ATLANTIC CITY — “I’ll go out of here on a wrecking ball! I’m not going nowhere!” yelled one woman who declined to give her name but said her Stanley Holmes Village apartment is in Village 1, where conditions are not too bad.
Another retired woman living in Village 3, where many apartments are boarded up and empty due to serious problems with water intrusion, sewer leaks, mold and more, said she has been told she will soon move temporarily into Village 2, then have to move again in another year when that village is cleared and demolished.
“The place is falling apart,” said Raquel Rodriguez of Village 3. She said she has lived in Stanley Holmes for 37 years.
“If they had kept up the repairs it would be OK,” she said of the Atlantic City Housing Authority, which owns and manages the property and others under oversight by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. “They mistreated us, but I have faith in God. Everything is going to be all right.”
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On June 27, the authority passed a Stanley Holmes Village transfer plan that said it would move most Village 3 residents out of their apartments by Oct. 1, into either other authority complexes or into private housing using Section 8 vouchers.
Village 3 is between Kentucky and New York avenues from Adriatic to Sewell avenues.
Villages 1 and 2, which run from Adriatic to Baltic avenues between Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Kentucky Avenue, will be evacuated by Oct. 1, 2025, according to the plan, and then demolished as well.
The transfer plan and a heat and hot water analysis said it would be too expensive to bring the complex up to acceptable standards.
Atlantic City Housing Authority Executive Director Tom Sahlin testified last month in Superior Court that the authority was moving to install a new heating system in Stanley Holmes Village by Oct. 1, as repeatedly ordered by the court over the past year. But documents sent to the attorney for about 130 residents of Stanley Holmes suing over unsafe and unhealthy conditions there show the authority has done no such thing.
Authority Executive Director Tom Sahlin did not give information about the transfer plan when it passed at the board meeting last week, and it only became public when a lawyer for the residents sent it to the judge handling the case in which 130 residents are suing over conditions at Stanley Holmes.
It also came out in the heat and hot water analysis that the authority will not install a new heating system there, as it had repeatedly told a Superior Court judge it would do.
Sahlin said Friday he felt the plan has been “completely misunderstood at best.”
“Additional information is being released soon that speaks for itself,” Sahlin wrote in a text response. “We’re trying to do the best by our residents with extremely limited options to a very complicated issue.”
He said the authority is making final edits to the transfer plan, and it all will become publicly available in about a week.
“I had no idea they were going to take this down,” said Dorothy Robinson, a retired casino worker whose only income is Social Security, of her Village 1 block of apartments on MLK Boulevard. “I have been here more than 20 years, and all the problems I have had (other than heat and hot water outages) were little things like having to unstop the toilet, sink or tub.”
She’s been in Stanley Holmes more than 50 years, she said, but in her particular apartment two decades, and said she will try to convince the Housing Authority to change its mind and keep Village 1 going.
“When I got in here I thought I was in paradise,” she said of the trees and lawns around her apartment, and the central location that allows her to walk to the laundromat, shopping areas and more.
Robinson and neighbor Stephon Evans, who lives in the same block of apartments, both said they are not interested in trying to find housing with a Section 8 voucher.
Atlantic City Housing Authority member Charmaine Hall fought for transparency and residents rights, clashing often with the board's leadership. On Thursday, she said she intends to step down.
“I have lived in worse places,” Evans said of his block of Village 1, adding his apartment has no major problems other than inconsistent heat and hot water.
He is an overnight security guard in a Ventnor housing complex, he said.
“I guard rich people all night,” he said.
The vouchers allow low-income people to rent from private landlords and pay 30% of their income toward rent. The federal government pays the balance.
“What are we going to find?” Robinson said, because much housing in the city is in poor condition.
The authority’s plans, if they go through, will leave the city with 420 fewer units of affordable housing.
As some Stanley Holmes residents move into vacant authority units in other buildings, it will make the wait even longer for those in need of affordable housing who are on the wait list now.
Residents in Stanley Holmes have dealt with more than two years of inconsistent heat and hot water, with smaller numbers living with water intrusion, mold, pest infestations and more.
The Atlantic City Housing Authority has not complied with court orders dating to December 2022 because it had no architectural and engineering firm to prepare plans and bids for replacing the old heating system and gas lines, Executive Director Tom Sahlin testified Wednesday.
Rodriguez said her daughter, who also lives in Village 3, got a voucher for a four-bedroom apartment, but works full time and is having trouble searching for private housing.
“Some people took Section 8 (vouchers) and can’t find places,” Rodriguez said. “I didn’t take it.”
She will take her chances staying in authority housing, she said.
“The hardest part is trying to find something where they will take Section 8. They are moving too fast,” said Jakki Bell, who said she has relatives who live in Stanley Holmes and she is trying to help them find private housing.
Of those who have already moved into new authority housing or Section 8 housing, Bell said “some people are happy and some are not.”
“We don’t know where to start,” Bell said.
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