Abstract:
Alphonse Mourad, owner of V&M Management Co., blasted the attorney general's request for summary judgment from Suffolk Superior Court Judge Catherine White that would put his Mandela housing development into state receivership.

Mourad - whose run-ins with city government date back a decade - accused the attorney general's office of helping push a "hidden agenda" to replace affordable housing in Roxbury with luxury housing for middle- and upper-class people.

V&M attorney Victor Aronow said the violations [Leslie Greer] cited were the result of an "overzealous" inspector, who cited missing door stops as criminal violations.

Full Text:
Copyright Boston Herald Library Aug 17, 1994
The owner of a Roxbury housing development - accused by an assistant state attorney general in court yesterday of being a bad landlord - portrayed himself as a savior of affordable housing and the target of development-hungry politicians.

Alphonse Mourad, owner of V&M Management Co., blasted the attorney general's request for summary judgment from Suffolk Superior Court Judge Catherine White that would put his Mandela housing development into state receivership.
Mourad - whose run-ins with city government date back a decade - accused the attorney general's office of helping push a "hidden agenda" to replace affordable housing in Roxbury with luxury housing for middle- and upper-class people.

But Assistant Attorney General Leslie Greer told the court, "We are here and we were brought into this case four years ago by the tenants."

She said some Mandela tenants complained of poor living conditions and long delays in requested repairs. She also accused V&M of "stifling" tenant attempts to organize.
Inspections of the 276-apartment complex have "found numerous violations of the state sanitation code, the state building code and the state plumbing code," Greer said.

But some 60 Mandela residents at the hearing bristled at the idea of receivership and said it would ruin their opportunity to own their apartments.

Mourad has agreed to sell the complex to a cooperative of residents trying to secure money from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.

"The residents definitely want to own their (apartments) and they are willing to fight for it," said Helen Aizprua, president of the Mandela Residents Cooperative Inc.

Aizprua and other residents characterized their relationship with Mourad and V&M as "excellent."
V&M attorney Victor Aronow said the violations Greer cited were the result of an "overzealous" inspector, who cited missing door stops as criminal violations.