Water Damages

Residents of the NewHolly development on South Beacon Hill are suing
the Seattle Housing Authority (SHA), saying the agency has done nothing
about exploding pipes, undersized water heaters, improperly installed
drainage systems, and other defects in the former public-housing
complex.

The lawsuit stems from a 2006 report that found numerous problems
with pipes and heating systems at NewHolly, ing pipes that burst inside
walls, water heaters that exploded or were too small, and unacceptable
levels of lead in some pipe fittings. The suit also charges that SHA
staff “mismanaged the [homeowners association’s] affairs” during the
eight years it controlled the
NewHolly board of directors, by
failing to fix or disclose construction defects, ignoring problems with
drainage, potholes, and irrigation, and failing to maintain required
insurance, among other complaints.

The homeowners’ association board attempted for years to get SHA to
do something about the problems at NewHolly, board chair Erika Bliss
says, only to get the runaround again and again. “We said, we are fed
up with the treatment we’ve been getting. You guys don’t take our
concerns seriously,” Bliss says. “After trying to work with SHA for
years and years, the trust is completely destroyed, and that’s a shame,
because we’d really like to work with them.”

Jonathan Wall, who has lived at NewHolly with his wife and two
children for about six years, was up late one night when he heard a
loud sound coming out of the room that
houses his hot-water
heater. “I heard a big sound and I ran into the room. Water was spewing
everywhere,” Wall says. “I had to turn the water off and drain the
hot-water tank.” The culprit in the explosion: A faulty piece of tubing
made by the Canadian company Kitec, which is the subject of numerous
class-action lawsuits across the country, including in Las Vegas and
Albuquerque. If he hadn’t been up late, Wall says, the water heater
“would have just kept spewing out hot water all over the place,”
causing potentially thousands of dollars in damages.

SHA knew the pipes were faulty at least as far back as June 2006,
when a consultant hired by the agency completed a report recommending
that all the tubes be replaced. But the agency didn’t release the
report, which also included the alarming revelation that the
consultants had found lead in the pipes in at least one NewHolly home,
until December 2007, when homeowners asked SHA to look into what was
causing heating pipes to leak into their walls. “SHA knew about these
problems for years,” says homeowners’ association attorney Dave von
Beck. “They’ve been getting complaints about the heating systems since
2003. We believe it’s SHA’s responsibility to fix them.”

Residents say SHA wanted homeowners to join the agency in suing
Kitec for damages; not surprisingly, residents said they weren’t
interested in participating in any SHA lawsuit. (SHA did not return a
call for comment; residents say they don’t think SHA has sued Kitec to
date). “We said, if we join a lawsuit with you, we will lose our
recourse with you,” Wall says. “They’re trying to get out of their
responsibility.” Bliss adds, “They can sue whoever they want, but from
our perspective, these problems are the developer’s [SHA’s]
responsibility.” Residents want SHA to pay the damages and fix all the
faulty equipment in their houses, including hot-water heaters and
pipes—a demand that could work out to millions of dollars. Wall
says if SHA doesn’t do something about his heating system, he’ll have
to replace it himself—a fix von Beck estimates would cost around
$17,000. Still, Wall says he won’t have much choice. “If we go to sell
our house down the road and we have this system hooked up, I won’t be
able to tell [a prospective buyer] it works. We’ll have to deal with it
eventually.”

barnett@thestranger.com