Publications

By Jess Rivera

ARE YOU A PRODUCT OF YOUR ENVIRONMENT?
OR ARE YOU A PRODUCT OF YOUR CHOICES?

Hey yo, this personal narrative is dedicated to my food stamp getting, public housing living, foreign car dreaming, foster home hopping, bottom of the totem pole goal gettas. Regardless of your financial situation, or your current circumstances, I want to encourage you to make a plan to intentionally keep getting it out of the mud. Whether you are reading this in the United States or across the globe, I’ve opened up in hopes to inspire you to get over your adversity, to be persistent. May you continue becoming a better version of yourself and make your journey toward progress worth it.

I have realized no one is coming to “save me.” And for that reason, I have taken accountability and full responsibility for my life and how I navigate it. Don’t get it twisted. I don’t turn down help, nor am I too proud to ask for it when I need it. But I’ve learned one thing for sure—when you give over the power to feed you, you give others the power to starve you. And from my personal experiences, relying or depending on others exposed me to shark-infested waters. Despite the programs out there providing you with resources, financial assistance, or a place to call home, becoming self-sufficient and savvy is essential for your independent success. You have the power to minimize the possibility that you fall through the cracks and become another victim or another statistic in the system. Let’s get right into it.

Let me give you the game on where it all began for me. I grew up calling the hood, the projects, South Boogie, Hollywood, Dead City, “home.” My childhood and adolescent years were rough as fuck. But it wasn’t because of my home structure. I was raised in the projects by a beautiful single Puerto Rican mom with three girls. Growing up in Springfield Housing Authority (SHA) also known as “Dead End Projects” or “Marble St. Housing” came with many challenges—gritty experiences and high exposure to violence.

But living on the third floor with my sisters, in our three-bedroom apartment, was like living in luxurious condos. Mom always had the house laced up with the nicest furniture (in hindsight maybe chairs and sofas remained in mint condition because she wouldn’t let us sit on them). Artwork and figurines decorated rooms like you would see in the pages of a home improvement magazine. The floor stayed waxed like that of a high-end executive office, and our rooms were decorated with popular cartoon themes, with sheets and curtains to match.

On the weekends, my mom had a routine. When my sisters and I heard the salsa, merengue, or colta vena (Spanish for slow love songs) playing through these two, four foot high speakers, we knew it was cleaning time and we did not interfere. If we wanted something, we waited. As we tried to be patient, we would clean up our own rooms, entertain ourselves, and watch TV until she was done. She would take forever, I mean seriously, she would start early at like 8 a.m. and be at it for hours. We’d watch Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, play Mario on the Nintendo, make art with the Light Brite. Do you remember this toy? It had black colored sheets with templates. You’d put them on a board with a light behind it, follow the template design, lightly press little pegs into the template; then it would light up to show you what character you made. It was a hot commodity at that time. Anyway, we would eventually tire ourselves out from keeping busy, which inevitably led us to take naps. Can you believe my mom would still be cleaning at noon?

Oh man, sometimes . . . actually, now that I think of it, she always cleaned the nasty-ass hallways, too. The staircases were filthy, so she would use a separate broom and mop to clean the front and back stairs, which took her even longer. No matter how impatient we got, we knew to leave her be. We did not interrupt or rush her. The collective smell of Fabuloso and Mr. Clean after she mopped was the cue that she was almost done. I have to admit her deep intricate cleaning routine set a high standard for me. It just made everything feel better.

Funny how my sisters and I could sleep all through the loud music my mom blared through those speakers. Even her loud singing couldn’t wake us. All that combined with the downstairs neighbors, Jamaican reggae bumping through the walls, the next-door neighbor screaming at her kids on the top of her lungs, and all the commotion going on outside did not faze us. This cacophony was normal in the projects. But something about the great smell of cleanliness and fresh air coming through the windows always woke one of us up. It set the tone for excitement as we knew we’d be doing something fun once my mom was done. Once my sisters or I woke up, we would get bored and wake everyone else. When my mom was finished with her routine we would get all showered up and dressed for the day, to spend quality time with our family or friends or head out of town for adventures.

