Va. public-housing residents angry over orders to relocate

Martha Holmes's small, frail body often bumps into things in her new apartment, which seems like a maze to the 87-year-old woman with Alzheimer's disease. In the last month, she has been hospitalized twice, and police have found her wandering the streets, attempting to walk back to the public housing apartment in Alexandria that she called home for more than 40 years.

Now living in Ladrey, a public senior-housing building five blocks away, Holmes is among those at the center of a dispute between James Bland public housing residents who say they are being disregarded and housing authorities who say the residents are uncooperative and antagonistic to development plans.

Residents say they know they have to move out of Bland, which is scheduled to be demolished early next year as part of a $55 million redevelopment plan that will usher in market-rate homes and transform the government-owned buildings constructed in 1945 near Old Town into a mixed-use neighborhood.

However, some say officials at the Alexandria Redevelopment and Housing Authority are forcing them to make hard moves during the holidays and imposing unreasonable deadlines. They also argue that housing officials are picking and choosing whom to reimburse for moves rather than paying for everyone's expenses.

Housing officials say residents are not communicating with their offices and are attempting to slow development plans. Roy Priest, the housing authority's chief executive officer, said postponing moves until after the holidays would hurt development plans and stall demolition of the buildings.

He also said that residents who are being moved to smaller apartments do not have to be reimbursed under the authority's policies and can be fined for living in an apartment that has more rooms than they require. However, several residents said some were reimbursed for moving into smaller units and others were not.

The situation has left many residents angry and confused. Holmes's daughter, Martha Crump, said housing officials forced her mother to leave her apartment in Bland because they wanted to move Holmes, who lives alone, from a two-bedroom apartment to a one-bedroom unit.

Crump said ARHA sent her mother a letter in September stating that she was being moved from Bland to Ladrey. Crump immediately filed a request for her mother to stay, arguing that although Holmes lives alone, she requires 24-hour care. That means the "extra" room is used by her mother, a nurse or a family member, Crump said. In addition to Alzheimer's, her mother suffers from congestive heart failure, hypertension and rheumatism.

Crump and housing authority officials differ on what happened.

"Her [housing] workers never got back to me about the form," Crump said. "I never had any feedback, and they would never answer my calls." In October, Holmes received a letter from the authority stating she had three days to move, her daughter said. Crump said she stalled the move for weeks, hoping that her mother would receive approval to stay in the area.

For her mother, the five blocks could mean the difference between life and death because of the progression of Alzheimer's, Crump said. She said doctors warned her that moving her mother might worsen her memory. Crump said she made multiple calls and visits to ARHA to plead for her mother to stay.

Crump said she received no word from housing officials. In the first week of November, moving officials from the housing authority appeared at her mother's apartment. They packed up her things and moved her to Ladrey, her daughter said.