While covering the issue of St. John’s United Church of Christ Organic Community Garden and Labyrinth back in February, I attended a meeting of the Housing Authority of Chester County’s Board of Directors at King Terrace, during which representatives of the garden met with the directors to seek a compromise.

That compromise was whether the garden would be allowed to remain on its property, which is owned by the HACC, after its lease expires in 2010. The HACC had previously announced plans for expanding the number of units in Fairview Village, and potentially those units could be built on the garden’s site.

While the garden didn’t get its lease expanded, the HACC directors announced that they would work to ensure that the garden remains throughout the expansion project. As far as I know, that situation remains the same. It’s great on the HACC’s part to allow the garden to remain, even though they didn’t have to. And I don’t mean that flippantly or diplomatically either, but whole-heartedly.

I include that little addendum, because given my recent stories you may have read over the past couple of days, you can probably predict what direction this column is headed.

Before I get into that, I need to say that what also happened during that meeting is that numerous King Terrace residents spoke out about their gratitude to the Housing Authority for giving them a place to live. Others praised their conditions and stated they were pleased with how they live.

So the two residents featured in Tuesday and Wednesday’s stories on Fairview Village and King Terrace, respectively, may not speak for everyone.

But the photos, interviews, numbers and documents used for and included in both stories cannot be ignored as it seems Serephine Thomas and her family have been. Or as the woman, called Rosa Carey in my story, on King Terrace was ignored when numerous work orders she had submitted often resulted in no action taken. These two women were extremely brave in coming forward about the conditions they live in, placing their trust in a complete stranger to share this information with, in order to see some action taken.

A member of the HACC board commented during a past meeting that it was a “God-given mission” to provide affordable housing, and that if you see a homeless person on the street, “you house ’em.”

Both a noble and necessary mission, because as much as some may hate to admit it, there really is need for affordable public housing, especially given the state of housing in today’s day and age.

HACC Executive Director Tonya K. Mitchell-Weston — who, it should be noted, was extremely polite and helpful in my interviews with her (and patient as well, for enduring an hour and 20 minute interview via phone on one occasion) — described opposition to public housing as a “not in my backyard” mentality. I’d say that sounds about right. Like it or not, there are people need help, who need this mission fulfilled.

But shouldn’t there be an asterisk understood to exist at the end of that mission statement stating that the housing will be of acceptable quality?

Shouldn’t the second part of that mission be to not only provide housing, but to maintain it? So a family can cook in their kitchen without worrying about human waste contaminating their food? So that food can even be cooked to begin with if the water isn’t shut off all day long in the entire building throughout a year-long repair project just starting now, due to inaction over the course of years on a water infrastructure known to have problems?

So that it doesn’t take an arson, of all things, to result in repairs to a faulty fire alarm system that now goes off so often due to a poor ventilation system that people don’t even leave their apartments when it goes off? Will it take another tragedy to repair the ventilation system like it did for the alarms?

I don’t know if morality, duty, ethics or simple common sense dictates answering “yes” to any of the above questions, but something certainly has to. If it was my mission to provide affordable housing to those in need, and I slapped together a group of quonset huts with no plumbing, labeled it “affordable” and walked away to never look at how the residents lived ever again, I’d hope somebody would fault me for that (and no, I’m not calling either facility in Phoenixville a group of slapped together quonset huts — just making an analogy).

There’s a lot of things that happened over the course of developing these stories that didn’t make it to print. Such as when I was speaking with Serephine Thomas in her kitchen, and I couldn’t tear my eyes away from that sinister plastic tarp. She made a comment to the extent of “it’s hard to look away from, isn’t it?”

Or interviewing Carey in her unit at King Terrace, and she lies down on her kitchen floor and demonstrates how someone in a wheelchair would go about opening their oven when it is so low to the floor. She should know, as she said she had used one herself for a long time due to her disability.

At the end of that interview, Carey walked me out of her unit, shortly after commenting that she knew of other residents in the past who did not have working locks and deadbolts on their door, and was grateful that her’s worked fine.

Following three failed attempts of getting the lock to catch, we were on our way out after the fourth was successful.

I’m not making out the HACC to be a villainous entity — nothing of the sort. They’re here to help people.

I’m simply reporting what I saw first-hand, what others have collaborated, and I simply have to ask myself why? Why, with funding at their disposal, are they constructing more units when many of the ones they have are either vacant or lacking suitable conditions? Why not use the money towards repairing what you have before building anything new? I’m not the only one who has asked this, and I don’t think I’ve found a suitable answer yet.

The HACC has taken steps to improve the conditions of King Terrace and Fairview. But numerous people I’ve spoken with have said those conditions “didn’t get like that overnight.”

Well they can’t be fixed overnight, either. The band-aid approach does not work.

Take that money. Use it towards improving what you have, and soon. Then worry about new housing.

On a final note, on April 11, 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Fair Housing Act, an article of the Civil Rights Act. As such, the government now designates the month of April with a special label in honor of the act.

Happy Fair Housing Month.

To contact Brian about his column, email bmccarthy@phoenixvillenews.com

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Brian McCarthy