During the week, mom always had dinner ready for us. When I got home from school with my sisters, we would pop open the security door downstairs (because the buzzers or doorbells never worked); it was the only way to get into the building. No matter how many women would be cooking in the building, I could tell my mom’s cooking apart from theirs. Mind you, we had to go past five apartments before getting to ours. As soon as I opened those heavy hideous blue security doors, I could smell the Jamaican patties from one neighbor, the burnt rice from another. But I knew the smell of my mom’s cooking. Mmmmm. My favorite meal was yellow rice with green gandules and seasoned, golden brown pork chops fresh off the stove. I don’t know if it was the fresh sofrito my grandmother always sent from Puerto Rico, but I knew Mom’s cooking anywhere. I realize now why she cooked for all the parties and holidays. To be real, my mom did a great job of providing for us so you couldn’t tell me we lived below the poverty line. How? I didn’t know anyone who was coming home to a clean house, a home-cooked meal, and a beautiful loving mom, who would slap some act right into us if she had to.

So, if that was the environment in my household, how could anything be wrong with my upbringing? Despite what the social scientists said about broken families and single moms, my home life and family were inspiring and uplifting. But let me clarify for you where the plot begins to thicken.

Growing up in public housing, you had a variety of different people living in this crowded box-like, dead-end street. You had three buildings to the left and three more to the right, with the road in the middle. These two huge blue dumpsters that overflowed with trash daily were located in between the buildings at the end of the streets, just before the woods. The parking lot was always full of trash, bottles, hazards, plastic bags, cigarette butts, Dutch guts, tape from cassettes wrapped around the poles, and broken CDs that someone tossed out because they were probably too scratched up. The parking lot was dull and rarely clean or safe to play in. The nearby park was flooded with homeless people and addicts—so that was off limits.

Imagine what graffiti-filled hallways looked like or the gross smells that came from some apartments where people did not clean with the same intensity as my mom did? Whatever you imagine it’s probably a little worse than that. The stairs would have needles that addicts would leave behind. Little colorful bags emptied of their addictive substances would also be left behind. Blood smeared on the walls from the junkies’ veins bursting made the hallways and stairwells look like murder scenes. Piss in the corner of the floor seeping into the wood beneath the tiles and all types of nasty shit surrounded our little oasis. This is probably why my mom did not allow shoes in the house.

You would see raccoons and homeless people constantly going through the trash. The “repurposed units,” as I’ll refer to them here, were the stuff that homeless people frequently took out of the dumpsters: dressers, reusable metals, and other big items, whatever they considered valuable, filled their shopping carts. They would later clean, polish, and sell the items to pawn shops or they would trade them in to the hustlers (drug dealers) for their fix. Next, there were the “recyclers,” who literally had shifts. I can’t tell you if it was intentional or not, but they respected each other’s routes and schedules. They were very organized. All they did was open trash bags and collect the recyclable cans and bottles. They would take the cans and bottles down the street to a redemption center in exchange for the five-cent recycling deposit that happened to be right next to the liquor store. SHA didn’t have a recycling program, so no one who lived in the projects recycled. The dumpsters on our street were a gold mine for others in desperate need. Especially after a long weekend, the trash had more beer bottles than it normally would during the week and was a profitable hunting ground. In my opinion, the trash heaps were a major eye sore, and forcing people to scrounge through them to survive was truly inhumane.

