Well, I have been in the current U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) funded Public Housing Agency (PHA) since December 2008. That means my mother and I have been in this unit for 17 years. That means my mother and I have lived through three Executive Directors (EDs), which includes the current Executive Director. The first Executive Director was known as Joy. She, in the end, gave the impression of “I’m god and you will do what I say”. After one HUD inspection, she made my mother and me scrub the baseboards just to pass her inspection. It was some time after that that Joy was forced to retire, which left Wetumka Housing Authority without an ED until the second Executive Director was hired. The second Executive Director is known as Steven Cates. He was, for the most part, a cool guy. My mother and I had problems with him, but there was always mostly small. Hell, he was even more of a father figure than the guy my mother was married to. So every time Mr. Cates and I argued, it felt like a father-son thing instead of an employer-employee thing. The current Executive Director is known as Lewis Yahola. Mr. Yahola started out nice and seemed to care, but then problems happened, and now he is acting like Joy.
Now I can’t say too much about Joy other than she was one who made us get on our hands and knees to scrub the baseboards to her liking. So with that, we are going to skip Joy. Mr. Cates, on the other hand, I worked with for about a year, on top of living in the current unit. He is a man who, like I said, was more of a father figure than anything else. Yes, we argued, but it never got to a all out drag down fight. At least to me, it never did. Hell, I can even count the times I felt I needed to report him to HUD on one hand. In one of those times, he had no problem showing me how wrong I was. He made sure that work orders didn’t take too long, and if they did, he would let my mother and me know why. He would get frustrated that we would seem not to pass the Housekeeping part of the HUD inspection, but he didn't say too much since he didn't feel it was fair to expect more from us in that department when his own home was worse. Maybe that’s what makes Mr. Cates a better ED than Mr. Yahola.
Now, let’s get to Mr. Yahola. As I said, he started out nice like Mr. Cates did. That stopped happening after the BedBug problem happened. When the BedBug problem happened, I asked for direction on what needed to be done. He would only tell me that whatever C & C Pest Control told us was what needed to be done. The problem with that was how were we going to replace everthing with out money? After going back and forth about whether we can’t just get rid of it all, we finally get told not to worry about it will just be treated. That’s when we get told that we didn’t do a thing and that we would be evicted if we didn’t cooperate. That was when I sent HUD an invoice for all my mother, and I did, which C & C Pest Control was taking credit for, and told HUD they can decide who pays the invoice. After that, it seemed that HUD was more than willing to look into the problem my mother and I were facing from the PHA, which HUD is funding. After which, the BedBug was declared solved.
Now let’s move on to the next problem my mother and I faced from Mr. Yahola. One day, while doing the dishes, I had noted that there was water coming from underneath the kitchen sink cabinet. I didn’t think anything of it at first, other than maybe I got a little wild with the water and it got splashed onto the floor somehow. A month later, a HUD inspection happened. I told Mike, the maintenance assistant, about the leak during that inspection. It did not get addressed by any means. The leak started to get worse, so I made a work order for it. Mike came and looked in the kitchen sink cabinet. He said that since he could not see or hear it, there was nothing he could do. So I had a problem that was underneath the kitchen sink cabinet, and I was told it did not exist.
So I was left with just trying to manage it with a leak I’m told didn’t exist. I would set a towel on the floor to catch the water, but that only lasted for about three months before I had to start using two or more towels. So I made another work order about the leak again. Mike came out as he did before. Mike again told me that since he could not see or hear it, there was nothing he could do. That's when I emailed HUD about my issue. After that, the ED came down and looked in the kitchen sink cabinet. He told me the same thing that Mike did, which was that since he could not see or hear it, there was nothing he could do. That’s when I made a video showing the leak and posted it on my PeerTube server, and then posted a link to it on Facebook. My mother saw the video and saw the leak that I have been trying to get addressed.
My mother then called the office and asked for the ED. She told the ED that the leak is bad since it was even coming out of the wall on the back porch. Once my mother told me that the ED was coming back again, I set it up for him to see the leak that everyone told me did not exist. I even started the test that they didn’t really bother to do before they got there, so they could not miss it this time. Once they saw the leak, they both changed their tune on it not existing. I thought that finally this leak would get addressed. What I didn’t know was how it was going to get addressed.
