thank you for tuning in to belmont buzz i'm joanna jewel is your host and i am basically like the belmont b i fly around belmont getting the news i try not to sting people  today's guests actually we have a very special guest with us today one of the town election cassandra page one the housing authority she is a newcomer she ran against incumbent thomas ina olson she she won five out of the eight precincts three hundred and eighty four dollars votes about fifty four percent of the voters she's lived in belmont all her life she's a tenant  belmont village which is one of the properties managed by the belmont housing authority and she is a mother of three i want to welcome you cassandra thank you glad to be here yes and also also joining us is her campaign manager ca were not expected to win so tell everybody how you felt or when you're around how did you learn that you won so actually i went back with a group of my supporters my team to the beach street center which happened to be the home of my precinct and my opponents and we waited there patiently we had people at each precinct reporting back to us and they was coming in pretty quick we got the results and i started seeing the numbers and i just couldn't even breathe anymore i was like oh my gosh what is this oh my gosh oh my gosh i don't like looking and somebody's sitting there tracking at and we're going down like the clipboard and i'm like oh my gosh that's by a lot oh my gosh oh my gosh oh i lost that precinct oh only by five votes and i was like oh my god and somebody came over to me and was like you realize that even if you lost the rest of the precincts you have the house and i'm like no way no way and i started like running to the faucet getting all water i just couldn't breathe that was so overwhelmed because i was in shock i there was no way when i started this that i would have ever thought that i would have gotten to this point why why didn't you think you had a chance of winning because living in the village there's always ben this negative outlook from other people in town you know as a kid people's parents didn't want their kids coming down there because they thought it was a really bad place that in understand it actually was a wonderful place that had people that just didn't have the income that other residents in town had and you know we we worked really hard on this campaign and when i started it and through most of it i didn't really have any help or support except for a few very very close friends behind the scenes that were kind of like i'd be like what does this mean like what do they mean i have to go do this like what is that they just told me i had to get signatures like and at that point they were like ok well they don't tell you all of that upfront but you'll learn it along the way and they explained to me that  not only was i getting signatures but then i needed to learn how to get out the vote and i'm like ok let's figure out one out and i got really interested in other things that were going around and like in the town i wanted to know you know what else is connected to the housing authority because it can't just be one place so i started going to all different board meetings for various different things and picking up information and realizing just how intertwining all of these different committees really are all of a sudden i went from having a minimal political background to learning the ins and outs in a very short period of time until i started getting more of the recognition and i didn't think anybody cared about the issues i didn't think anybody cared to have town and i thought everybody wanted the person they knew who had the experience and i seen it was thomas you know and i didn't think i had the experience until someone pointed out what do you mean you've lived this this is your experience it's your life experience and i'm like yeah but i don't have the political background and they said that doesn't matter nobody can be closer to this than you and i said you know what you're right and i slowly started to believe over time that you know this was worth it and that's why i kept on it as much as i was nervous and all the things that were going on it was it was crazy because for years due to domestic violence my address was impounded  unable i wasn't able to vote in the same way that other people were because i had to go through extra hoops to prove that i was a resident because i had had my address impounded and if i did it have the people behind me that supporting me that were trying to raise that confidence again i don't think i would have stayed in the race because i don't in myself i want to talk about your relationship with cavill and how you met him when he came your campaign manager and how you think she may have helped you so much of the day all over again you know well i mean for me when i found out that tenet was running that was a game changer for me i have a history of dealing with affordable housing my mother was affordable housing  and was having some challenging situations with her board and the people that were living there as well so for twenty years i was her advocate and it was very very hard and so i thought you know if there was somebody on here that really understood in this border where my mother lived that she would be having the same challenges that she had so when i found out that dishonor was wrong and i absolutely had to get involved because i knew that it would be a game changer for the tenants and then it was the right thing to have her on i think it took so long to get a tenant on the board and i know it's all it's the might even make it a law well it should be a law and it will be a law because it's the right thing to do because it's the only way that things change and it's the only way that the people get the help that they need why is it taking so long because people that well i mean st of all right now in massachusetts we have a state rep that comes from formal housing and that doesn't happen very often because it's very hard to get out of it once you're in it very hard to get out and once you're living there as