Federal agency looks into Mayfair complaints

A federal agency that subsidizes Mayfair Apartments in Rocky Mount has contacted management to inquire about recent complaints made about the community.

An official with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in Greensboro has contacted Wellons Foundation Management Services in Dunn, which manages the rental community on Chicora Court.

The low-income rental community for seniors recently served an eviction notice on a 76-year-old woman for feeding a stray cat, but then backed away from it after the Edgecombe-Nash Humane Society picked up the cat. The community’s manager also recently demanded that the seniors remove flower beds they had cultivated for years in front of their porches. Mayfair Apartments also recently closed down its community center on weekends, which was being used by Northside Community Church for Sunday school services for residents.

Christian Stearns, HUD’s Greensboro field office director, said the community has not broken HUD guidelines, but there seems to be a communications breakdown between residents and the management.

He suggested that the residents form an association to represent their interests.

“It doesn’t sound like they (Wellons officials) are specifically trying to do anything negative to the residents,” Stearns said. “It just sounds like events keep happening that result in a miscommunication, and then it gets blown up from there.”

Wellons officials did not return numerous telephone calls on Wednesday.

Stearns said the controversy has arisen because Mayfair Apartments has a new on-site manager who started enforcing some rules “that maybe hadn’t been enforced before.”

Stearns said management indicated that it may once again open the community center on weekends and after 3 p.m. during the week if a resident or church member would be willing to be the caretaker of the center’s key. A resident who had that job decided she no longer wanted the responsibility, he said.

“They (Mayfair Apartments) need a volunteer to make it work,” he said.

Several residents said that they would be willing to safeguard the key.

Residents Minnie Herbert and Emma Jones said they would like to share the duty.

“If I’m not home, I’ll hand it (the key) to Minnie,” Jones said.

Herbert said she also would be willing to handle the key.

“I told them (managers) in a meeting that I would handle it,” she said.

HUD contacted the complex after complaints were made to the agency by the community’s residents and children, Stearns said. Another complaint funneled down to the agency after initially being made to Gov. Bev Perdue’s office. Rocky Mount resident Blair Alford, who doesn’t live in the community or have parents living there, made the complaint. He said Wednesday that he was unhappy about the way the community was treating its residents.

“I just feel like the ladies had been living there eight or nine years, and they (Mayfair) shouldn’t be making changes (to its policies) now after they had been doing something for that long,” he said.

Nancy H. Evans, a housing program consultant with the N.C. Division of Aging and Adult Services, informed Blair in an e-mail that the governor is concerned about senior issues and that his complaint had been forwarded to HUD.

“They (HUD) determined that management is reaching out to residents of the development and volunteers in the church to provide the necessary supervision of the laundry and community center during times management staff is not on the premises,” Evans wrote.