I don’t remember if it was that day or a day later that the work on addressing the leak started. Either way, Mike came into the unit and started to take apart the kitchen cabinet under the kitchen sink. Mike did that for two days, and only for two hours on both days. After the second day of doing that, I got a reply from Cynthia R. Woodard, MBA, stating that the Wetumka Housing Authority was waiting on a part. I thought that was odd since Mike told me that they were waiting on a tool. So I replied to Ms. Woodard with pictures of the progress that the Wetumka Housing Authority had made on the leak. I believe that it was either that day or the day after, my mother got a call from the office telling us that we would be placed in a Hotel regardless of whether we wanted to go or not. We were given the choice of either Okemah or Henrietta.
My mother chose Okemah since we ended up with bed bugs from a Henrietta Hotel. We were told that it would take about a couple of days. The day we leave, or maybe the day after we leave our unit and make our way to the Hotel I get a call from the office as I’m shopping at Homeland. They told me that they needed to talk to my mother, so I rushed to get done and went back to the Hotel room. Come to find out, I needed to go back and move stuff out of my room because they will be going from the kitchen to my room underneath a wall through the floor. So I did what they asked. The problem was that the only places to put it all were in the living room and my mother's bedroom. I did my best to make it so that all they had to do is work without anything being in the way. I did stop by a couple of times to see if there was any kind of progress being made, but there was what looked to be very little done. That even includes the day I had to come back and get my mother's meds.
In the end, those three days ended up being almost three weeks, and we still had to pay rent even though we didn’t get to use the unit for a full month. Either way, it was not even a week, and we got a notice that our housekeeping was in question and that the new kitchen should not be that messy. Mind you, we were still trying to put everything away, but I guess we didn’t do it fast enough for the ED. Mind you, the kitchen looks nice once you ignore some of the problems with it. What do I mean, you ask? Well, for starters, the Formica they replaced did not cover the same area as the old Formica did. The front part of all the cabinets is the only part of the cabinets that got stained. The tile under the kitchen sink cabinet looks like it's covering floor imperfections instead of being glued to the floor. The tile as you enter the kitchen looks like they didn’t measure it correctly. A piece of baseboard as you walk into the kitchen is not even attached to the wall. Last but not least, the baseboard frame they put together is now incomplete.
Now let’s move on to the current problem my mother and I are facing. We had another HUD inspection on 3/20/2026. I believe we were told about it on 2/23/2026. So that gave us about three weeks to get ready for it. Now, the first week we really could not work on the unit due to my mothers apointments and such. So that left us with two weeks to work on the unit, and that even includes losing a day for getting a food basket from both Texas Banner Church of God (Wetumka) and First Baptist Church (Holdenville) on 3/16/2026. I noted on 3/17/2026 that the stove top igniters were malfunctioning and called the office on 3/18/2026, 2:05 PM for a work order. I then called the office again on 3/18/2026, 2:29 PM, to have the work order just for the stove top igniters and not the front porch light, as it started to work again. I then emailed Ms. Woodard an apology, which included the time and date of when I called for a work order and the unrealistic expectation of my mother being able to exit the unit through a window in the event of a fire. The Inspection happened like it always does, with the inspector speed running it like his life depended on it. I thought maybe then the stove top igniters would be addressed since the inspector stated they had to light on their own. However, the Inspector was more interested in the water heater flue. Hell, the Inspector didn’t even look interested in the power plug sticking out of the wall about an inch or two.
Now that the inspection had happened, I started to slow down so that maybe I could catch my breath and try to push my mother into planning what containers she needed to get rid of some more stuff. After all, we have been doing that ever since we applied for the Tecumseh Housing Authority. However, that came crashing down when we got a notice on 3/26/2026 about the housekeeping again, and that it is now grounds for eviction. That means all the cleaning I did was a waste of my time that I could have used on something else. That's right, two weeks down the damn drain. Now I will admit I missed the refrigerator, but everything else was uncalled for. Now, I think it would be fair if PHA Staff went through the same inspection as the tenants, so they can understand what a tenant goes through. I’m almost sure some would not pass on some level.
Hell, I’m starting to wonder if all of the stress is making us both sick on some level. I started getting sick between 7 and 8 AM on 3/23/2026. My mother started showing signs on 3/25/2026 of getting sick. Who knew being in a HUD-funded PHA would be stressful? At the end of the day, it is what it is, and only time will tell what will happen next.