well you know generally you don't have the time to run a campaign a campaign is two hundred and forty seven it doesn't sleep so it's not it is you can't just say you know what i'm going i'm to run and i know this i've been on campaigns for two decades it's exhausting work so the people just don't have the time and and you know they don't have the confidence either because they are shunned and this is not just in massachusetts but it this is a universal problem so were you surprised if you want no not at all what do you think helped her win what do you think it was just the fact that she was attended to well i mean it was it's not so much that she's a ten because it has to be a special type of tenant right i mean you know it's about cassandra and it was about the way that she was connecting to people it was when she was going toward a door you know i would have to pull away from the door because she would just get so engaged with the person that she was speaking to it was the authenticity that she brought to the race is why she won kid it could have been just any tenet it was her and it's because she is special and it's because she does connect with people and she does care about people so once that message got out there people understood and people went and they voted for well let's talk about how has your life changed since election night how is my life changed what have you been doing to prepare for that st housing authority mean you had drove by the hour and a half to get here to be here for that so and her fiance came from work and i didn't know she was coming and it was tech season for you her fiancee yes yes it was so because i received a phone call back from mass union which was a call it put out about a month or so before and i had a short conversation with somebody previously they needed to get me some more information and then they finally got back to me and they said oh did you still need information on the law around the tenant on the board and i said actually i was elected on to the board and they were like wow that's amazing  we started talking and they were like oh well there's a conference you know next weekend and we hold them twice a year and it's for tenants you know and they said that's great you can ask your executive director if they can fund it if not would be happy to just have you here which was great and i went into the executive director and i said this is what i'd like to do and she said ok great at which point we had set up  just to kind of get started and go over some of the things that we're going to need to do some of the people work very so we scheduled that meeting and then the next meeting i had to meet with another one of the board members that wanted to be put in it i don't know her you do coffee lots of coffee because boys will run me ragged my daughter is very mellow but the boys their energy level is through the roof  so i went to this conference with mass union and it was amazing i got to meet many people there and about ninety percent of the people that were there were residents they were all from local t organizations they were some of them actually were appointed to their boards there are cities that i guess you can because of the way the law was right in there was a lot more explanation on how to do an election process for a city but there wasn't really clarification on the town so it happens and i was i was shocked to see that and it was it was really cool i got to talk to some people and i was good preparation for your st meeting it was i got to go over a ton of information i was able to speak with jack cooper who is the head of mass union and we had presentations from d h she and we we were able to talk about how can we get a local town organization in our town because that was something that i  really important and a couple months ago another resident had tried to start it and really yeah yeah very very intelligent woman and so this is one of your goals now it is it's already in the works so yeah so it's really good we couldn't get that we couldn't generate enough interest when this other resident tried to do it  now i think people feel a little bit more comfortable you know i know you talked many times maybe you might be familiar with this too about the the fear of retaliation tenent fearing retaliation is that that's a real that's a real thing and is it absolutely is it systemic it's been going on for years it's not just here but maybe now that attention is on the border that fear will subside right and i think that that was apparent out the board meeting just before the election just by the amount of people that showed up and i agree i was there you know previous the  was that your st me there and i have are standing that experience how was that experience where you actually they would welcome you to the board and you were actually a board member it was so real honestly it was you know you walk into a roman at st it was just other board members and the executive director and i was like ok do i belong here apparently i do when i sat down at my seat and you know we started the st meeting we had t meetings that day we had to go through a reorganization right well yes so we had our own election our own little mini election and you actually became the as so there are five positions and for each one of the members and yet to be nominated by another board member for different positions who nominated you i was there for that oh my goodness i believe it was in man do so i'm going to system to korea and gloria is a phenomenal woman who really knows her stuff she used to be a director for cambridge housing and she did that for about thirty years and you knew her before i feel for him aleck did before the election i met her while sitting on the other side of the table at the board meeting but i didn't really get a chance to speak with her so i wouldn't say i or like in person but i had met her and i got to see her take and she's got a lot of information she's she's very smart she's basically been on both sides she wasn't a tenant but she was a staff member you know and now she's on the board and she