Beacon News :: News :: Sylvia's house

Centennial House resident Alva Rodriguez gets a kiss from Sylvia Burke while Rodriguez's fellow resident, Michael Serra, looks on. Burke moved out a few days later. Rodriguez said she would miss working with Burke to improve conditions at the complex.

"Me and her, we're like teamwork," she said. She's prepared for this and practiced what she's going to say, but she's still not quite ready to leave. Still, her walk is steady, her head held proudly, and she never lets the pain she's in cross her face.

At 51, Burke is still dealing with the idea she's disabled -- she suffers from a joint disease that makes it impossible for her to work or even spend long periods of time on her feet.
Permanently retired and collecting Social Security benefits, Burke has always been a fighter. Just a few years ago, she was in a wheelchair and living with her son in Oswego, and she barely had the strength to lift her grandchildren.

But now here she is, managing her pain with a combination of medication and attitude, walking proudly and gracefully.
For the past 15 months, Burket has been on her own, living at Centennial House, a public housing complex tucked away on Aurora's West Side. And almost from the day she moved in, she's been the unofficial social worker, counselor, friend and mother to the seniors and disabled people here.

"Not a day goes by that someone doesn't knock on my door for something," Burke said. "I didn't intend to get so involved when I first moved here, but then I saw how things were, and I met some nice people, and I had to help."The residents are starting to show up now, filing into the small cafeteria that doubles as the Melody Club meeting room.

Here is Michael Serra, who has been in the public system all his life. Serra has trouble reading, so Burke has been opening and dealing with his mail for months. She's also been cooking him meals.

Here is Ron Lathrop, the best-dressed man in Centennial House, guiding his wheelchair through the door. Burke has to hold it open for him since the cafeteria is not equipped with handicapped-accessible doors. Lathrop lives with a multitude of ailments, including spinal epilepsy, and Burke has helped him sort out his medications and fill out the paperwork he needs to get a personal assistant.

And here is Alva Rodriguez, also in a wheelchair. She is one of several people in Centennial House paying for special services, including the cleaning of her apartment. But she says it hardly ever gets done, and she ends up doing it herself, or enlisting friends to help her.

In addition to doing what she can around Centennial House, Burke has worked day and night to bring attention to the conditions there. She believes these residents, particularly those with physical and mental disabilities, are being forgotten about and ignored, and they're not getting the help they need. She's called state social agencies and legislators, pleading her case.

She also revived the Melody Club, a social group that organizes events and trips for the residents. Centennial House hadn't had a Melody Club since 1992 and without it, she says, the people there would have nothing to do. Burke serves as president, and she arranges donations from local businesses to help fund cookouts and other activities.

But all that is over now. Burke is leaving. Her things are packed, and she's headed to a new apartment in another public housing building in Naperville.

She just can't take it here anymore -- she's tired of the dirty walls, the stained carpets, the musty air.
"My son won't even come visit me here," she says. "He says it's unsafe and unsanitary.

"Word has traveled among the club members, but tonight is the night Burke hands the reins to her vice president and steps down.
Michael Serra sits with his head in his hands, lost in thought.
"She helps me a lot," he says.

"I'm really gonna miss her."

For a while now, Sylvia Burke has known she can't do everything she wants to do at Centennial House.Burke is used to taking charge.

Before her disease made it difficult for her to get around, she ran her own business, and her voice retains the brassiness of someone who regularly makes things happen. She's a wizard at getting local businesses to contribute to the Melody Club, with both food and money.But she realizes the problems here are too great for any one person to solve.

Which is why she's enlisted some big-league help -- Lillian Perry, the director of education, senior citizen and cultural liaison for State Rep. Linda Chapa LaVia's office. Perry has been a community activist for years, and she sees real problems at Centennial House, especially concerning the physically and mentally disabled residents, and the extra care she believes they need.

"They need a full-time social worker there," she said. "Someone who is there eight hours a day, every day. And they also need to find someone like Sylvia, who lives there, and is sound enough to assist after the social worker's eight hours is up.

"Perry, who helped Burke fill out the paperwork to revive the Melody Club, now attends all the meetings and takes notes. When Alva Rodriguez complains about the poor state of transportation in Kane County for those in wheelchairs, Perry writes it down and brings it back to her boss. And now that Burke is stepping down, Perry will help run the meetings.

