Siavosh Sateri, 64, sits on his bed in the apartment he shared with his brother at Bayside East in Portland. The brothers, who lived there for seven years until Thursday, had mold all over their windows and on the walls. Derek Davis/Staff Photographer
The Portland Housing Authority is moving people out of low-income housing in Bayside after ongoing complaints about mold that the building’s manager says were ignored for months.
Until Thursday, Siavosh Sateri, 64, and his brother Sirous, 58, lived in a moldy apartment on the second floor of 25 Boyd St., a 10-unit building that is part of the housing authority’s Bayside East development. It was their home for seven years.
The men finally were moved to a different development this week after making multiple complaints that they said went unanswered.
Baba Ly, who manages the building, said his supervisor prioritized filling empty units with new residents over moving existing residents into safer settings. Ly said he had been trying to get the housing authority to address the black mold that has been growing throughout the building for months, but it wasn’t until he shared photos of the mold on Facebook that his complaints were addressed.
“I don’t think these are conditions people should live in,” he said.
Brian Frost, the executive director of the housing authority, admitted Friday that the agency took too long to address the problem.
“Staff at the housing authority, myself included, failed to take immediate action in terms of moving that family out of that unit,” he said in an interview. “That’s an internal failure.”
Mold grows in an apartment at Bayside East in Portland, a low-income housing complex run by the Portland Housing Authority. Derek Davis/Staff Photographer
Frost hopes to move everyone out by the end of February and then tear down the building and build a new one. He said he plans to ask the city’s planning board for approval in the coming months.
As of Friday, four families were still living in the building, Ly said.
‘I CANNOT BREATHE’
On Wednesday afternoon, before they moved, Sirous Sateri gripped a 5-month-old puppy, Toni, close to his chest as he moved slowly through his apartment. His brother rubbed sleep from his eyes after waking from a nap and pointed to a collection of small lemon trees lining his windowsill – coated in mold.
Behind Siavosh Sateri’s pillow, a piece of white printer paper was taped over a growing patch of mold in an effort to smother it.
“We want to get into new housing where we don’t have this mold,” said Siovash Sateri, who had nasal sprays lined up like dominoes on his bedside table.
He said he’s gone to his doctor about persistent trouble breathing, watery eyes and a runny nose – symptoms he’s had for years and believes are caused by the mold.
“Sometimes I cannot sleep because I cannot breathe,” he said.
Siavosh Sateri pulls back a piece of paper he taped to the wall in an attempt to smother the mold growing next to his bed. Derek Davis/Staff Photographer
He said he has complained about the condition of his apartment multiple times, but all the housing authority did was take pictures.
Eventually, Sirous Sateri started working with a lawyer at Pine Tree Legal, who filed a complaint with the housing authority in early November.
Frost said staff were told when they received the complaint to move the brothers out immediately. He said he didn’t know until last Friday that they were never moved.
25 Boyd St. is a small, boxy building just off of Cumberland Avenue. A bubbly black film coats the trim of the creaky white front door. Other communal walls and doors are covered in the same substance. It appears floor to ceiling in unoccupied units on the top floor. Multiple units had so much of it that they were not available for rent, Ly said.
He said the housing authority’s protocol has been to wipe the mold away with a cleaning solution and then paint over it. Frost denied this, saying workers would only treat small areas with a cleaning solution.
An upstairs unit in the building was leased to an elderly couple just a few weeks ago. But the couple’s daughter found mold when she visited and sent an email complaining.
Baba Ly, who works for the Portland Housing Authority, said he alerted his bosses about the mold in a building he manages in Bayside East, but those complaints went unanswered for months. Derek Davis/Staff Photographer
‘JUST DAMAGE CONTROL NOW’
Ly said he emailed his supervisor suggesting that they terminate the lease and move the couple somewhere else.
“We need to go ahead and move them in,” his supervisor replied, according to an email obtained by the Press Herald. “Let’s get some air quality testing done on the unit.”
According to Frost, those air quality tests were never done, so he can’t say for sure if there was mold, but he said the housing authority would not have leased the unit if workers thought it had mold.
On Wednesday, that unit appeared to have been newly painted, but there were visible dark patches underneath the fresh white paint that Ly identified as mold.
“We would never paint over existing substances,” Frost said when asked about it.
He said housing authority staff believed the unit was safe to inhabit.
Mold grows on the front door of an apartment at Bayside East in Portland. Derek Davis/Staff Photographer
The condition of the building, Frost said, has deteriorated significantly over the last few months because Portland has had an unusual amount of rain. He also blamed a shortage of federal funding.
“These buildings are old and haven’t been maintained as well as they should have been due to chronic underfunding from HUD,” Frost said.
Ly is glad to see residents are being moved into better living conditions, but it hasn’t restored his faith in the housing authority.
“What they’re doing is just damage control now,” he said.
Editor’s note: This story has been corrected to attribute quotes to Siovash Sateri, rather than his brother Sirous, and to fix the spelling of the last name Sateri. It was a reporting error.
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