Children in low-income communities have
a lot on their plate when it comes to dealing with quality of life
issues. They have no control over violence or the unhealthy people
they might be surrounded by. The have no control over what goes on in
their schools. To add insult to injury, they can't do anything when
they're living in an environment that causes their health to decline.
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| Clean it up NYCHA! |
I didn't quite understand why the
reports also said that, for example, in East Harlem, children are 13
times more likely to go to the ER than those on the Upper East Side.
Why aren't all children - regardless of their residence - getting the
help they need to control their symptoms?
The root of the problem seems to be
where they live – notably the sickening conditions that only
poverty-stricken families have to succumb to.
Last year in February I received a
phone call from Bayview Houses resident Natisha Davila, who
had leaks in her eighth floor apartment as well as mold. When I
visited her apartment, she told me that maintenance crews came and
left on a frequent basis without making repairs. She showed me a copy
of medical records with her children's allergies and asthma triggers.
Among triggers were roaches and roach feces, dust and mold - all of
which were present in her apartment.
She also said her son was rushed to the
ER several times over that past month and that his condition wasn't
getting better since the air quality in the apartment was making him
sicker. In addition to insects and allergies, secondhand smoke is one
of the major contributing factors for developing asthma. But the
conditions of this resident's apartment had so many physical signs of
being hazardous.
There were bubbling water pockets
waiting to burst open under the bedroom ceiling and it looked like
the walls were sweating. Around the windowsill edges, black and gray
discoloring indicated water damage and mold were present. When I
heard her son coughing in the next room, I asked myself, why would
the city let children live in these conditions? Davila said showing
medical papers to the Bayview Houses manager at the time
did little to speed up the process of having repairs done. She also
requested to be relocated to a first floor apartment, and that took
an extensive amount of time as well.
The bigger problem was that many
of Bayview's apartments had leaks due to torrential rains that swept
through the community, in addition to melting snow from weeks before.
I don't want to sound mean, but the
message I get from the city and those who manage low-income housing
is: “Well, you can't afford to live in a nice place, so you'll have
to put up with health problems and disgusting living conditions until
the city can send someone to your building to MAYBE fix the problem.”
I can bet anything that most kids from Canarsie and surrounding areas
who live in private houses don't suffer from asthma as severely.
While I've tried to compile statistics from pediatric departments of
local hospitals, it will take detailed studies to determine where
some of those children reside and if their homes are health dangers.
Are children living in Breukelen Houses, Bayview Houses and
Glenwood Houses rushed to the ER more often than other kids?
The good news is that children of
low-income families are eligible for free or low-cost health
insurance. While government-funded healthcare is available to most
low-income residents, city agencies like NYCHA don't have the funds
to make critical repairs to their buildings, which cause health
problems to begin with. What beautiful irony!
Some people living in private homes in
middle or upper class communities are more likely to be able to
afford to have repairs made to their property when leaks and mold
appear. They don't have to wait for a superintendent to call a
repairman – and they don't have to put a ticket into the New York
City Housing Authority and wait months and years for a contractor to
take a look, then abandon the problem for another few weeks,
resulting in long-term exposure to dangerous, corroded building
materials.
Highly populated apartment buildings
might also be more likely to be infested with roaches and mice than
private homes, where homeowners can hire exterminators within a few
days to treat the problems.
It's not fair that our children are
suffering from respiratory illnesses just because they are “poor.”
The city is making it's discoveries and nothing is being done to
prevent the statistics from going up. Who is really to
blame?
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