She and Burke have toured the halls of Centennial House and seen first-hand the conditions there. Burke says when she first tried to use the washing machine in the laundry room, bugs crawled out to greet her. She points out the cobwebs clinging to the windows with disgust.

Things are worse in the 1640 W. Plum St. building, the western wing, but that's to be expected.

The old brick structure is still recovering from a gaping wound, the damage caused by an early-morning fire more than a month ago. The blaze tore through the third floor, leaving six injured, one dead and more than a dozen with no place to call home.
Burke describes a pile of glass, the remnants of the third-floor windows, which she says was swept up in front of the main entrance and left there for a week.

Inside, the building carries the scars. The carpets have been removed, and there is still a smoky smell in the halls and stairways. Burke believes the air is unsafe, even though the Kane County Health Department has given it a clean rating, and she says the giant fans running non-stop are only spreading dirt and dust around.

For Burke, this isn't merely a cosmetic issue.
"This building is full of seniors," she says. "If you get sick in this building, it takes a long time to get well.

"While Perry understands the Aurora Housing Authority is limited in what it can do, she also believes it could be doing much more, especially when it comes to the upkeep of the buildings and the extra work of seeking out organizations to help the residents.
"I think what you see (with the housing authority) is people that don't want to be doing what they're doing," she says. "If they don't have the care and the humane part of loving and helping people, they shouldn't have that type of job.

"

Centennial House was built in 1976 -- hence the name -- and is owned by the Aurora Housing Authority. The AHA is charged with providing adequate and inexpensive housing to those who couldn't otherwise afford it, and receives its funding from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.

AHA's executive director is Rick Brace, a jovial yet businesslike veteran of the administrative side of the public housing system. Brace's office is in the Centennial House complex, part of AHA's main offices there. AHA has a small staff, overseen by a seven-member board of directors, and operates six complexes and roughly 60 scattered houses across Aurora.

Altogether, the AHA is responsible for 600 or so living units, and roughly 98 percent of those are currently filled.According to board member (and, until recently, board president) Ken Griffin, applicants are evaluated using a point system: The elderly, the disabled and veterans get a point, for example. The Housing Authority determines eligibility based on need, but Griffin said there are more than 600 people on the waiting list.

AHA turns over between seven and 10 units per month, so the wait for housing can be a lengthy one -- sometimes up to two years, Griffin said. Rent is 30 percent of a tenant's income, no matter what it is, although the minimum payment is $50 per month.When Centennial House was originally built, it was intended as senior housing, for those 62 years old or more.

But in the mid-1980s, all that changed. Thanks to new regulations covering disabilities, HUD opened its requirements to cover those eligible for Social Security benefits due to a physical or mental disability. The catch, according to Brace, is that the law does not allow AHA to gather information on an applicant's specific disability.

That's why someone like Ron Lathrop, with his mobility problems, is offered a second-floor apartment. Brace said it's not only illegal for the AHA to move him without a doctor's note explaining why he needs a first-floor apartment, it's illegal to ask from the outset if he has a disability that would require one."We can't make anyone get assistance, or counseling, or medication," Brace said, "because it would be denying them their liberty.

"The only qualifications, he added, are low income, Aurora residency and a clean psychiatric evaluation, to ensure the tenant is not a danger to himself or others.But that's not even the biggest issue facing the Housing Authority and its residents. Brace said the biggest problem is funding.

AHA, like many around the country, has been coming up short for years. In 2005, it took in $3,805,010, from both HUD funds and rent, and spent $4,044,929 on the operation and upkeep of its facilities.The more than $200,000 shortfall is actually an improvement from 2004, with its $300,000 deficit, and 2003, which saw the AHA end up almost $500,000 in the red.

Pleas from national organizations like the Public Housing Authorities Directors Organization for more funding, Brace said, have fallen on deaf ears.Other complexes eat up repair costs and maintenance expenses, and the fire at Centennial House cost the Housing Authority an unexpected amount. AHA paid to put the third-floor residents up in hotels until other units became available, at a cost of thousands per day.

"We have a choice," he said. "We can keep doing the best we can with what we've got, using the resources we have, or we can cut $300,000 out of our budget, fail our physical inspections and not respond to vacancies. We'd be in existence longer, but we'd be a worse agency.

"

Ken Griffin says it's simply not true that the Housing Authority doesn't care.It would be hard to accuse Griffin of apathy toward his community. In addition to his tenure as president of the AHA Board of Directors, Griffin has been a member of the Kane County Board for the past four years, and has worked with the Southwest Neighbors Association and the Aurora Council of Neighborhoods.

