The state Attorney General’s office last week sued the Boston Housing Authority (BHA) over its treatment of a family with two girls with asthma and developmental issues, charging that the authority ignored repeated complaints for three years about the unsanitary conditions in their Franklin Field apartment that were so bad the girls had to seek emergency care at a local hospital two to three times a month.

The filing lays out the following scenario:

In 2016, the BHA moved a woman, her mother, and the woman’s two nieces, who were living with them, into a four-bedroom Franklin Field apartment that was already overrun by “mice and other pests,” as were other apartments at the development. Conditions grew worse as the BHA ignored repeated complaints.

The authority’s repeated ignoring of both the woman’s requests and documentation from her family’s doctors about the harmful impact of them being in close daily contact with mice, their droppings, their urine, and mold – which started sprouting in 2018 – violates both state housing anti-discrimination law and a Boston-specific fair-housing law. It is seeking compensatory and punitive damages on behalf of the family.

Not long after moving into the unit on Ames Street in Franklin Field, they found that “the radiators were filled with mice droppings, there were droppings and chewed holes in all the furniture despite routine cleaning, and the entire family were living in fear of seeing mice, at times seeing more than five mice every hour. … The family “did not want to cook or eat in the unit due to fear of contamination by mice droppings and urine.”

In 2018, the family began noticing “a strong mildew smell in the unit” and black mold growing on ceilings. In October 2019, the nieces’ doctor contacted the city’s Inspectional Services Department to request an inspection. On Oct. 24, 2019, ISD notified the BHA that the apartment was in violation of the state sanitary code. 

In response, the BHA sent someone out to swab some bleach on the mold and repaint the affected areas, but the mold soon returned.

The authority did nothing out of the ordinary about the mice - it simply continued what it was doing - so the rodents never left. If anything, the number of mice - and their droppings and urine - only increased, forcing the woman and her nieces to spend time in relatives’ homes away from Franklin Field for several days a month to try to get some respite.

When staying at the apartment, the four women slept in a single bed because the girls were too scared to sleep in their own after a mouse crawled into bed with one of them.

In December 2020, the woman asked BHA to transfer her family to another unit, but the BHA ignored her request – and follow-up requests and letters from her nieces’ doctor and her own doctor, saying the problems were making her own health problems worse, in part due to anxiety and her attempts to keep up with the problems on her own by cleaning the apartment twice a day.

In August 2022, ISD again inspected the apartment and again concluded that it was in violation of the state sanitary code. Despite that, and a fourth formal request from the woman for help, the agency did nothing at the time.

On Jan. 22, 2023, a BHA extermination contractor removed fourteen mice from the apartment and found that the bait stations in the unit had been “wiped clean” due to the severity of the infestation. As a result, the contractor designated 20A Ames as a “**High Priority Unit.”

On March 15, the BHA sent a property manager to take a look at the apartment. The next day, that manager called the woman to discuss an “emergency administrative transfer” to another unit. On May 1, the woman and her nieces (her mother had died in 2022) moved into a new unit on D Street in the BHA’s West Broadway development in South Boston. 

On Sept. 26, attaching a letter from her nieces’ doctor saying they require “modifications in order to feel safe in their new home, and in order to monitor any unpredictable behavior resulting from these diagnoses,” the woman asked the BHA for window guards, a video doorbell, and security cameras and requested the authority address “inadequate and ripped screens” that were allowing bugs into the unit and “continually leaking toilets that were creating conditions likely to lead to mold growth.

As of last month, none of that work has been done. The state contends that adding the requests were for “reasonable accommodations” to the family’s physical and mental health issues. The authority has until May 6 to answer the complaint.

This article was first published by Universal Hub on Jan. 8. The Reporter and Universal Hub share content through a media partnership.