These are the projects.

They are one example of where some of the city's poor live.

There are some 10,000 of these units spread throughout the city, and they house more than 40,000 low income people.

They are run by the Pittsburgh Housing Authority.

The residents of one such community, Terrace Village are angry.

They say the housing authority is not serving their needs, and at least one community service organization agrees.

George Coleman is executive director of an organization called The New Breed.

A group of young men and women who have come together to help residents, like those in Terrace Village.

Terrace Village right now is like as you can see, you can see the condition.

I personally got involved into it, I think, even more deeply than anyone anything else.

Because my mother lives up here now, okay?

And she's been living up here for quite some time.

And I recall a time that I lived up here.

It didn't look anything like this.

And we ask simple questions, and we simply like to get some simple answers.

The simple question we ask is like, what is the job of a Pittsburgh Housing Authority?

Although the type of housing under the housing authorities charge can range from three story walk ups to row houses to high rises, the Terrace Village area is over 30 years old.

In fact, it was the first low income housing constructed in the United States.

The residents of Addison Terrace, Aliquippa Terrace and Bedford Dwellings, the areas which comprise Terraced Village, feel that they have been overlooked and are treated as second class citizens, especially as it concerns maintenance.

The Housing Authority, on the other hand, operating on $11.5 million budget, feels that it is doing an adequate job of maintenance and of running its varied housing complexes.

Well, when you're talking about, you know, public public housing, particularly the housing authority in Pittsburgh, we have over or pretty close to 10,000 units.

And, on a given day, all light switches won't work.

All the plumbing facilities won't work.

We do service our communities.

Each one of the communities does have a maintenance shop.

And, on a daily basis, the service requests are called into the management office and directed to the, to the, maintenance shop.

And then they are serviced.

Each one of the communities has a, the proper people, the plumbers, glasers, electricians, and they are service.

And when we talk in terms of, large communities such as Aliquippa Terrace, 1800 units, from time to time, there might be a delay in getting the maintenance done.

We do get all the, the emergency.

Emergency is done on a daily basis.

Routine maintenance, such as leaky faucets, bad light switches, things of that nature may take, several days before we do them, but we make every effort to get all the emergencies done within that particular day.

They're not doing what they're supposed to do.

What are they supposed to do?

They're supposed to give us sufficient housing, heat, water.

We're not getting anything.

Are complaints made to the housing authority?

Oh, most definitely.

And we're not heard at all.

You know, they send us here.

Send us there.

You know, we've even been downtown and we're still not heard.

Specifically, what are some of the problems, specific problems that are here?

- The refrigerators are messed up.

Our food is going bad.

Our children's are catching colds because the houses are insufficient with the walls.

The walls is moldy.

You know, everything is going on.

They're not doing their job.

Our stair halls haven't been painted in over ten years.

Our shrubbery grass hasn't been cut in over a year.

It's just we have rats running around like they're grown men.

You can't let your children out after dark because the rats are there.

We have a staff of exterminators who do go out and attempt to control them.

I don't think you can ever, eliminate the, the rodent problem.

So here again, it's a, time of the year type thing.

Whenever you go out to, spray for, for or, exterminate for rodents.

We have people who do go out and do that.

At times we, we, go out on a contract basis specifically for rodents.

We worked with the Allegheny County Health Department.

They've been very helpful along these lines and giving us, some service and giving us some, assistance in attempting to control this, the, infestation problem internally, mostly with the roaches.

Our men are more, trained along these lines.

- As far as the maintenance is concerned, that they haven't lived up to their responsibility because the windows and, the plumbing inside.

And, like, I had, trouble with the backup, and it took them two months to come out to fix this, to back up in the tub.

And, then when you call up there, they'll tell you that the man will be there.

You don't see the man.

You don't hear from the man.

You call again.

And another bad problem that they have some of help that is in their office, they write up the slip, and the slip lays there.

The slip never gets reported.

Okay.

Then when you go to the manager about it, then he'll tell you, well, we only have X amount of men to do this and X amount of men to do that.

I got four too windows broken out and it's been six months.

And if you don't if you ask them they say no, no, we will end up back here to fix it.

Now what are you supposed to do?

But if we miss a month in rent, you got a letter in your box.

What do we attempt to do with, broken windows within and within the apartment, these are the units in which we attempt to take care of first, particularly families living on the first floor, second and third floor.

And actually, we're going to attempt to take care of those as quickly as possible.

I would not like to think that any family has been, waiting for service, longer than 2 or 3 days.

Two and three months would be certainly inexcusable.

Who do you blame?

Who do you blame?

Who's responsible for you not getting the things that you need up here?

Who who who do you put the blame on?

It's your manager.

Is it the administration?

The housing authority of the city of Pittsburgh?

- Downtown.

Downtown.

They don't know what's going on in these projects.

They don't live in it.

They don't live in it.

And they live in Mount Lebanon.

Fox chapel.

- Yeah way up Plum Township.

No we live here.

Don't make no difference because we live in the ghetto.

And they sent me a list with 33 names as your maintenance personnel.

And if they have 33 people here, then we could have sufficient maintenance.

But we do not happen.

They don't want to give us what we want or they can't compromise, because this is what is all about compromise.

You know, they don't want to compromise.

Then, why should we have to pay our rent?

Why are we going to get put out in the street?

Because we don't pay our rent.

You know, they're just as bad as the slum land lords, if not worse.

To serve the needs of its 40,000 units, the authority maintains a workforce of 250 employees.

But maintenance personnel who would only speak off the record for this report, all agree that they need more workers, plus more cooperation from the residents and Housing Authority administrators.

How would you respond if someone came in here?

If someone from the Housing Authority, just anybody came in and said, of course we can't keep, keep maintenance up in the Housing Authority because y'all are tearing everything up.

Y'all are throwing all the garbage out here in the streets.

Y'all are making our job twice as hard by not helping yourselves.

How would you respond to somebody telling the people they move in here?

That's what they need is a screening committee and then they would know what kind of people or general idea what kind is moving in here.

And they put garbage cans out there and the garbage.

Someone steals the garbage cans.

We had nowhere to put the garbage.

And then, our hall was so dirty up there.

And they gave us, we asked to paint.

They gave us paint.

We cleaned the hall ourselves because we had nobody to clean it.

The hall looked so bad.

So our hall 440 is all cleaned up for now.

How would you describe Terrace Village as a community, as a place to live?

How would you term it?

I would describe it down pretty much as a place that at this particular time, if we were to take heaven and compare it to hell, I would say Terrace Village is hell.