Some Virgin Islands housing units that have been sitting vacant in disrepair are being fixed up by public housing residents, adding to the stock of low-cost housing, improving their neighborhood, creating employment and saving money all at the same time.
On St. Croix, the V.I. Housing Authority has eight young men and women working hard fixing up units in the Aureo Diaz Heights Housing Community. In less than a month, the eight workers have completely overhauled two three-bedroom units. Leaky pipes that dripped through cracks in the ceiling were dug out of the concrete and replaced, faulty, corroded wiring have been replaced, the cracks in the masonry repaired and everything given a fresh coat of paint. Where just a few weeks ago units stood vacant and decrepit, making the neighborhood look decrepit, fresh clean apartments now are occupied by families who had been on the Housing Authority waiting list. And two more units are well on their way to the same status.
"They really are cleaning up the place," said Aureo Diaz resident Jason Vallard. "There has been a lot of work going on and they’ve been working at top speed. It’s been good to see."
Vallard, who has lived in the community since a young child, happened to be walking by on his way to work while Housing Authority officials were giving news media a tour of the work.
On St. Croix, 30 vacant units in Wilford Pedro Homes, Aureo Diaz Heights and Walter I.M. Hodge Pavilion are slated to be fixed up by this temporary crew. They were selected, trained and hired under the federal Housing and Urban Development Department’s Section 3 program, which asks public housing authorities to give preference to residents when hiring and training for HUD-funded projects.
The work is going quickly, said Patrick Moss, deputy executive director of the Housing Authority for the St. Croix district.
"These guys have been here 10 days and are 75 percent complete already, at a fraction of the cost of an independent contractor, " Moss said.
Doing the work in-house has saved money too.
"The general contractor wanted $75,000 for this one unit and this way we can do it for about $20,000," said Irma Hodge, director of public relations and resident services for the authority.
These 30 units being fixed up are just a fraction of the work being done to renovate and add to the stock of available public housing, Moss said.
"We’ve repaired 211 units since March of 2008, when Director Robert Graham took over," Moss said. When Moss and Graham arrived, there were about 900 vacant units in the territory, Moss said.
"But we’re knocking it out."
There is about $9.4 million in stimulus money to fix up 128 housing units on St. Croix and a smaller number on St. Thomas, Moss said. About $1.8 million is for the thirty units being fixed up through this program.