And he grew up in public housing himself, which he said gives him perspective on the needs and obstacles his group faces.The difference, he agrees, is one of philosophy: The AHA is a landlord, not a social service organization, and though the board members all wish they could do more, the money just isn't there, and their own charter forbids it. "At some point, you have to draw the line," he said.

"There are so many other service organizations out there."In fact, AHA works with more than a dozen of them, including Joseph Corporation, Meals on Wheels, the Visiting Nurse Association and the Marie Wilkinson Center. Griffin and Brace both said AHA sets up programs for its residents, but runs into a common problem -- very few show up to take advantage of them.

"We see it all the time," he said. "People just don't want help. They don't want to take advantage of it.

"But his examples seem to refer to low-income housing complexes like Jericho Circle, rather than the seniors and disabled residents of Centennial House.
Ask Ron Lathrop, and he'll tell you he needs full-time care. He has a personal assistant and a nurse to help with his numerous medications, but they are only there during certain hours on certain days.

Lathrop has good days and bad days, and on the bad ones, he can barely move. Earlier this month, he had a seizure in his apartment and hit his head on a desk. With no one there to help him, he stayed on the floor for hours.

"I need to find a new place to live," he said the next day. "I need to get out of here."
Even Rick Brace agrees some of Centennial House's residents would be better served where they can receive full-time care.

"Do we have people living here that shouldn't be? Yes," he said. "Some of our residents could be better served in a different living environment.

"

Brace insists it's not just the AHA claiming to need more money. The federal government apparently agrees, though Brace says it hasn't moved to fix the problem. In 2004, the federal government updated its operating fund formula for public housing authorities, following an eight-year study that showed those authorities need more money to adequately perform their functions.

The effect of the new formula varies, but according to documents supplied by HUD, the AHA is in line to receive $1.2 million in additional money per year. However, even though the new formula hit the books in September 2005, the funding has not been approved by Congress.

According to the HUD Web site, the Aurora Housing Authority is one of the most underfunded in the country and the most underfunded in Illinois. The AHA should be receiving $161.91 more per unit from HUD than it now receives.

The next-highest figure in Illinois is for the Elgin Housing Authority, which should be receiving $119.48 more per unit, according to HUD.
Just this week, Brace reported, HUD informed the AHA that the Aurora agency would receive $298,734 less in operating funds than it was expecting for 2006, even under the old formula.

Congressional approval is still needed for the new formula to take effect in 2007, and Brace said he doesn't think that will happen.
"We have no reasonable expectation that we will get it," he said. "Congress needs to come through with their pledge to fund the study they commissioned.

Until then, we're getting screwed."But even the influx of funds the new formula would bring in would not prompt AHA to provide social services -- it's simply not what they do, Brace said. The extra cash would likely be used for maintenance on the buildings and other projects related to physical upkeep.

"Why is it that we are asked why we don't provide all of the comprehensive social services some of our participants need?" he asked. "Why is the question not directed at social service agencies as to why they are unable to provide affordable housing to the millions of people they serve?

"Burke and Perry are trying to contact outside agencies to provide these much-needed services. Together, the two of them met with Aurora Mayor Tom Weisner about this issue. Weisner, who as mayor appoints the members of the AHA board, came away from that meeting with serious concerns, he said.

"Sometimes the federal government cuts back on supplemental functions, but that doesn't mean that those functions can disappear without catastrophic results," he said. "Sometimes it's pushed onto the lower levels of government to do something."
Perry was encouraged by the meeting.

"There will be programs in there that have not been on that site for a long time," she said. "A positive change will come about."

Sylvia Burke is standing in the doorway of her new apartment at Ogden Manor in Naperville, marveling at how clean it all is.

Earlier that day, she had gone to the laundry room and took note of the spotless walls behind the washers and dryers. She's already making friends in her new building. She walks down the hall and two people wave and call her name as she passes by.

Sylvia feels at home here, but she hasn't stopped working for the residents of Centennial House. She still attends Melody Club meetings and stays in contact with Lillian Perry.
Burke says she'll never stop doing what she can to help her former neighbors, but she knows what they need is someone like her.

The scene of her final Melody Club meeting runs through her head, and she nearly cries again.
"I'm sorry I couldn't do more for you," she said to her friends, her neighbors, that night. "I leave you in each other's hands, and in God's hands.