really has a good grip on the financial aspects of the stuff that goes in the middle learning from her running the budget  so i'm going to let her keep the reins and guide me and teach me and i will help her in any way that she needs me to help are you don't have goals for the five year period that you'll be on board i wouldn't say that i have a five year plan i would say that i have about a six month plan that i then want to oversee throughout the next five years maybe ten i haven't decided if i'm going to continue after that or not i need to maybe go through a couple  months before i make that decision but if you ask me right now i would say that i'm not going anywhere where there's a lot of things that have that have started already like i said i spoke with mass union at that conference i also put another phone call in to them to have them come out and meet with residents to explain what a board is not a not that i'm the housing authority board but the local tenant has their own board as well  so they're going to explain what the local town an organization is and what being a member of that board would be like and explain those responsibilities and then hopefully we can hold a vote and have people interested i've got people interested in wanting to go to the meeting at least and i've got to get a compromise it really is and there's at least two people that have agreed to take on a position so i'm going to try to get that set up in the next week or so  yeah i'm going to figure that out but i'm at least trying to push them in the right direction and get people interested and it seems like they are so now i'm waiting on mass union they're going to come out they're going to help us you have to right by a loss you have to write a memorandum of understanding and money is an issue there are enough money there there isn't and this is something that is put into the budget that is for the local kind of organization only and it helps to pay for mailings  and you know newsletters and stuff like that which by the way a resident had offered at about a year ago yeah so expect with all the changes that we were going through  have between maintenance and administrative staff there's only two people left i don't know your faces there's only two familiar faces out of right now we have six or seven  because we have added some part time positions in the office where the short maintenance man at the moment we had somebody who had been there for thirty one years retire so we lost a lot of people which which can be unsettling when you're sitting on the other end of it because you don't know what's coming next you know it's that fair the i know that's right and i there was always an issue with people going to the board meetings there would only be like one or two people constable why do you think that is well because residents felt for one they felt that if they want and they boycott any kind of concern that they might have a negative outlook on them from the  staff but more so they were very scared that residents other tenants were going to target them for anything that went wrong and a change that came about  thought that it was a tattle tailing session and it's not i mean you can voice your concerns but the way it's supposed to be done is as a whole you're not supposed to go in and target other residents and that's not typically what happens either and i'm not saying that maybe somewhere down the line it might have happened but that's not what it was ever about and that's why i felt it was really important when i started going during my campaign that other residents came as well so they could really see what it was about and you know learn that they do have a space during that meeting time that is a lot had to turn and public concern  let's talk about the st meeting because i i couldn't say for the whole to leave very early on but i heard a tenant voicing her concerns too to the executive director and the board and it was a lot of back there was a lot of tension and it was saying one thing executive director was saying another how can we resolve these issues are you are you going so that you'll be able to help but so that's the goal it's to be you know a big change for me and finding out where that fine line is because i am still a tenant and i am going to have my own tonic concerns and i with my own unit or with it's  true but i also we need to do you make it clear that yes i'm there for you this is why i'm here do you feel i know you have support from your fellow tenants do you feel like the staff is supportive of you and your fellow board members and how do you feel i stepped up to help the residents but that i also understand my role as a board member and that i do need to help with the polic and i'm going to have to make decisions that might affect also as a whole at the end of the day what will end up happening once we get over this hump because it's going to be an adjustment period once we get over this what's going to happen is if i get this tenant association going it's going to alleviate some of the people coming in with the mass complaints so if there is an entire group of people that are coming in and they're complaining that there's a communication problem which was the big this is just the other night that's what i sense that definitely a communication problem there are we going to fix that can they change the process well this whole process of work orders and they already have so  the old policy the guidelines the d h c d guidelines was that if maintenance was in your home they were supposed to leave you a note if you weren't home under the old management things like that weren't enforced  and the residents were complaining that either work orders work done or they weren't satisfactory or there was still an ongoing issue so now what jacqueline has done which is amazing as she's implemented a new work system where when they go into your house we get the letter st within forty eight hours they have forty eight hours to come into the unit after you have called they would come in they need to give and at the end you now have to sign it and state