If my mother was treated as badly as you say your mother has been treated, I would take care of her myself. That you have chosen to leave her where she is and blame the Housing Authority for her ills speaks volumes.

You are an example of all that is wrong with our ungrateful, welfare-loving nation.

I’m sure HA would like tenants to just go into assisted living after they’ve been debilitated by HA’s maintained toxic environment, and just chalk it up to inexplicable acquiring of disease, and grossly accelerated aging for no reason. My grandpa, her dad, was independent till 96, and lived healthfully till 103 yo. She . .-herself- was -vibrant- till her foray into Colorado Springs Housing Authority’s housing.

Is that what all 250 or so non-smoking Housing Authority residents should do who are harmed by the smoke and have disabilities that make them particularly vulnerable to poison, moreso than others are vulnerable to poison? Is that what -they- all should do too, . . Jake?

Thanks for your comments, Jake.

Look at Independent article. Cortisone shots to stop persistant coughs; Prescription to stop bleeding nose (probably from burning ammonia in cigarette smoke); Heart stents; Diabetes worsened by smoke; Smoke coming from underneath; Why don’t they make it smoke-free like casinos and restaurants(?); Lots of statements from tenants in just the one building.

Asthma; shortness of breath; heart pains; I hear at -other- buildings during Resident Advocacy Group (RAG) meetings, a group that I started, consisting of 4 tenants from 2 different bldgs., my mom, and myself. Anyone reading, join – elrco07@yahoo.com, and, get on the RAG, . .so yu don’t have to breathe into one !

There is a simple solution to your problem put your mother in a private assisted living facility. If this is such a health hazard for your mother then there is no excuse not to do it and cost should not be a consideration.

It is sad that seemingly council members are so indifferent, claiming they can do nothing, and not signing support letters (only Lisa signed one, that she wrote herself, and actually, did not -sign- my copy, and -my copy- had no letterhead either, . .so, . .if I wanted to “re-send” it to HA, to be sure it got sent, there’s no distinguishing that I didn’t myself type it, . .oh, but I guess I wouldn’t have put the big disclaimer in the middle – “Though I know that city council has no (agency) over HA ” [nudge, nudge, wink, wink, this is just perfunctory, so we don't look 100% complicit in your crime against this community's elderly, HA, so go on ahead])

It is -because- of all my and my mom’s actions that HA has been -compelled- to make their fraudulant, fake offers, and tell their lies in their own defense, as opposed to what they did -before- we took action, and -between- the times we were taking action. In other words, no action = HA’s landslide of lies and malfeasance. Hateful discrimination, and planned, willful, deliberate defiance of their tenants’ well-being and quality of life = HA. Chad Wright said, “That’s not gonna move the ball”, in response to my stating I needed to make an appt. w/him to talk about why he hasn’t fulfilled that “wing” offer (that HA made 15 months ago, . .and then 9 months ago when Steve Cox was inquiring, both times, when the “heat” was on, but never fulfill). It warms my heart to hear Chad make reference to my mom’s living in a torture chamber, as a ‘sport’ or a ‘game’. Chad knows how bad it is, has my mom’s doctors letters for more than a year, knows my mom has had 2 deteriorations of condition – 1. A 2nd bleeding stomach ulcer Jan. 2012 (linked to smoke) 2. A diagnosis of COPD in July (hypoventilatory changes, and artifacts in the base of the lungs). He knows that she acquired respiratory disability in HA’s -other- bldg. from which they had to do vast emergency remediation on the bottom floor and the entire crawlspace, and had to -move- her due to vomiting blood from the nauseating spores, from years long of ignoring a burst water-heater and many leaking pipes. He knows that she collapsed the day the 2 Men & A Truck were moving her, . .and almost DIED! He knows she had to have that first ulcer cauterized, and that the 2nd, Jan. 2012, was too BIG to cauterize! And that they had to put her on strong prescription stomach-acid blocking drugs and sedation to get her to heal! And that she was in a Nursing Home rehabbing for 6 weeks. And that she couldn’t pay the last 2 weeks of her Nursing Home bill, b/c, ironically, she could either pay -that- . . -or- her rent! She paid the -rent- where the poison is that causes the increase in her stomach-acid, that causes the stomach ulcers. (Cigarette smoke increase stomach acid, and causes stomach ulcers and delays their healing.) Chad -KNOWS- this, . .and still uses words like “That’s not gonna move the ball”, and, . .he chuckled through the conversation. .the conversation that consisted of my 1 1/2 sentences, and his, 48 or so sentences consisting of talking-over me and laughing like some sadistic sociopath, carving a path of monologue that avoids accountability and justifies delay indefinitely while my mom dies. HA has said more than once that they intend to have a smoke-free in -5- yrs. Since my mom is dying, and since it takes 30-Days to implement, . . HOW ABOUT RIGHT NOW?!!! Oh, . .and since Section 504 of the ADA says you have to put into habitable repair a place that is not just hazardous to everyone, but particularly hazardous to disabled persons, disallowing them the intended -use- of their apt. , which is to breathe normally in it, with an expected sense of safety, not, a -knowing- that between this time and that time everyday and every night, they are going to have to evacuate, or, be stuck in the one pocket of air they can find in a certain room. And, because HA’s own d*mn motto is: We Give Quality to Life. And because HUD requires that HA meet their Voluntary Compliance Agreement of 2008, that gets reviewed again this year, or be debarred. Safe, Decent, Habitable Housing, does not equal 50% of the tenants smoking, where 50% of the air is shared from unit to unit, and tenants have heart disease and respiratory handicaps.