Upon entering the dead-end street into our projects you would also see those who didn’t pay much for rent and spent most of their day outside. I’ll call them our “community watch.” They would be stationed at the end of the projects by the dumpsters from sunup to sundown. My sisters and I would leave for school in the morning, and we would see the same women congregating at the corner every day, with their lawn chairs, like clockwork. After school, my sisters and I would walk home from the bus stop and see the same ladies joined by more women. After 3 p.m., I would notice the group get larger with more people and all the kids playing outside. Don’t get me wrong, these ladies were cool. They always greeted us and watched all the kids in the area play outside since it was not safe to play out there without supervision. They kept an eye on the kids. That’s how they showed their nurturing side, by looking out for us. If we swore or were caught acting up, they would tell our moms. Some of these ladies were the mothers of our friends, while some would be just “visitors.” My mom hung out with them from time to time, but my mom was always grinding (working) so it would be rare. As you can imagine, these women knew everyone’s business. They knew who was being served papers for eviction; they knew who was cheating on their man while he was at work; they knew who lived there undocumented; they knew who was working more hours than they reported. Shit, now that I think of it, they had all the tea (gossip). They knew everyone’s business, so you wouldn’t want any problems with them. Otherwise they’d air out your dirty laundry.

Most days as we headed right out of our apartment door to go to the bus stop in the morning, we would encounter people sleeping on the hallway floor. We would have to excuse ourselves as we walked over these unknown strangers who, unfortunately, became familiar faces over time. I remember opening the door and seeing them hanging out in the hallway, smoking and drinking, with no regard for anyone or their kids. And in case you were wondering why no one called the authorities, if you are from where I’m from, you don’t call the police. THAT IS A BIG NO-NO!

I recall these guys who were staying in the apartment with the family next to ours. Turned out they were wanted by police for allegedly murdering a clerk at a liquor store. A few days later, the police rushed into our apartment screaming, “Where are they?” I’m talking about a mob of agents everywhere looking through every room, yelling, swearing, “Where the fuck are they?” with their weapons inches from my face, I was so confused and angry because they were in the wrong apartment. They had the audacity to use the space from our apartment to better position themselves to rush into the apartment next door with no regard for how their mistakes just impacted my family. How would you feel waking up at the crack of dawn to this type of madness? They found their suspects in the apartment next door, and sadly the Department of Child and Family Services took the young kids from our neighbor. The mother lost her kids because she was harboring criminals in her apartment. She eventually also lost her housing benefits and was evicted. I didn’t understand the purpose of the ugly heavy-ass security doors. It clearly wasn’t keeping anything or anyone hazardous out of our homes or stairwells. They were pointless. Maybe they were trying to keep us in?

One thing is for sure, privacy was a higher luxury. The maintenance crew were not the only ones who had access to enter our home. I can recall many employees had the master key to every apartment unit. This was unsettling because there were always new employees on the premises, and we could not keep up with the changes. SHA employees also had the “discretion” of legally entering any dwelling as they deemed fit. That was an unsettling feeling for me and my family. Seriously, “at their discretion?” With so many new faces, trust wasn’t easily given.

Imagine sleeping, attempting to regroup after a rough day, and you are woken up by not one but two “high-class” women with their fancy dresses, clipboards, polished jewelry, in your bedroom! They would announce themselves as you were asleep, three rooms and down the hall, too late because now they’ve realized someone is knocked out from exhaustion. To my startling surprise, I reacted instinctively, and I became aggressive. I mean, who wouldn’t? I’m at my most vulnerable state, deep asleep, and I’m woken up by loud heels, chattering voices, no advance notice, and no regard for the place I call “home.” Beyond being confused, to me, they were intruders! Did it make it OK to enter my home without notice? Why? Because they were recently titled the new property managers? Did this give them free range to violate my rights? What did they expect? I had no idea what they looked like, let alone expect them to be in my home, conducting business as usual in their new roles as if this was OK. Plus, hello, they had their nasty shoes in the house! The entitlement was real. I could not help but wonder how the rest of the public housing authority was being managed and what other levels of disregard for tenants was taking place.

This SHA location was home to about forty families “legally”—meaning they were on the lease and had permission to live there. The others were “long-term visitors”: boyfriends, fathers, and other people who stayed in the apartments without being on the lease. Some were illegally staying there because they had been convicted of a crime and would not be allowed to legally reside on the property. Others were not allowed to get help or services for reasons like having a case with “pending charges.” So much for being innocent until proven guilty.

