll. As I walked it’s exotic streets, I spotted some buildings that looked like public housing in the distance. I don’t know what it was, maybe it was their windows, their brick walls, or even their downbeat vibe, but there was something about them that I could tell it was where I felt at home at. It was where I wanted, or needed to go. At that very moment I would have traded France, Europe, everything, for one more visit to any of my families in New York City. That’s when I realized that my mind was zapped. But fuck it, you had to be zapped in the brain one way or another to be in this line of work and do it for a few years. Even more so when you start to miss it.

New York City has 8 million stories. I’m glad I know at least 700 of them. And they will never be forgotten.