Maurita Lord is Sproul Block’s longest tenant, here since 2006. Before she was poisoned from toxic water, Maurita had done theater, been an airline attendant and attended the Police Academy in Pennsylvania. She was living in North Carolina when her housing collapsed. With no other options, Maurita applied for public housing. She chose Maine because her father, whom she loved fiercely, lived in Jefferson and suffered from dementia. And they had lived in Maine years before when her parents taught at Unity College. Maurita applied to Sproul Block. The current Sproul Block was built in 1983, with 36 units of federally subsidized housing. According to Maurita, almost the tenants have some connection with Maine, but many live with the hope of moving to better housing. At Sproul Block, Maurita is one of the people whom tenants go to when they need an advocate. She is the person who volunteers to distribute the bags from the Food Pantry to the third or so residents who depend on that food. You might hear her playing the guitar and singing at Broad Bay Congregational on Sundays or with the group of musicians who play at Odd Alewives. You might see her weeding and gardening outside the building. She’s person who will give a ride to someone who gets a last minute doctor or dentist appointment. Maurita is someone a lot of people count on.
I don’t think anybody expects perfection over here. We’re all human. We’re all imperfect. We all have flaws. Every human on the planet, even the greatest on earth, had flaws.
When I first moved here, most of the residents were elderly and disabled. I think people thought of Sproul Block as a place to go and die, because they remembered their grandparents living here or dying here.
I think some people think we’re drug dealers or drug users. Well, a few years back, we did have drug dealers, but not now. They kicked the dealers out through the court system because the dealers’ friends made too much noise, and you’re responsible for what your guests do. And now we have cameras, and I don’t hear anything anymore. But I still feel judged for living in Sproul Block.
The building is okay, but the construction is a little cheap. The walls are thin. But there’s plenty of heat – so much that I don’t even turn it on in winter. We have a laundry room. An elevator in the center. Storage units on the first floor. And a community room there where there used to be a jigsaw puzzle always going. A full kitchen as well for making and serving a meal three times a week. This is important for people who, due to age or disability, can’t or won’t cook.
It’s management that’s the yoyo. We have had some great managers. Christine Chapman was one of the best. She worked really hard to make things better. Before COVID, we always had a group turkey dinner Thanksgiving week. Christine would come in at 7:00 to get it in the oven. One spring we planted the garden on the side together which is now full of perennials It actually belongs to Waldoboro which has welcomed it.
Unfortunately, we’ve had managers who didn’t care also. Or didn’t work hard. One manager had a disability, so he wasn’t able to do much. And we’ve had a few who’ve screamed at me for raising an issue. They’ve even threatened me with eviction.
An issue can be anything like keeping the building clean to refrigerators that don’t work. Like my own when I came here. It failed to freeze in the freezer but froze everything else like the lettuce and the vegetables. And that wasted food was costing me. I found out that a lot of us had freon-based fridges dating back to 1994, 1993 or older.
By law, because this is a HUD building, if a refrigerator is more than five years old, it’s supposed to be replaced. I called Maine Housing. They said they’d get to it when they could, but that didn’t sound very fast. So, I approached the resident services coordinator who told me that replacing them was impossible: “And if you don’t quit advocating for yourself and others, they will probably evict you.”
Suddenly, a month later, they were replacing the refrigerators. However, they only did it for the ones that weren’t working. So, some people still have old fridges.
But things are definitely turning around here. We have a new manager, Deborah Vannah, and she’s great. Already she’s had the carpet replaced because the previous painters splattered paint all over them. She’s installed new furniture in the community room, and it is comfortable, and it looks pretty good. There’s new lighting. She’s very responsive. She seems like a fair person, too. She tells me she doesn’t think I have to fear being evicted.
But once you’ve been threatened with homelessness, that fear doesn’t go away. You are always looking for options. For subsidized housing, there’s a five-year waiting list for subsidized housing in Bath and a ten-year waiting list in Portland if you’re not from the city. So, you check out the open market. Someone I knew had an apartment for rent. He had so many offers he took the notice down after one day. He told me, “I can’t tell you not to come, but I can say is that you are not above number ten on the list.” That was in Warren. His apartment was renting for $1,600. Then you consider renting a room in a house, but even that rent, for something with no privacy, is at least two thirds of my check.
In the end, all you can think is, “If they decide to put the hammer down on me, what am I going to do? Cram all my stuff in a storage unit and sleep under an eave?” I’m joking. But not really. We just need more housing in Maine.
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