I could go on forever about this, . .and I may.

Housing Authority can adopt a smoke-free rule with 30 Days notice to residents. It is -not- Complex.

Housing Authority gets found in Compliance because they get -credit- for making offers for accommodating my mom that are ridiculous and ineffective.

The Civil Rights Division said mom should have -tried- the Air Purifiers, .. though she had -tried- air purifiers (3 times more expensive than HA’s) before she even complained.

AP’s don’t -work- on smoke. Even if mfg. claims they do. Mayo Clinic, etc., says they don’t. Experience; and the lady who gave-up her subsidy and left (the same bldg.), says they don’t.

A person stops the investigation by Civil Rights if they accept an offer, even a bogus offer, and they are -blamed- if they -don’t- accept an offer
made by the Respondent in the claim. They don’t win because they “didn’t even -try-” the bogus offer.

I don’t know how long she would have had to have “tried” the AP’s that she’d already “tried” on her own, and that she knew weren’t going to work. I don’t know if then someone would have -refuted- her and made her -prove- that they weren’t working. Incidentally, . . -proof-, is the lady’s oxometer readings – the lady who left. She took them daily.
Proof is the CDC, Mayo Clinic, etc.

Either you go through that ruse, . .then you re-file, which takes months to get anywhere; or, you -don’t- go through that ruse, . .and you -lose- for not “trying” an offer, then you appeal, which takes months to get anywhere.

Then, when you appeal, HA makes reference to the offer you didn’t “try”, and may make another offer that is wide open and leaves a lot of wiggle-room for themselves to make sub-offers that are ridiculous. Ex. A non-smoking floor or wing. HA doesn’t stipulate what most would assume – ‘to be created -soon’, ‘w/o delay, to solve the problem’. When asked ‘when’, and ‘how’ they stonewall. When pushed, they say, “Can’t do it while we’re being investigated, because we may be told to do something else”. That’s not true. Resolution attempts are to be ongoing, throughout investigations, throughout reviews.

When pushed further, they offer mom a unit on a -Floor- that has no smokers on it, but 1. But that unit is the unit from which the former tenant left for the same reason -the smoke (& gave-up her subsidy). The smoke comes from a tenant below and diagonal to her – the same source that is next to my mom.

