Ailing woman, 78, spared eviction after PHA's reasoning collapses

One phone call from the Philadelphia Housing Authority to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development could have saved 78-year-old Clara McLeod months of emotional agony.

Instead, the authority moved to have McLeod evicted in July from the Conswiller B. Pratt apartment building at the Greater Grays Ferry Estates, where she's lived for five years.

It was only after the Daily News got involved that McLeod's eviction was averted.

"All the way to 78 and they were going to put me out?" McLeod said. "Who'd ever have dreamed that I'd be going through this at my age?"

McLeod doesn't throw wild senior parties. She keeps her clock radio low, her home clean and pays her $355 rent every month on time. Her only infraction: She refused renovations to her apartment that would have made it handicapped-accessible.

McLeod, who suffers from spinal stenosis - a narrowing of the spine that causes her to be bent over - presented numerous notes to PHA from her doctor that said the renovations, which would lower her apartment fixtures, would only aggravate her condition by requiring her to bend over even more.

"They call it adaptability," McLeod's daughter, Marcia Dixon-Sutler, said of the renovations. "But how can you adapt to life in a wheelchair if you're not in one?"

The sawdust and fumes from the construction work also would aggravate McLeod's breathing troubles, the doctor's notes said.

PHA spokesman Maurice Brown contended the building and McLeod's apartment were already considered handicapped-accessible, though that's not immediately apparent by visiting her residence.

Brown said the renovations would only lower her fixtures an inch, but McLeod and Dixon-Sutler said they were told 2 to 3 inches.

McLeod was the only person in the 72-unit building - on Moore Street near South 29th, in Grays Ferry - who fought the renovations.

"She thought about breaking down and letting them do it a couple of times but the doctor knows what's best," Dixon-Sutler said of her mother.

For her resilience, McLeod said a notice of the authority's intention to take her to court to evict her was tacked to her front door, where other residents saw it. A passer-by let her know it was there, she said.

"I was crying," she said. "I have never been so humiliated - and for what? I don't owe anybody anything."

Brown denied the claim and said notices are always hand-delivered.