Sweltering residents of N.B. Housing high-rise anxious for fresh air
Air circulation system expected to be down for several more weeks
Some residents of a public housing building in Saint John are frustrated by a lack of fresh air in their apartments and the length of time taking to fix the problem.
Residents of the nine-storey, 96-unit building on Brunswick Drive were told the air circulation system was shut off last month because of work being done on the roof. They were told it won't be back on until next month.
In the meantime, Richard Northorp said it's been "sweltering" inside his apartment.
While the temperature outside the building was 19 C on Tuesday morning, inside his apartment it was 29 C.
Northorp said "the heat gets unbearable."
Resident James Haslett, who's ninth-floor apartment gets a breeze off the Bay of Fundy, said the hallway gets no such relief.
"When you open the door, the heat hits you right square in the face," said the 63-year-old.
Haslett said he's especially concerned for the senior citizens in the building who aren't as mobile as he is.
Down on the fifth floor — and on the opposite side of the building — Northorp doesn't get a breeze in his apartment.
"Oh, the airflow is terrible. I mean, these windows are crap. You can't get air flow in them at all. And now with the air conditioning down makes it even worse. We just swelter in here."
And that's with three fans going.
Rebecca Howland, a spokesperson for Housing N.B., said the building has "an air exchange system that draws in fresh air from the outside and pushes out stale air from the inside. There is no central air conditioning in the building. Vents in each unit function to draw stale air out."
She said the roof is being replaced and the air exchanger "had to be shut off … to prevent the smell from the tar and any other chemicals from travelling through the air exchanger and into the building."
She said the work is expected to be completed at the end of October.
"Staff from Housing NB will continue to check in on tenants regularly during the process of repair," said Howland in the emailed statement.
Northorp said the vents in the hallway do seem to blow cooler fresh air, but he has a hard time believing the vents in his apartment are blowing in air from the outside.
"There's an air vent above the stove and one in the bathroom, and we had to cover them because of the awful smells coming through there. You're breathing in second-hand air from other apartments," said Northorp.
"We covered up because of all the different orders coming together. We would smell dope, we would smell burnt food, we would smell body sweat. Who knows what else we're smelling?" said Northorp.
He said it wasn't very appetizing to cook with those smells blowing directly at his face.
Taking the tape off the covered vent revealed a filthy build-up on the vent cover and beyond.
Running his fingers over a vent cover in the hallway, Haslett held up blackened finger tips.
He worries what the substance might be and what the health effects will be once the ventilation system is back on and pumping air over the build-up of material in the system.
Haslett said his concerns don't seem to have been heard. And both men say there are other health concerns in the building.
Northorp said the windows haven't been cleaned since a couple of years before he moved in. They've also had mice, rats and bedbugs, along with disruptive neighbours and drug dealers in the building, he said.
"I mean, I wasn't expecting it to be perfect," said Northorp. "I knew moving into a building with 96 apartments, you're bound to have a few disruptive, troubled people. You know, you're not going to get a perfect environment when you have that many apartments, but it's a far cry from what we expected when we first decided to move over here."
He said 656 Brunswick Dr. was supposed to be "a quiet seniors building," that was part of the reason he and his wife decided to move there.
"Well, we moved over here and it wasn't all seniors … and some are not quiet at all."
Originally, there was a caretaker in the building, but he retired a year after the Northorps moved in, and he's never been replaced.
Northorp also said the New Brunswick Housing Corporation has "nowhere's near enough maintenance staff." He said it sometimes takes months to get a response from the people looking after the place.
"I mean, we've kept after [the New Brunswick Housing Corporation] about things, but there was always the same excuse. They don't have the funding or they don't have the manpower."
He believes that "any building this big … should definitely have a caretaker." He said that would help address a lot of the issues residents have complained about.
"It's not fair to the tenants to have to live the way they're living," Northorp said.
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