Then they offer mom -another- unit on the 3rd FL, the one with just 1 smoker on it. They offer it b/c it happens to be vacant. It has again a smoker diagonal below it, -and- . . it is on the South half of the building, where there are 12 smokers, many on the floor below, and the floor below that. We had pointed out that “A floor only works, if it is the 1st floor, for non-smoking, . .other than that, it must be a wing, . .and -her- wing, since, again, there are 12 smokers on the south wing/half, and 3 on her north wing/half. So moving 2 (we want to make it cheap and easy for HA, so leave the guy in the corner on the 1st FL who smokes, and just move the 2 next to her, so HA doesn’t claim financial hardship, as they fraudulantly did before) to the other side of the building, into, incidentally, -2- units that are sitting vacant and ready-to-go, is cheaper than moving 12 from the South wing, and cheaper than 5 off the 1st FL.

Another component of their wide-open, loop-hole ridden offer, that is a tokenism, when the whole bldg. should be made smoke-free anyway, . . is that, requesting that they fulfill -this-, as opposed to the -100% smoke-free-everyone smoke outside in 30 days- proposal that -we- originally made, does not speed things along, . .because, as you remember, when they made that offer, they never stipulated -when-, and though a reasonable accommodation is to be provided “without delay” to a person for whom otherwise their disability, and the status of the current house-rule, prevent them from successfully using their dwelling; and HA is pretending it takes a long-time to move 2 people down the hall.

If it takes -that long-, which, -it doesn’t-, then . . .the 30-Day notice to change a House-Rule, stipulated in the HUD Occupancy Handbook, to go 100% smoke-free, and quit hokeying around with moving people. Smoke-free House-Rule -SAVES MONEY- ! Moving people is an excuse to . . “Develop a Multi-Step Plan”, and “Assess the Configuration of the Building”, while my mom dies . HA didn’t tell us until we pushed and pushed for an answer as to ‘when’, that one of the smokers to move required a handicapped unit, and that the 2 vacant South units were both non-handicapped accessible. HA was saving this for the -next- time we filed a claim. They could not just tell us that w/o months of us filing, . .then they pull out this excuse, was their plan. But, we got them to tell us this, so now we can say – - alright then – -’Looks like you have to do what you should have done all along -and- what you should have done 19 months ago, that you didn’t do simply b/c you didn’t -want- to do, and -hadn’t- done 10 -years- ago, b/c you simply didn’t -want- to, in -any- of your bldgs. Looks like you have to tell people to smoke outside, and save -yourselves- and the taxpayers 10′s of thousands per building per year’ Uh oh, . .does that not offset your bribe from some tobacco company affiliate, or whatever your motive was for this Holocaust on Springs elderly and disabled ?

When HA moves to act, by choosing to manage 9 senior/disabled buildings, they must act without harm. They have maintained polluted, hazardous, guaranteed harmful, class-A carcinogens for low-income, economically-trapped, elderly, and elderly-disabled to live in. They must aid those they have harmed. They must do this without delay.

Perhaps someone at an oversight agency to which our appeal went, assumed HA was going to -keep- making offers, or that they were going to fulfill the “wing” offer, and not turn it into something that would not work, . .like the -floor- part, and then, hold to their chest, the fact that the -wing-, the only part of the offer that would have worked, is not easily do-able b/c of the handicapped-accessible factor. -This- is something -they- knew when they -constructed- this offer more than a year ago, . .and then made us fight and fight for their fulfillment of it, to save my mom’s life, without telling us this key info.

-I- have some -key- info. My -mom- has a -Respiratory- Handicap that requires a Handicap accessible unit too – A unit that has breathable air – a unit that is not so full of pollutants from smoke-incursions that she risks respiratory arrest and another bleeding stomach ulcer that could kill her.

By the way, I have a lot to say, and that pesky little thing called Freedom of Speech says I can say it whether City Council is interested or not. “Never” is when you are going to tell me to -stop coming here-, because you -can’t- tell me that.

You all can sign a letter of support or you can choose not to. I can choose to raise public awareness of -every- aspect and -facet- of this experience.