Manor, Once a Drug Haven, Becomes Model Residence

PAWTUCKET, R.I. —  Until recently, kids at the Crook Manor housing project fed their drug habits there.

Teen-agers hawked cocaine on the street and in the back hallways. Toddlers played on lawns that were nothing but needles and weeds. Mothers tapped the grapevine to find out when someone was carrying a gun in the project, so they could haul their children indoors.

“Eight murders in eight years” was the unofficial slogan.

But three years ago, Crook Manor began its own Cinderella story with a $6-million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Today the big drug deals are history. The place has new sod, new paint and a new name: Galego Court. The 450 tenants can join tutoring and anti-drug programs, field trips to baseball games and a youth group that holds dances. A guardhouse at the entrance is manned by an off-duty policeman to keep out unwanted visitors, and rules on who may live there are strict.

As a result, small children play outside in safety. And, although the stain of the project’s bad reputation means that 12-year-old Monique Bentil still cannot persuade fearful school friends to sleep over, residents say they would not live anywhere else.

“They got new people and the place is unbelievable,” said Angel Roman, a disabled truck driver who is president of the Galego Court Tenants Assn. The group’s members meet once a month, learning grass-roots democracy and self-esteem as they go along.

“There are people here that are poor people,” said Roman, 45. “But they are decent people. Now they have a nice home.”

The change is so stunning that the project has won national public housing awards, including one from HUD. Some have suggested that it is too good to be true and will not last.

“It’s a very fragile success story,” acknowledges John Burgess, who as head of the Pawtucket Housing Authority has orchestrated Crook Manor’s makeover.

“The most important word in this fight is ‘attitudes,’ when you convert tenants to your way of thinking,” Burgess said. “It’s a long process, but the tenants became believers.”

Galego Court has 15 brick and clapboard buildings opened in 1953 on a former dump in this industrial city of 70,000 north of Providence.

For urban public housing it is a small complex. A key to its upgrading was making it even smaller. The original 228 one- to five-bedroom units were reduced to 164, mostly by closing off third-story units. The remodeling also included replacing troublesome hallways with outside entrances for each apartment.

During the remodeling, troublesome tenants were evicted. Now, prospective tenants must pass a strict background check and for the first six months submit to monthly inspections, which their children must attend.

Those who lived here during the worst troubles in 1983-85 describe a place where teen-agers paced the road that snakes around the project, pressing drugs on everyone who dared to enter the property. Dealers fought over customers and prices. Car windshields got smashed when a seller was turned down. One man was shot in the back for turning down a peddler.

Crook Manor was a major transfer point for cocaine shipments between New York, Providence and Boston, said Police Cmdr. Richard DeLyon.

During the renovation, many guns were found hidden behind kitchen appliances, he said.

Cynthia Clayton grew up in Crook Manor and got tangled in the wildness.

Childhood was “people hanging out. Drugs, guns and shooting,” said Clayton, now 20.

At 14 she had a cocaine habit. At 15, she was punching her mother. They fought and filed charges against each other. At 16 she quit drugs but a year later she quit school. Now she is expecting a baby and unemployed. But Cynthia has joined her mother, Shirley, 49, in studying for a high school diploma through classes at the project.

Shirley Clayton said the improvements please her too.

All in all, she said, “it’s a lot better.” Will it last? “God only knows that,” she said.