GREENFIELD — With a multimillion-dollar apartment renovation project underway, public health officials are grappling with complaints of rodents at Greenfield Gardens.

“We’re working diligently to address people’s concerns,” said Caroline Murray, owner’s property manager for the nonprofit Homesavers Council of Greenfield Gardens, addressing complaints that have been brought to the Health Department over the last year. “But we’re also undertaking a multimillion-dollar renovation problem to fix this problem for the long term.”

Murray, who manages the nonprofit entity that took over the property in the last year, explained that in February, the 202-unit housing complex on Pray Drive “jump-started urgently needed construction” that began under the previous management company. In a $9 million project expected to take another 18 months, each apartment will be fully renovated for the first time since the late 1990s and early 2000s.

The rehabilitation project will also increase the number of fully accessible apartments from four to 12, Murray said. It will also require updating the fire detectors and ensuring asbestos is covered. The work means moving families from one apartment into another as renovations happen.

Murray acknowledged that the construction may be contributing to the presence of mice on the property, as well as the abundance of rain seen recently. Since July 2022, the Health Department has received 10 complaints from different tenants at Greenfield Gardens, according to Health Inspector Nicole Ducharme. Murray said she was unaware of the complaints but knew the housing complex has received two orders to correct relating to the mouse issue.

Property Manager Dedra Lewis said when tenants have complaints, maintenance visits the site, offers traps, and that unit is added to the list for the exterminator, who is on-site every other week.

Ducharme said 10 complaints is “a lot” for one place, noting that the majority of complainants had relatively clean apartments, despite evidence of mice. She said it was “very concerning.”

“Mice carry a lot of diseases,” she said.

In particular, hantaviruses are a family of viruses spread mainly by rodents.

“I had to bleach my stove on a daily basis,” said Xiomara Morales, a Greenfield Gardens resident who filed a complaint to the Health Department. “I lost everything. I lost my couches, car seats … clothes [and] shoes.”

Although there was an exterminator brought to her apartment, Morales didn’t feel that person was “getting to the root of the problem,” but instead putting out bait traps. She was eventually moved to a different apartment at Greenfield Gardens, she said.

“I just feel bad for the other people who are still living like that,” Morales said.

Murray said it isn’t her intention to work in an “adversarial” way with public health officials.

“We’d like to work with the Health Department, the mayor and the building inspector as a team,” Murray said. “We are 100% committed to the health and safety of residents and building a healthy and safe thriving community.”

Prior to the Homesavers Council of Greenfield Gardens, the property was managed by Mount Holyoke Management LLC of Holyoke, which started the renovation project in fall 2019. In 2021, the company was fined $35,670. The violations were discovered in February of 2020 after the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection received a tenant’s complaint describing renovations and disturbances of asbestos-containing materials in several apartments. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development removed the general contractors on the project, according to Murray.

Greenfield Gardens, which supports a variety of income levels, offers Section 8 housing, as well as subsidized market-rate apartments.

“This property has been in a state of flux the past five years,” Murray said. “When a property has been disinvested in, so much has to be done to bring it back to where it needs to be.”

Reporter Mary Byrne can be reached at mbyrne@recorder.com or 413-930-4429. Twitter: @MaryEByrne.