SHA was income based. This meant that one household could pay twenty dollars for rent a month if you didn’t work. Those who worked, like my mom, paid much more, but rent did not exceed more than $525. The rent categories created a bit of a divide in the projects between those who were employed and those who were not. SHA did constant monitoring for an increase in tenants’ income. The lease required you to constantly update your income information and household members. It often frustrated my mom and the neighbors. I remember when it was time to renew your lease because I would hear the tenants complaining. Their frustrations were reasonable. They worried about paying rent and paying for college. If every time I make more they take more why work so hard? I would always be ear hustling and could hear their cries and concerns. The SHA monitored tenants’ wages like the CIA watched drug cartels. As soon as you made more money from working more, your rent went up. Before you could update SHA, they had already sent you a notice that you needed to provide copies of your pay stubs. Like most government assistance programs that provide services, they wanted to know everything, not to assist you better but to adjust your benefits accordingly. They expected a letter with information from your employer about how long you’ve been working this job or how often the overtime was going to be available. These dynamics were real disincentives for tenants to work harder. Getting assistance from public housing came with a whole lot of bullshit. However, higher rents did not mean better living conditions. The quality of living did not improve. Paying more did not mean better services.

SHA had to have a high turnover rate for their maintenance workers because there was always a new face with an SHA uniform shirt on. At one point they must have partnered up with the Hamden Sheriff’s Department because I would see some of the prerelease guys come around and clean up the premises as community service. Someone had to do it because SHA maintenance workers did not do it, with the exception of one young Puerto Rican maintenance man. I remember this one young Puerto Rican guy who overperformed his maintenance duties above anyone’s expectations. He was on top of things. He was committed and didn’t come to do a half-ass his job. I think he had a little of my mom in him. He might also have been attracted to her because he was always giving her free paint for upkeep and fixing a chipped floor, and he made it his priority to provide or fix what she needed without her having to call the main office and wait. I’m not sure if he did this for every tenant, but we appreciated it. With his help, my mom always received compliments for having the nicest apartment in the projects. Seriously, she constantly received compliments from the neighbors or whoever would come to our home. He was an outstanding maintenance man, regardless of his motives.

But all the other maintenance guys, they underperformed. This went on for so long that I can’t help but assume they were allowed to slack off on the job. You would not see one maintenance worker for hours. You would have to go to the maintenance basement, which was in the community room, and it was like their hangout. The one Puerto Rican maintenance guy who I rarely saw slacking later showed me the man cave they had set up because I was so curious about where they would spend their shifts. They were very comfortable down there. Nice big TV, fridge, Sega game, a basketball hoop, I mean, they had the works, and it was a perfect setup for slackers. It must’ve been nice to go to work and get paid to do nothing work related. I knew when their supervisors were around on the premises because they would suddenly be seen doing their jobs, scattering like cockroaches when the lights come on. The sound of leaf blowers was heard; sweeping was seen; the outside trash was finally picked up; the stairs were mopped for the first time in forever. Maybe the inside of the building smelled more because they never did their job or perhaps even worse after they used the dirty, nasty, moldy old mops when they did do their job. It was bad, seriously, they did the worst job ever. It was ridiculous.

As I grew older, I started wondering how this situation was allowed to occur and why. The Mickey Mouse maintenance work that I witnessed being done on the property truly didn’t make sense to me. How could they just paint over the blood on the walls? That’s a major health concern, isn’t it? There had to be protocols to follow to safely sanitize the apartments and hallways, right? Who knows! All I know is when a family moved out, a new family moved in within days. Shouldn’t maintenance sanitize and deep clean? Instead, they did the same lazy-ass job prepping the apartment for the next family to quickly move them in. I’m talking about in a matter of days someone was already pulling up in a moving truck unpacking their belongings. Since SHA employees didn’t live there, you could clearly tell by their lack of effort that they didn’t care. Eventually, as I would become friends with some of the newcomers, I’d get to see how their homes differed from my home. And that shit looked crazy. But I guess it beats being in the streets or in a shelter. It’s as if SHA employees expected folks to settle for whatever they got. The tub was the one thing that stood out to me once because it looked brown and rusted. There’s no way the new family that just moved in caused that much wear and tear like that. The edges had mold—like damn straight-up disregard for people and their well being. I also recall the knobs to the sinks having food particles in the crevices. It was just gross. Don’t even get me started on what they did on extermination days.

