In September and October 2012, I had two meetings with Dorothy Gay pertaining to the matter of moving me to a one-bedroom apartment, summarized below.
> Dorothy refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing on her part or on the parts of her employees. She attempted to frame everything that had gone on to that point, including Carolyn’s attempt to force me to pay $5,000 and her threat of eviction, as a series of misunderstandings. The most to which she would admit was that she hadn’t been as “on top” of the situation as she should have been.
>I had consulted a friend who had formerly been a Disability Commissioner for the Town of Somerville, of which Dorothy had been mayor for one term. This woman sat on the committee that drafted the Commonwealth’s guidelines for reasonable accommodation, and told me that Center Communities was clearly in violation of the law. I informed Dorothy of this; she was disinterested and claimed the offer of another studio two years prior had been a reasonable accommodation, which it obviously was not. This was one of Dorothy’s many attempts to deflect and to avoid dealing with the matter.
> She told me in the first meeting that she would be retiring in the spring and that she was making me a “promise” that she would have the matter resolved before then. In the second meeting, she was less certain she’d be retiring, but told me that if she did, she’d leave her successor a letter describing the situation so that I wouldn’t have to “start from scratch”. She did neither.
>Dorothy told me they were beginning a separate waiting list for one-bedrooms for non-elderly disabled people and that I was first on the list. Nothing was said about the fact that I was supposed to be placed on a waiting list two years prior, or that I should have been placed on a list four years prior after the meeting with Carolyn and Andrea. From my perspective, I’d been on a “waiting list”, whether real or not, for four years.
> She informed me that she wouldn’t be able to give me a one-bedroom apartment for the foreseeable future, as she was responsible to Mass Housing regarding quotas of people of various categories, and that they were already over the quota for non-elderly disabled people in one-bedroom units. Later in that conversation, I asked her, “As I’ve given you two doctor’s letters mandating a move to a one-bedroom apartment as a medical necessity, can you use those to justify the move to Mass Housing?” She replied, “Oh, I don’t have to answer to Mass Housing; I can do whatever I like!” This encouraged me; however, in the following meeting, she told me again that she couldn’t give me a one-bedroom unit because of Mass Housing and quotas. This was always the way with Dorothy – it would be black, then white, then black again.
> However, in spite of the conversations described in the previous paragraph, she also told me, in the first meeting, that they were preparing to offer another apartment to an elderly woman who had been complaining about her unit. They had already offered her two, which she’d declined, and were about to offer her a third, and Dorothy told me that if she accepted it, she would give me the apartment being vacated. Although the offer never materialized, this was illustrative of three things: that there was no substance to Dorothy’s excuses involving Mass Housing or to Sue Carlsen’s claim that they never allowed transfers, and of the fact that they have always been far more willing to accommodate others than to accommodate me.
> I asked Dorothy if, in the meantime, something could be done about the various noise issues. She replied, “There really isn't any way we can go to someone and tell them they can't do what they need to do", which was nonsense, as no one needs to be running up and down the halls at night or moving furniture and slamming drawers and cabinets at 5:00 AM or at midnight - certainly no one at the advanced age of most of the residents.
> These issues all remained unaddressed until late November 2012. At that time, the elderly woman above me had been going through a period of many months during which she was making a sharp, metallic sound over my head repeatedly during the course of a day, beginning early in the morning and continuing until late at night (which she denied doing). I had spoken to the management about this on numerous occasions, but they were unwilling to approach her or to become involved. At one point, it became especially egregious, so I approached Tammy, another social worker to whom Andrea had turned me over a few weeks prior (and who has since become the head of the Social Services Dept.), and who had been similarly disinterested in becoming involved in resolving any of these problems. I told her my mother had just died, I was in a depleted state and that something had to be done about it. Suddenly, a one-bedroom apartment materialized. I believe this was in response to what I had said to Dorothy earlier about reasonable accommodation, and the fact that I had involved the Fair Housing Officer. There were two caveats – it was in their other building at 1550 Beacon Street and it was next to the elevator.
> On the following day, I went to look at the apartment with Susan, the Leasing Manager. The elevators were extremely noisy; furthermore, Sue approached me in a manner that presented a number of problems:
1. On the way there, she informed me that my monthly parking fee was being raised from $160 to $200. This complicated the matter further, as I wasn’t certain I could afford it, and if I had to give up my car, 1550 Beacon was too far removed from Coolidge Corner to be a readily accessible location for me.
2. She told me, “I had to fight to get you this apartment!” which was, of course, untrue, because as I’ve described earlier, she had been resistant to moving me all along.
3. She insisted upon an immediate answer. I was incredulous; they’d made me wait for five years and she was now insisting upon an answer in five minutes. My mother had just died, I wasn’t in a frame of mind to be making important decisions, they were offering me a unit with very real problems attached – and she wanted an answer right away (I’ve since learned that this is illegal; they are required to allow at least 24 hours for a decision to be made).
4. She also told me, “This is the only offer they are going to make you! If you don’t take it, there will never be another!” At the end, she reluctantly agreed to give me 24 hours to make the decision.
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