‘It’s Like They Just Gave Up on Us:’ Monticello Tenants Allege Years of Mismanagement, Landlord Harassment

MONTICELLO, N.Y. – Iris Frazier has lived at Evergreen Housing in Monticello since 2009. On warmer days, she and her neighbors gather outside their homes on lawn chairs along the sidewalk – a community she describes as “one big happy family.”

“We try to help one another out, you know? It’s just a loving place, like everybody around here calls me ‘granny,” said Frazier.

During the summer, residents say they set up a bouncy house for the children in the neighborhood.

But some tenants allege that management at Monticello Housing Authority, the public housing agency that oversees Evergreen Housing, has changed in recent years.

“During COVID… yeah, it’s like they just gave up on us,” said Frazier. She recently received a leasing violation for not paying rent that she says she paid months in advance.

Radio Catskill spoke with several Evergreen Housing tenants who alleged years of landlord harassment, building mismanagement, and landlord-tenant retaliation in the years following the onset of the COVID pandemic.

New York state implemented an eviction moratorium in 2020, which prevented landlords from evicting tenants for non-payment during the pandemic. The moratorium ended in January 2022, and eviction filings immediately spiked across upstate New York.

Sullivan County Sheriff’s Office said that evictions in the county jumped from 69 evictions in 2021 to 420 evictions in 2022.

While the number of evictions in Sullivan County has slightly declined in the past two years, some tenants at the Monticello Housing Authority (MHA) allege that significant management turnover in the past five years has created confusion on tenant agreements, lease terms, building policies, and how much rent tenants owe.

Several tenants allege they haven’t had an active signed lease for nearly six years and are worried that leaves them more vulnerable to evictions.

Radio Catskill reached out to MHA and its Albany-based legal counsel, Towne Law, multiple times. They did not respond to our questions before publication. We also reached out to the Village of Monticello Mayor Rochelle Massey, who appoints a portion of the agency’s Board of Commissioners. Massey declined to comment and advised us to speak with the Village’s legal counsel.

A history of alleged mismanagement and harassment

Vanetta Lane has been an Evergreen Housing tenant for more than two decades. Once the weather warms up, she plans to get her tiny garden up and running, she says.

Lane was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2024. Two months later, she received an eviction notice after coming home from surgery. She worked with a local housing nonprofit to figure out a payment plan with MHA that she’s been steadily paying off since. But Lane says current management still threatens her and other tenants who are behind on rent.

“We’re giving the money as we get it. We’re giving it,” said Lane. “We have to be treated unfairly and talked down to because we owe back rent? That’s not fair. It’s not.”

Other tenants allege a hostile and uncomfortable culture of bullying by Marc Sterling, the newest executive director of the Monticello Housing Authority. One tenant alleged that Sterling threatened he would count the number of people coming in and out of their homes at night to confirm the household size.

Jovita Rivera, an MHA resident, said her household received a leasing violation in March, despite having reached an agreement with previous management in February 2026. She alleges the agreement was disregarded after Sterling took over and says he refuses to work with her.

Tenants also describe MHA’s Board of Commissioners as “dysfunctional.” Some residents allege that some board members have told tenants they’re required to attend board meetings. But when tenants show up, the board goes into closed-door executive sessions.

Frazier says that building management has allegedly delayed building repairs because some tenants are late on rent.

“ In the beginning, it was always nice. You would have been able to go to the office, ask for something, ask for a repair, and it got done right then and there. Now, nothing gets done and when it gets done it’s way past the time that you need it,” said Frazier.

Meanwhile, some have filed complaints with the county’s Human Rights Commission, which is currently reviewing complaints related to racial discrimination and landlord-tenant retaliation. At the April 23 Sullivan County legislative meeting, tenants urged the county legislature to hold management accountable for alleged neglect and mismanagement.

Sullivan County Democrat reported that residents also spoke out at an April 15 Village of Monticello board meeting, describing concerns about staffing changes, bullying, and confusion over new tenant requirements. Avraham Richard, one of the housing authority commissioners, said MHA was a “troubled agency” that the board was working to turn around.

A legal grey area

Monticello Housing Authority is one of more than 3,000 public housing authorities across the United States – all governed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

“They range from very big, well-oiled agencies that are managed by big cities all the way to very small organizations,” said Juan Pablo Garnham, policy and communications manager at the Eviction Lab, a research nonprofit tracking America’s affordable housing crisis.

While housing authorities must follow federal HUD guidelines, how local authorities implement them can vary.

“In terms of how they actually apply them, and what can the federal government impose on them, it can be quite complex,” said Garnham.

For instance, public housing authorities should conduct the recertification of a tenant if they lose income and may need a rent reduction. But whether local housing authorities are supporting tenants through a quick and fair process can be difficult to determine, Garnham says.

Rural residents also often don’t have as wide a range of housing resources as renters can find in bigger cities. Unlike New York City, Sullivan County and many upstate areas don’t offer a legal right to counsel for tenants facing evictions.

“Sometimes in rural areas, those [resources] don’t exist or are much, much less funded or much less available,” said Garnham.

George Haddad, Litigation Director at the Hudson Valley Justice Center, says evictions are the top issue his legal nonprofit responds to.

“What we’re seeing [is] the increase in the rental prices in our region, especially in the Hudson Valley [and] around the Hudson River itself. We’re seeing tenants getting priced out,” said Haddad, whose nonprofit provides free legal counsel for low-income residents in the Hudson Valley.

But Haddad said it’s important for tenants to remember they still have housing rights. Public housing tenants typically have additional tenant protections, he says, including an administrative grievance process when a landlord must try to reach an understanding with a tenant before moving forward with an eviction court process.

Tenants should also typically have a lease, Haddad says, though each case is different.

“Now, best practice for the public housing authority is to give the lease on an annual [basis],” said Haddad. “It sounds like there’s been some turnover here for whatever reason, and they haven’t provided it, which is not best practice,” he said.

Juan Pablo Molina, an organizer with Community Voices Heard, a statewide housing advocacy nonprofit, says residents should not have to live under poor housing conditions. All public housing authorities should have its agency’s regulations posted publicly, he said.

“Oftentimes [tenants] are prefaced with ‘Well, you live in low-income housing.’ Okay, so what? It doesn’t matter if you pay $3K in rent, which is absurd, or $500 in rent. Everybody deserves an affordable, safe place to live,” said Molina.

Garnham at the Eviction Lab says evictions can have a lasting impact on households.

Black families and households with children are disproportionately threatened with evictions. A national Eviction Lab study found that Black women with children had an eviction filing rate of 28.4 percent nationwide, compared to 16.3 percent for Black women without children.

“Eviction is not just something that happens in one moment of your life… but it’s something that drives poverty and instability and reshapes the renter’s and the renter’s family life through [the] years,” said Garnham. “One renter once described it as this hole that you fall in and then you’re trying to crawl back out of it, and the more that you try, the deeper that it is.”

In Monticello, Lane says she and other tenants at MHA are worried about their homes, their neighbors, and the close community they’ve built over the years. Some tenants are afraid to speak up out of fear of retaliation, she says, while others say it’s long overdue.

“We understand we owe back money, but this place has been mismanaged for four and a half [to] five years now,” said Lane. “I think now we’re coming out more to speak up because we’re fed up now. We’re fed up.”

Image: Entrance of Evergreen Housing in Monticello, New York (Photo Credit: Kimberly Izar)