Quality of life concerns at Westover Gardens raised by tenants
It all started with a “foul smell.” Then there were flies in the lobby.
Nassau County police were called out to an apartment at Westover Gardens in Elmont for a wellness check. Instead, they found a body.
There was no sign of foul play, police said, and the tenant — not identified by authorities — reportedly had an extensive medical history. The body was removed by the medical examiner that same day.
People die at home sometimes. It’s a sad fact of life. But for the woman who finally called police, it’s just one more thing on a growling list her mother — and other tenants at Westover Gardens — are dealing with.
“I mean they’re seniors,” said the woman, who asked not to be identified fearing repercussions for her mother. “They could leave feeling ill.”
The super arrived the next day to clean up the lobby and rid it of the odor. A cleanup crew from the Town of Hempstead Housing Authority — which manages the property — was by not long after to clean out the room, once the super told residents he received an all-clear from the coroner’s office.
“First, it took so long for someone to realize there was a dead body,” she said. “Then it took so long for someone to come clean.”
None of this was new for Vida Tomlinson, who has lived at Westover Gardens for the past five years. During the pandemic, someone on the floor below her died, and the smell remained in the building for several weeks. Whenever family members would come to visit, they’d have to cover their nose and mouth to bear the odor.
“It smelled worse than a morgue,” said Patricia Ross, Tomlinson’s daughter.
A lack of basic building maintenance, lingering garbage, rodents, roaches and poor security — all based on complaints from a number of residents at Westover Gardens — has caught the attention of one lawmaker, who says he wants to do something about it.
“I mean, if there was basic maintenance being done there,” Nassau County Legislator Carrié Solages said, “they could’ve detected the odor as many residents who live there detected that odor.”
When Tomlinson first moved in, the building super would clean general areas weekly, but not lately. The super blames the town’s sanitation department. When they collect garbage, workers leave spare items by the dumpster. It’s more than enough, he says, to attract rats.
Tomlinson had rats in her apartment as late as three months ago, but has not seen them since. The building super says that’s because exterminators come once a month to rid the Elmont Road property of any rodents.
Westover Gardens is one of 14 sites maintained by the town’s housing authority. It provides a place to live primarily through Section 8 programs, which allocate housing vouchers to cover rent for low-income families and senior citizens.
According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the public housing authority that administers the voucher program must inspect each tenant’s unit at least once a year to ensure it meets minimum housing quality standards.
“The housing authority is committed to providing eligible and qualified families with safe and sanitary housing,” Edward Cumming, executive director of the Town of Hempstead Housing Authority, told the Herald in a statement. “All housing authority apartment complexes are maintained and repaired in compliance with the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development and New York state law, and are reviewed on an ongoing basis.”
The woman who called about what ultimately was someone who died in their unit also called the next day to express her concerns the town’s cleanup crew still had not come. In a letter to Hempstead Town Supervisor Donald Clavin, Solages relayed is own concerns about the complex.
Clavin did not receive that correspondence, according to his communications office.
“We have a responsibility to address the glaring inequities that currently exist in Nassau County housing,” Solages said in his letter to Clavin. “There is absolutely no reason why people should be living like this when communities have an abundance of good and decent housing.”
The woman says her mother has lived at the complex for the past 18 years. But it’s only been over the past decade or so she has seen living conditions deteriorate. From regular dumpster overflow to loosened electrical outlets on the first floor that took a year to fix, she says the building simply is not maintained frequently enough.
“You pick and choose your battles,” she said. “You take care of your parents. That’s it.”
