'This is history:' Fulton Homes apartments hope for maintenance help from city

LORAIN — For Fulton Homes' property manager, it feels like the south side apartments are stuck in the desert. The aging, historic 60-unit apartment complex bordered by General Johnnie Wilson Park, Industrial Street and Fulton Road, needs a lot of work, manager Vanessa Jones admits. There are 10 vacant units scattered between the one-, two- and three-bedroom row homes, once barracks for steel workers. Walking through one left uninhabitable after the tenant of more than 40 years moved out a year-and-a-half ago, she's frustrated at the amount of work needed, and the little funds coming in. "This is history right here and this should not be like this," Jones said. Fulton Homes was one of two former public housing complexes purchased by the tenants in 1957, and one of the first Black-owned apartment complexes in Lorain. Originally build in the mid-1940s, the 10-building complex was once Army barracks, Jones said, before being apartments for U.S. Steel workers. But in the late 1950s, the tenants organized to form Fulton Homes Inc., a nonprofit that purchased the complex for $165,000, according to a Chronicle-Telegram article. Individual families could purchase their units for $400; 50 of them sold at the time. Now, it's a mix of relatives of those original tenants with a mutual ownership contract passed from generation to generation, and new renters. The projects were the childhood home of General Johnnie Wilson — and the reason for his namesake park abutting the town homes. But its position in the 5th Ward has made history on the area hard to find, Jones said. "The redlining district is on this side of 28th Street that runs there, and they never really had no history because they never came out to do anything," she said. For some, Fulton Homes is where they've grown up, and grown older. For others, it's a new start, helping Nord Center patients or formerly homeless individuals, Jones said. But over the years, low rents and disinvestment from former management and tenants alike have left them in a sorry state. When Jones took over in 2010, the property had thousands in delinquent taxes, and she went to court to have the appraisal lowered. "What I really want is for them to replace these roofs and these gutters like they said," she said. "That's pretty much all I want. We walked this whole project with Max Upton and he promised me that." Last year, the Building, Housing and Planning Department pledged more than $100,000 in Community Development Block Grant funds to rehabilitate the roofs and gutters throughout the complex after rotting wood and melting snow left leaks and areas exposed to the elements, birds and squirrels. But the money never came, Jones said. On Monday, she and a handful of residents came to the City Council meeting, demanding the city do what it had pledged and help them. At that meeting, BHP program manager Matt Kusznir said they'd had trouble getting enough tenants to provide income information to make the project eligible under U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development guidelines, and that the cost ballooned to upward of $1 million to replace roofs across the complex. On Friday, Councilwoman JoAnne Moon, D-5th Ward, walked the complex with The Chronicle-Telegram and Jones, listing the items that need to be fixed. Jones' focus was on the gutters and roof, especially the six units in dire need of repair that the city had promised to help with — an undertaking her nonprofit doesn't have the funds to manage, she said. Osie Chaney, who's lived in Fulton Homes since 1969, had the roof over her porch finished Friday, after it had all but caved in. "My kids want me to move because they're slow about doing stuff — and I ain't scared to say," she said, sitting on her porch that afternoon. "We've got neighbors, they don't care about what they do. I just called Vanessa a while ago and told her my tub is backing up and stuff like that … It's just getting worse because it's older." Moon expressed frustration that the project had stalled, and that she hadn't been included on all the city's discussions about it, or upgrades to General Johnnie Wilson Park. "These whole units need updating," Moon said, pledging to get a community meeting together to help the residents stay informed — and to get city housing inspectors out to cite tenants with debris scattered throughout the property. She also wants to get local artist Jeff Pye out to paint a sign denoting the historic complex. Mayor Jack Bradley said he wasn't sure where the original idea the roof work would only cost about $180,000 came from, but he has instructed BHP staff to do a deeper dive on the complex. "This is a private organization that owns this and we need some further discussions on what we can actually do to help them out. We're going to explore some different options, that's why I want to meet with them," he said. Those options could include American Rescue Plan Act funds or other federal dollars. For now, Jones and her residents wait for more information from the city. She said she's promised not to raise rents — which start around $350 a month — but fears the nonprofit Fulton Homes Inc. can't sustain the myriad projects piling up without some funds coming in. "It's so nice here, I've always loved this place. And like I told them, this is not my home, it's your home. I want your home to be like a home — I'm not from here. … These people get on my nerves … but it's my heart." This story has been corrected to remove a photo from a different area of Lorain mistakenly attached. Contact Carissa Woytach at (440) 329-7245 or cwoytach@chroniclet.com.