Stories

In the front hallway of Rashida Mims’ house at 119 Kellogg St., written in blue marker on a whiteboard by her 17-year-old son, is a Bible verse that helps keep her centered in her crumbling home.

“Blessed are all who fear the Lord who walk in obedience to him,” the verses from Psalm 128 read. “You will eat the fruit of your blessings and prosperity will be yours.”

Taped to the wall below: a letter from the Onondaga County Department of Health about lead hazards in the house. The landlord has been fined once already but the lead paint’s still there — just like it was when Mims, a single mother, moved into the house with her nine children nearly two years ago.

Mims had to close off the back staircase because of the lead paint, and now a week’s worth of recycling and garbage blocks the stairs. The laundry room has lead paint too, in addition to a section of exposed beams and pipes in the ceiling from a half-finished repair job.

“It’s not fair because we still have to pay for rent and the kids need a place to stay,” she said.

Mims had some of her kids tested for lead last year and said all their levels were within the acceptable range, but she needs to get them all re-tested this year.

County violations

The notice from the county states that the landlord failed to show up to a Feb. 5 hearing, where the Onondaga County Health Department found the landlord had violated Public Health Law and the Sanitary Code of the State of New York by having lead hazards in the house. The landlord was given until May 15 to reduce the lead hazards. If not, there will be a fine of $200 plus another $200 fine from a July 2014 violation.

The house is owned by 119 Kellogg LLC, which bought the property for $1,000 in March 2013, just a few months before Mims moved in, Onondaga County property records show. New York State corporation records show 119 Kellogg LLC is registered to an apartment address in Brooklyn. The property has more than $25,000 in unpaid property taxes dating back to 2006, records show.

Mims declined to provide the name of her landlord because she didn’t want to cause any trouble. She said the landlord stops by once a month to pick up the rent.

Myhousingmatters.com has filed a request with the New York State Division of Corporations for 119 Kellogg LLC’s articles of organization.

Removing lead from a house can be an expensive project. In October, Syracuse learned that it would lose funding for the lead abatement program it has run for the past 20 years. The program had overseen the removal of lead from more than 2,500 Syracuse homes and apartments at a cost of about $15,000 per home, according to an Oct. 2 syracuse.com article. City residents can still apply to Onondaga County for help with lead removal.

Mims Family Photo Gallery

Rashida Mims' son wrote a Bible verse on the whiteboard in their front hallway.| Jessica Iannetta, staff photo

The back staircase had to be closed off because of lead paint.| Jessica Iannetta, staff photo

Rashida Mims, 37, stands in her hallway with daughter Neriah, 2 .| Jessica Iannetta, staff photo

Unfinished repairs caused an exposed ceiling in the laundry room.| Jessica Iannetta, staff photo

Nehemia Mims-Daniels, 6, plays in the living room while his brothers watch TV.| Jessica Iannetta, staff photo

Mims' nine children range in age from 8 months to 17 years old.| Jessica Iannetta, staff photo

Mims said people have attempted to break in through the side door of the house.| Jessica Iannetta, staff photo

Mims looks at the plywood covering the porch.| Jessica Iannetta, staff photo

Isaiah, 9, Talitha, 9, and Neriah, 2, smile for the camera in their living room.| Jessica Iannetta, staff photo

The Mims' house is on Kellogg Street in Syracuse.| Jessica Iannetta, staff photo

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The lead paint may be one of the house’s biggest problems but it’s far from the only one: the exposed pipes and ceiling in the laundry room, the broken window pane in the room off the kitchen, at least three doors that are no longer attached to the door frames, the windows in her daughter’s bedroom that had to be caulked because it got so cold they could see their breath, the rotting wood throughout the house that Mims worries will fall and hit her children.

But as much as she sometimes worries about her children inside the house, Mims worries more about the area outside. Mims moved aside her washing machine and a piece of cinderblock and disabled an alarm to reveal for a visitor a set of stairs that lead to a door to her side yard.

Bits of sunlight stream through cracks in the old, wood door, and Mims said several people have tried to break into the house that way — including a few times when the family was home. Beyond the side door, one side of her backyard fence has been knocked down — probably by someone looking for copper pipes to sell, Mims guessed.

The small backyard isn’t really big enough for her children — who range in age from 8 months to 17 years old — to play in, and Mims doesn’t like them playing in front of the house because of the violence in the Near Westside neighborhood. She can’t afford a car now but would love to have a car by the summer so she can drive her kids to the park when they want to go outside.

“Last summer we were ducking bullets,” she says.