The things I was exposed to and witnessed as soon as the brown doors to my home closed behind me were ruthless. I was not the only one experiencing this lifestyle though. With so many other kids in the area and their single mothers living in this cell-like jail structure with one way in and one way out, it was traumatic. The way we were living and the things we were exposed to is what you would mostly see in R-rated movies or on Cops TV.

SHA is supposed to be an organization developed to assist low-income families with a place to live. But was that it? Create a well-written mission and vision statement, get the funding, and pretend everything is running smoothly, even though it wasn’t? Where was the follow-up, where were the people in charge, the higher-ups? There were so many issues, so many unanswered questions and yet no improvements to increase the quality of life in our neighborhood.

As I got older I began to research the SHA mission and what could be done to build a better community. With very little encouragement and access to information, I began to notice there was a major misalignment of SHA’s program goals and its tenants’ experiences. SHA documents all seemed like lies—fabricated well-written bullshit. I did not see how anyone believed SHA was helping us. The claim that they “are dedicated to providing a well managed, well maintained and high-quality housing” was far-fetched. Their attention was supposed to focus on “build[ing] communities and neighborhoods which promote self-sufficiency.” Seriously? How? Maybe I was reading the wrong SHA mission and vision statement, but this was not my experience. My personal experience living on SHA property was beyond alarming.

How was all of this allowed? Where do you turn to just to ask questions, let alone get answers? What do you do when you need to express your concerns without fear that someone in power would retaliate? Many of us who lived here were black/Jamaican or Puerto Rican—there were a few Jewish and Irish people. The frustration grew into animalistic instincts for survival in some of us.

Living in the hood was no walk in the park. These can’t be the political issues being discussed because, if so, the politicians were failing us big time. Where was the disconnect? How can these people say they are helping, yet all I see are struggling families, drug-infested hallways, and a system built to “help” letting many mothers and their children down. So I sincerely sympathize with the many who are currently being raised in these failed, structured systems, near and far.

Springfield Housing Authority was the organization that provided income-based housing for my family for almost nineteen years. In my highly informed experience, I have concluded they were really comfortable simply being slumlords. And no one challenged these conditions. If what I have described doesn’t vividly paint the picture of my environment, let me just sum it up: it is nothing like these politicians, housing representatives, and community leaders describe. SHA has a “mission,” but their statement and their “vision” did not reflect what I was experiencing in real time. My real-life experiences and their program’s mission did not correlate.

I confidently believe that my environment and experiences were the reason I scored high on the ACES test (a study that measures childhood experiences and the correlation between chronic illnesses and other concerns). We had very limited resources while living there. Although my mom did an amazing job to shelter us from the reality of what was happening around us, her efforts stood no chance against the systemic issues of poverty. I have no recollection of anyone making it out of the projects to become property owners or achieve anything major. Unless you want to call high-profile drug dealers and prostitution a success. We didn’t see many happy endings. I’m not sure what SHA was really aiming to accomplish as an organization, but the options for us in that place were very limited and did not reflect their so-called desired goals. My experiences were not just extreme exposure to traumatic events; I’d call many of these experiences major civil rights violations, which took place openly on SHA premises.

My environment didn’t give me many choices; therefore, the limited access didn’t provide many luxuries for me. I had to work with what I had. Without much guidance, I quickly learned from my environment and picked up some bad habits. I became a product of that environment. The environment taught me survival; it taught me I had no place in the world outside the projects. I learned that going to jail or dying young was what awaited all of us who came from here. That’s what SHA exposed me to. Although SHA isn’t to blame directly or entirely, I believe the environment they fostered was the opposite of what they claimed in their vision statement, ultimately failing many of us. Therefore, I feel the neglect was so deep-rooted and overlooked that it resulted in me becoming a victim of their flawed system. Through them I learned policies and politics come before people.