whether or not it was completed ok and then if it's not it would go back to the executive director so that she's made aware of the problem so that she can take it to the next step this was something that wasn't happening before so maintenance was coming in and they were doing their job but there's also financial restraints that people don't realize are there so you have to acknowledge a case people yes you can't just say oh i called in my my sink was leaking and i want an entire new plumbing system throughout the whole house and it's like no we can't do that we're going to fix the leak replace the faucet if need be and i'm going to comfortable and her power that she steps into her power and that she owns her power and gets more comfortable sitting on sat because i'm rambling well no no but just just that you  there's so much there's so many wonderful things about you that a lot of people see and so for me you know it's all about you comes stepping into that and owning it and thinking long been knowledge that you have is is very needed and people like you don't end up in state legislator because they don't have the time to get the knowledge so this is a gift i think for you to be able to get this but i would like to see you be able to advocate for the state not just for your own area wow that's really great we're all going to make it through this you know there there are definitely some difficult  challenges ahead but there is a program that i looked into it is the empath program and i reached out to another housing authority that  was using company so empath is the company and they run a bunch of different programs one of which is a mobile mentor in program and it was a five year come to find out after did my research it was because i was like wow wait i want this in belmont  this is exactly what i was talking about throughout my campaign was how do we get people in a position to get out positively not running away because they were scared or they didn't like all the changers or they didn't like something not waiting until their kids were grown and out of the house till they could really afford something but to be able to get out in a positive way without being there for an entire life of their whole life because there are all right half way i would like even half way would be great or even just educating our children and teaching them that like this is not a safety net that you need this is not something you need to fall back on this is what worked for me but this doesn't have to be you and teach them how to go out get proper jobs hold a job for a long period of time and advocate for the advocate for themselves and know how do you how do you apply for a lease how do you apply for a long how do you buy a house you know how do t when you're not provided with the tools to do so a lot of parents that live in the low income housing are single parent homes who have been dealing with the same things for generations you know maybe their their mother or father was a single parent and you just don't have enough time in the day to do those extra things because you're so worried about making sure that your kids are fed dressed closed they have a roof over their head and you're struggling to pay the bills so and you moan to make sure above all that they're loved and other than that you don't have time to stop and say or money even to send them somewhere to learn these things and i want there to be those programs those were some of the things i was talking about through the campaign and when i a friend of ours actually a mutual friend of ours had said did you see this you know video and we were like wait and i'm like hold on i'm looking and i'm looking at it and i recognized one of the people in the video actually so i reached out to that person and i said how did you get that there because this is exactly what i want my town that's ending in september but they were able to inform me that they had about twenty residents who lived in low income housing that started this training program and thirteen of them are graduating really with a lot of background and knowledge and i'm like wow we need this finale i'm going to be meeting with him and i want to invite the executive director to come with us so that's under so that we can get some more information because even if that program is ending and the agency can't take it on with the rates the deal was getting there might be other ways to do it and i really want to see more and  see what effect it really had so that i know that if we do start to do something like that here that it's got a really positive outlook because that's the most important thing is making sure people are learning so we've got that we've got the local tenant association that should be happening in the next week or two at least getting the ball rolling on the not mass union has been extremely generous they are they are willing to come out and sit down and really help us go through and figure out the steps and this might sound like a bit of a reach but the goal with our local terror organization is not just to have a ten organization that is going to be able to take that pressure off of jackie and allow for one person to go in and say this is what's going on at the board meeting this is how we this is how we're going to function or this is what residents as a whole are saying we'd like to see next it be one person as opposed to an entire room of people and it will remove that tension you guys just got to bear with me everybody's going to have to bear with me because it's gonna be hard at st right now i think people all of a sudden are like oh my gosh we're still constable early well i just i think you know just kind of keeping your eye on the ball and know that there's this is so much bigger i guess than what you want to do and so you know sometimes everything else around you is that carried me through to the end and i want to thank everyone for tuning in i want to thank you both for coming on the show and i want you back in six months and talk about where things are at and i wish you all the best sandra oh sure all the best if you ever need