Greetings!
I hope you’re doing well. Now that the dust has settled from our move, I wanted to share with you some additional information regarding why we moved so quickly from our location at 1306 N Third Street.
Why We Moved
As we were preparing to reopen our space this summer after being closed due to the pandemic, we discovered that mold had developed in the basement. (The basement was not included in our lease, but the landlord had allowed us to use the space for storage.) We requested our landlord, Eric Papenfuse and Catherine Lawrence, address the mold by contacting their property management. On June 11, 2021, the company they brought in said that no professional mold removal was needed and recommended just getting some dehumidifiers and cleaning the mold-impacted items. We decided to get a second opinion, keeping the health and safety of our staff and community members as our primary focus.
We brought in two different companies with expertise in mold - All Mold & Basement Services on July 12, 2021, and Green Home Solutions on July 21, 2021 - to provide additional, independent assessments. Both companies conducted inspections, and identified serious mold issues in the basement needing full remediation. The inspector from All Mold & Basement Services also identified asbestos on pipes in the basement, so we brought in an asbestos company, Conservative Environmental Services, Inc., on July 29, 2021 who verified that there is "approximately 350 LF [linear feet] of asbestos insulation" in the basement. Green Home Solutions also identified mold presence in the back walkway on the first floor, and advised that with the extent of the mold in the basement it was likely impacting the air quality on the first floor. At that point, we closed off all impacted areas of the building, posted notices on the doors, and required staff to wear a mask at all times.
Following the first mold inspection, I communicated directly with Eric Papenfuse on July 16, 2021, stressing my health and safety concerns and asking how he planned to address those concerns. He responded that he would pay for dehumidifiers and a sub pump, but “the mold treatment is a ridiculous price and not something we think necessary”. He also said he’d “be surprised if there is asbestos in the basement”, but if there is “best advice is leave it alone”.
Once we had all of the documentation in hand, I forwarded the reports from Green Home Solutions and Conservative Environmental Services, Inc. to Eric Papenfuse via the proxy he had identified on August 3, 2021 with a formal written request to approve or deny air quality testing, mold remediation & removal of contaminated materials, and asbestos removal - and if denied, to provide an alternative plan to address these issues. We were informed that he was on vacation at that time, and would not be available to respond until he returned.
While we waited, we brought Green Home Solutions back in to do an air quality test, at our expense, on August 16, 2021 to determine whether it was safe to have people in the building. The report that we received on August 18, 2021 showed that all areas in the basement, as well as the back walkway and the back office on the first floor, had unsafe levels of mold in the air - the only areas with safe air quality were the gallery and the Q-Lounge. We immediately closed off the back office, posted notices, relocated our workspaces, and shared this report with Eric Papenfuse via his proxy.
More than a month after initial contact was made with Eric regarding the mold and asbestos, we received a formal response from him, by way of his proxy, on August 23, 2021. He did not address any of our specific requests or the documentation that we had provided, and instead, insisted that we should have never been using the basement and that we should remove all of our items from the basement as a prerequisite for scheduling a walk-through with him.
This response indicated to us that he had no intention of addressing these serious health and safety issues in his property; therefore, the LGBT Center’s Board of Directors voted by September 1, 2021 to request an early termination of our lease. The lease termination agreement was signed by both parties on October 5, 2021, and we spent the month of October moving out of 1306 N Third Street.
A Note on Transparency
During my leadership, I have made every attempt to be transparent with you, our community members. The timing of this situation lent itself to a delay in that transparency for several important reasons. As we were seeking to negotiate an early termination of our lease, and then facilitating the move of all of our items out of the building, we did not want to risk potential retaliation from Eric Papenfuse in response to us sharing the circumstances of our move. Our goal was to be able to exit the lease and exit the building as quickly and smoothly as possible, without additional stress or complications in an already complicated situation.
Once we were out of the building on October 31, Eric Papenfuse was in the final stages of a write-in campaign for the General Election on November 2 to maintain his elected position as Mayor of Harrisburg. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, we wanted to avoid even the appearance of involvement in a political campaign which could have affected our tax-exempt status. We hope that you can understand the reasoning behind our delay. Please know that our goal throughout this process has been to protect the Center, our staff, and our community members, and that our commitment to transparency remains.
How to Support the Center
It was a stressful, frustrating, and exhausting process trying to address these serious issues in our building with no support or acknowledgement of the potential impact on our health and safety from our landlord. We wish our departure had been under different circumstances, but with the lack of response and subsequent non-action from Eric Papenfuse, we had no other option.
In addition to the time and energy our Board and staff have expended on this over the past several months, the Center has also spent a significant amount of our own funds on air quality testing, disposal/cleaning of our items from the basement, and mold treatment for the back walkway and back office so that it was safe for us to be in those spaces during the moving process - not to mention the move-out costs.
If you would like to help offset the Center’s costs associated with the mold, the move, and the ongoing operations that have been affected, we welcome donations via our website. We remain financially stable as an organization, but these are costs that were not budgeted for, so we welcome your support if you are willing and able to do so.
Tenants’ Rights Resources
We also know that we are not the only tenant in Harrisburg or the surrounding area who has had to deal with situations like this with landlords. As an organization, we have a certain degree of access to resources and support, and have been able to get out of this unhealthy situation. However, we know that many individuals and families aren’t in that same position, and have less access and fewer options.
If you or someone you know is dealing with a landlord who isn’t taking your concerns seriously, here are some resources that are available to you:
Since none of these avenues were available to us, we feel it is important to hold Eric Papenfuse publicly accountable for how he treated us as a tenant, and to do our part to ensure that other tenants or potential tenants aren’t put in the same position as we were. A press release is being sent in addition to this e-mail, and we will not be silent in the face of injustice and mistreatment.
We appreciate your support, and despite the negative circumstances that precipitated our move, we remain excited about the next steps for the Center and are committed to continuing to move our mission forward. Please contact me with any questions or concerns.