Unfortunately, after much political talk over the years, Massachusetts voted in favor of the MGM casino in 2016. Was it a coincidence that around the same time SHA was starting to get more involved, by conducting inspections in the apartments they had neglected over the years. I’m talking about these inspections occurring more frequently. They went from once a year, if that, to about four to six inspections a year, depending on the conditions of the apartment. I saw the politicians around the neighborhoods with their long fancy overcoats and leather gloves, and I remember thinking to myself, huh, they’re finally about to clean things up around here. Unbeknownst to me, I started to also hear more talk about the casino being built on Main Street, which was too close for comfort. But with so much speculation and not enough accurate facts, I disregarded the topic.

Living in the SHA projects for so long, I saw how the politics played out. I sat and waited for a long time to see how the casino’s proposal came to be. While dates and times for political discussion may have been accessible to the public, I can’t help but wonder where they posted the public notices of information. Was it intentionally only available during hours of operation in a locked room with limited access that only SHA had keys to? Of course, with little pushback from the people everything worked in favor of the casino. Sadly, many of the families living in SHA were displaced, the voucher that was promised never made it to many of us, and I wonder what came of the forty-six-plus families that were growing up in those projects. In 2018 the buildings were knocked down, and the dead-end street is now a public road that many drive through without the slightest idea of what it had once bred.

We are in desperate need of structural change. I recognize that no system is perfect, but we can’t continue to see the statistics and be selectively and willfully blind. Victims are falling through the cracks of these systems, which are supposedly put into place to improve lives and assist anyone in need. Don’t forget how your decisions impact the lives of us, the oppressed. The quality of our lives should reflect these promises, not the little effort and resources put into realizing them. We deserve people in power who aren’t selective about what they share or implement. Whatever you are in alignment with and whichever organization you are collaborating with, the aim should be to serve people with respect and dignity. The results of the missions and visions should reflect the people’s experiences. I ask you who read this to be in alignment with your heart’s true calling. Find a cause your heart can commit to and remain consistent. If you work for public housing, even if temporarily, please make your greatest effort to uplift those you serve by providing excellent service, especially maintenance crews.

As people in power begin to step into positions or rise up in the ranks, I truly hope they stick to core fundamental morals and values that respect, encourage, and empower those they serve. I hope they stand for things that are for the greater good and put people before profits. I hope they are living intentionally to improve our quality of life. If you are a teacher, teach your heart out, be a resource. Keep listening to learn. Apply the information provided in your training and pass down that knowledge. If you serve, serve wholeheartedly to those who may never be able to repay you. If you manage a property or a team, lead with excellence and contribute to your followers so they can accurately represent and have a role model they can follow. I’m calling the real leaders to rise and lead from the front. Be an upstander! Your actions in these positions of power are the voices for the voiceless. Society is molded by your vision; don’t just pretend to inspire hope with empty promises to get you recognized in public—only to fail us in private. Put action behind your words, it’s time to walk that walk. Let’s do better. Anyone can look good; it’s time to be good.

I couldn’t accept how long the wool was pulled over my eyes. I refuse to become another statistic. I began making healthier choices and went back to school to empower my people. I am tired of attending funerals and jails more than weddings or graduations. This was normal growing up, but this has to change. I realize I can’t wait until things impact me directly to learn more about an issue. If I wait to care or get involved until something negatively impacts me, my opponents have a head start and I am doing myself a disservice. I advocate against being ignorant or remaining arrogant. Ignorance is not bliss; it will most likely make you a casualty of profits. I became aware of my constitutional rights. When you come from the hood, those who work in these areas maximize and prey on your lack of knowledge and you become a target. Meanwhile they receive recognition for a “job well done,” even if they’ve negatively impacted your life. Understanding your rights is essential to living a fulfilled life. Set the standard, so you can be treated respectfully, fairly, and justly. Thankfully this is part of my come-up story. What’s yours?

To be continued . . .