A necessary move to the Near Westside

The move to the Near Westside was mostly out of necessity. Mims and her kids were living in a house on the South Side, where Mims grew up. But the house was making the kids sick. Mims never figured out exactly what it was — possibly mold — but she knew she needed to move.

Finding a house for 10 people is not easy and most of the houses Mims looked at that were big enough for her family were too expensive. Most of the other seven- bedroom houses she looked at cost around $2,500 a month. She found the house on Kellogg Street through a friend for less than half the cost of any other she looked at. She pays $1,000 a month in rent.

119 Kellogg Street is located in a census tract with low levels of opportunity in housing, employment and education, according to data from the 2014 CNY Fair Housing report.

Mims could afford the rent with her job as a patient care aide at Syracuse ElderChoice. She was working 40 hours a week and making $9.50 an hour. But the 12-hour, occasionally overnight shifts were getting to be too much. During one overnight shift, she got a call from the police: Her stove was on fire, a result of her 13-year-old son trying to cook while she was out.

After that, Mims told ElderChoice she was done working 12-hour shifts; the most she could do was eight hours. She said the company wasn’t able to make that work and she stopped working there at the end of February.

Her only other source of income is the small bits of money she can make as a representative for Avon, a beauty company. But that job is more valuable because of the discounted products she gets through the company, she said.

She’s been applying to a few jobs at Upstate University Hospital but hasn’t heard back yet so she’s considering filing for unemployment. Mims didn’t work a single day in March and was going to have trouble making the rent.

She filed for welfare in mid-March.

“I grew up on welfare,” Mims says. “I wanted to give my children the opportunity to not grow up on welfare so they know that’s not the way to live.”

The Mims family

Her kids have three different fathers. Mims said one was killed in a shooting, and the other two are around but don’t provide much help with money. Mims was married for seven years until 2011, but said she felt like a single mother long before the divorce.

Still, her family is close, Mims said. She home-schooled her kids until 2010, when their test results came back low and the state suggested she send them to public school. No school in Syracuse had room for all nine kids, so they’re scattered at five different ones throughout the district.

Her oldest, Rashid, 17, has dreamed of playing basketball at Syracuse University ever since some Syracuse basketball players came to the local YMCA to play with some of the kids there. A sophomore at Henninger High School, Rashid hopes to make the school team next year. He plays basketball almost every day after school and says he likes that you get to run around and that it keeps him out of trouble.

His younger brothers also dream of being professional athletes. Nehemiah, 6, wants to be a football player; Isaiah, 7, wants to be a soccer player; and William, 11, and Jemelle, 13, both want to be basketball players.

Mims’ oldest daughter Tarea, 15, wants to be a nurse because she likes helping people. But she also loves fashion and Mims said she could be a model. Tarea’s younger sister, Talitha, 9, wants to be a doctor.

Mims graduated from Henninger and went to Bryant & Stratton College in Buffalo, where she was majoring in computer programming. Programming came easy to her and she liked working behind the scenes. She said she was one semester away from graduating when she became pregnant with her oldest child, Rashid. Mims never finished her degree.

But she’d still like to go back to school and has been looking at some programs at Onondaga Community College. Mims thinks she would want to get a degree in financial management or business administration, something where her experience managing money as a single mother would be helpful. She wants to break the stigma about single moms and show that not all single moms are bad single moms, she said.

“All I do, I do for my children,” Mims said. “I want the best for my kids, I really, really do. I want them to be able to look back on their past and say, ‘We did it.’”

Residents can get help from Onondaga County’s lead abatement program

Since 2001, Onondaga County has operated a lead abatement program that offers county residents assistance with removing lead from their homes. The program receives about 180 applications a year and accepts about 100 of them, said Tony Mueller, the program coordinator.

Applicants must meet several requirements, including having a household income of no more than 80 percent of the median income for the county. For a family of four, that limit is $54,800. Both renters and homeowners are eligible, Mueller said.

The cost of removing lead from houses ranges from a few hundred dollars to as much as $25,000, Mueller said. The help the program gives comes in the form of a five-year deferred loan.

In October, Syracuse learned that it would lose funding for the lead abatement program it has run for the past 20 years. Most of the work the county program does is in Syracuse because of the city’s old housing stock, but Mueller said he hasn’t noticed an increase in program applicants since October.

County residents primarily find out about the program through word of mouth, but Mueller noted that the program is good for the whole county, even those who don’t have lead in their houses.

“There’s been studies that say for every dollar invested in lead hazard reduction, you can save taxpayers anywhere from $15 to $200,” he said. “(The program) has really proven itself whether it’s maintaining property values or long-term health.”

For assistance or information:

(315) 435-3558

http://www.ongov.net/cd/leadReduction.html