BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – Public safety concerns persist at Decker Towers in Burlington. Residents at the state’s largest subsidized housing project have complained for the past year about crime and drug dealing but say meaningful improvements have been slow in coming.
In March, the city agreed to help the Burlington Housing Authority — which runs the building — pay for private security to improve the quality of life at Decker Towers. The city paid for capital funds at BHA to help free up money to pay for those guards.
“I think they greatly improved over the conditions that were here in the wintertime, but there’s still a lot of things going on,” said Catherine Foley, president of the resident council at Decker Towers.
Joined by members of the neighborhood watch, Foley says that with warmer weather, the issue of people sleeping in the hallways has decreased, but other problems persist. “We’re still seeing a lot of people in the building that shouldn’t be here,” she said.
Foley says patrols from the sheriff’s department have ended and the paid private security has gone from several patrols a night to one. She says drugs are still a major issue inside the building. ”The guards are poorly trained… you cannot secure this building with one guard,” she said.
Steven Murray, director of BHA defends the guards, saying they are limited in what they can do. “We’ve we had a rough start but we have worked very much in cahoots with the security company and we feel that we’re in a much better place now,” he said.
Murray says they are working to get rid of problem tenants –citing 14 recent evictions — and says that he agrees with residents that more security will help, but that cost remains an issue. “We need two guards in order to accomplish what we wanted. But the cost is astronomical and we can’t afford it. We made that very clear and the city can’t afford it,” he said.
Burlington Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak says she is working with BHA to find solutions. “We are improving things slowly but it is very complicated because a lot of the complexities and the struggles that are happening now that we can talk about in the city, it’s like the epicenter at Decker Towers,” she said.
As for Foley and other residents, they say they just want to feel safe in their homes. “The guard program, you know, this is going to be really important. We need it to be successful,” she said.
Burlington Police data shows that the number of calls at Decker went down from 96 in February to 36 in March when there were full-time patrols from the sheriff and private security.
The plan is to reevaluate the private security in July.