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A sanctuary lost
By LEONORA LaPETER ST. PETERSBURG -- Emma Baines used to teach a Bible class, attend picnics and participate in the tenant patrol at the Graham Park and Rogall Congregate public housing apartment complex. But increasingly, she doesn't know what her neighbors will do next. They run around nude, overdose on drugs, rape and hit people and jump out of high-rise windows. One has even set fires in his apartment. It wasn't like this when Baines moved in 14 years ago. Back then, the biggest complaint among residents of the high-rise for the elderly and disabled was that the elevators broke down all too often. "I always thought this would be for seniors and truly disabled people," said Baines, now 69. "I didn't think it would be a dumping ground for whatever. And that may sound harsh, but anybody who lives here knows what we live with." In a radical shift over the past decade, the complex that used to house mostly elderly people now houses mostly young disabled people, many of them mentally ill. It is a mix that has left many of the residents living in fear, and it may be one of the reasons that turnover has remained high at the 15-floor building just east of Tropicana Field. The problems became more prominent after the St. Petersburg Housing Authority handed management of the 468-unit complex to a private company. The first manager, National Housing Group, left last April after a year on the job, taking with it some $25,769 in tenant deposits in a financial dispute with the Housing Authority. Among its legacies: A pedophile was allowed to move into the building, which is against federal housing rules. The second manager, Lane Co., just took over full management this month and has pledged to find ways to help the two disparate groups -- the elderly and the young disabled -- live together more comfortably. But report-generating calls to the police, which have tripled in the past three years, show no signs of abating. Last weekend, there were two incidents involving residents hitting each other. "This place scares me to death," said II Moons, a Cherokee and Mohawk Indian who uses a wheelchair and has lived at Graham-Rogall for two years. "If I had the money to move, I'd be out of here fast. It's to the point where you're afraid to go out. You don't know what will meet you at the door." This community didn't just surface recently. The same mix at Graham-Rogall has been brewing for decades across the country in public housing originally designated for low-income seniors. In 1961 the federal government said disabled poor of all ages could move into public housing complexes for seniors. They moved in slowly at first. But in the past decade, with the government closing mental hospitals and pushing housing authorities to set aside places for the disabled, public housing has seen a big increase in the number of disabled young and mentally ill. Both those groups still must meet the low-income qualifications. Today at Graham-Rogall, the disabled young now outnumber the elderly by 50 percent. Authority executive director Darrell Irions recalls that in 1995, some 80 percent of the people living there were elderly and 20 percent were disabled. Today, 60 percent of residents are disabled young and 40 percent are 62 or older. And 18 percent of all the residents have mental problems. "What you're seeing -- I'm going to hazard an educated guess on this -- is that the elderly population is aging out of the building, and they're filling vacancies the best way they can, and a needy population is the handicapped and the mentally handicapped," said Christine Siksa, a policy analyst with the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials. Gary MacMath, president of Boley Centers for Behavioral Healthcare Inc., said that for the past 20 years, there has been a push to have mentally ill people live in their communities. It reached a peak this past year with the closing of the G. Pierce Wood state hospital in Arcadia. "One of the major things that has allowed this to happen are new psychotropic drugs for schizophrenia and manic depression. As long as they stay on their meds, their symptoms are held in check," he said. A 48-year-old man got on the elevator on the 13th floor. Naked. He rode down to the sixth floor, then back up to the 13th floor, where he walked past three people and entered his apartment. Police interviewed him inside his apartment, where they found a puddle of urine near the bed and piles of feces all over a chair, the bed, the floor. The police took the man to St. Anthony's Hospital psychiatric ward, a busy place these days. He was one of 10 people taken to a local psychiatric ward from Graham-Rogall last year, up from five just three years ago. So far this year, they've taken eight people. One 27-year-old resident jumped to his death from the 13th floor of Graham Park in May. A sampling of these cases and many of the more serious incidents at Graham-Rogall reveals that most involve the young disabled and mentally ill. One of the few exceptions might be the 100-year-old in a wheelchair who hit a 56-year-old neighbor twice with a metal cane after the younger resident took the older one's hanging-out spot in the lobby. Three rapes have been reported at the facility this year, but none of the women wanted to prosecute, and one of the victims overdosed on drugs days later. In one case, the 81-year-old man who was supposed to have committed one of the sexual batteries died of natural causes. Police say they are dealing often with people who haven't taken their medication. "You could have one person in here with mental health issues, and for three to four weeks, we seem to be spending a lot of time dealing with that person," said Officer Chris Joyal. But he and other officers said that there are just as many with mental health problems who cause no trouble at all. All of the residents, whether mentally unstable or not, have a right to live at Graham-Rogall, the officers said. One exception would be Michael Kenneth Pitts, the 41-year-old registered sexual predator who was convicted of sexual battery on 7- and 9-year-old boys in 1995. Joyal and other community officers said residents who enter Graham-Rogall typically are screened by a panel that includes residents, managers and police. But when National Housing took over, police, who were supposed to do background checks of all prospective residents, stopped being notified of the screening meetings. Sexual offenders are not allowed in public housing, but Pitts apparently filled out paperwork informing the managers of his crime and was allowed in anyway. National Housing arrived at a time when the authority was having trouble keeping the apartments filled. Some 12 percent of the units were unoccupied in 2000 (today about 8 percent of the units are vacant). The company was paid more money if the units were occupied. Maggie Pedraza, president of the Miami-based National Housing, denies her company did anything wrong. She said she would have to look at Pitts' file, but her company instituted procedures and guidelines for screening when the authority had none. The new managers had been trying to remove Pitts from Graham-Rogall and finally succeeded Tuesday, when he moved out. Alice Scott's voice is rising as she tells the story. In a stuffy meeting room at Graham-Rogall, where dozens of her neighbors are seated in chairs and scooters, she tells Irions, the authority director, of a visit by her daughter from Wisconsin. Scott couldn't just get a visitor's pass for her daughter as she has every year. Her daughter had to come down to submit identification and then had to fill out a form to visit her. Scott said she has lived here since 1993, and you usually fill out a form when you're visiting someone in jail. The 64-year-old is threatening to move out. With the increase in problems at Graham-Rogall has come an increase in security. It's tougher for residents to get their friends and relatives in today. They must submit driver's licenses and sometimes fill out forms. The elevators now have security cameras. But Irions doesn't want someone else to move out. So he begs her to stay, to give him time to make sure that residents are treated respectfully. She agrees. He tells the group that help is on the way. "There have been a lot of changes here and I don't believe we, as a housing authority, have done a good enough job at adapting to that change," Irions says. "Now that we have the numbers, we're going to create programs to address this growing population (disabled young)." Lane Co. now has two resident service coordinators to handle resident needs, such as grocery shopping and pill-taking, up from only one before. The authority has submitted a grant for two more. Renae Gould, Lane's regional property manager, said her company, while not discriminating against anyone, plans to try to market the facility to elderly residents. But many housing authorities across the country have handled the disparate groups by separating them. The Tampa Housing Authority did this several years ago, designating some 600 units at three complexes for the elderly, because the elderly residents wanted it, said Jerome Ryans, its executive director. It's a tough solution, though, because housing directors must find alternate housing for either the elderly or the young disabled. Irions said St. Petersburg doesn't have the public housing to separate the two groups. Baines said she likes living in her apartment and doesn't have any place better to go, but she wonders what the future holds. "I don't want to go in the back room of my daughter's house and be chief babysitter and bottle washer," she said. "But I'm getting older every year, and where am I going? What am I going to do? These people they put in here. Every time I think about it, I want to cry."
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