A tenant at 432 Park Avenue told the Woonsocket Town Council on Monday that code enforcement had left her family in a bug- and rodent-infested apartment for more than a year despite repeated complaints, according to the Woonsocket Town Council's published meeting recording.
During the public comment portion of the council's July 13 meeting, the tenant, who gave her name as Cindy Harris, said she filed a complaint with code enforcement in December 2025 after discovering what she described as a severe pest infestation in her building. She told the council she had documented the conditions extensively, including photos of bed bugs and bites on her body, and said she brought that documentation to hand over to the council.
Harris said she lives with her 66-year-old husband and her 87-year-old father, who she said is being treated for prostate cancer. She told the council the building's basement floods with standing water that she said has become "a breeding ground for mice," and said she has found dead rodents there that were never removed. She said a tenant on the third floor of the building paid to have the unit exterminated out of pocket before moving out, leaving belongings behind because of the infestation.
Harris also alleged that the unit she rents is an illegal conversion. She said she was renting what was advertised as a three-bedroom, one-bath apartment, and that she still has the 2023 listing on her phone, but that code enforcement had told her the unit is legally permitted only as a two-bedroom. She said she is paying $1,850 a month with no utilities included and said water has been coming through her ceiling, a condition she said was included in a complaint she filed December 9.
According to Harris's account to the council, code enforcement staff visited the property after Mayor Beauchamp happened to overhear a conversation about her case in the code office and directed staff to act. She said she attempted to email the mayor directly several times afterward but believes those emails were "intercepted" by code enforcement staff before reaching him. Harris said she was notified on July 6 — after she posted about her situation on a Woonsocket public social media page — that her code enforcement case had been closed and that she would need to file a new complaint to restart the process. The council could not independently verify Harris's account of the emails or the case closure during the meeting, and no code enforcement or code office staff addressed her claims from the podium.
Harris also told the council that overgrown brush and dead grass snakes remain on the property, and that the third-floor unit, vacated June 5, was not cleaned out by the landlord until July 6 — which she said coincided with the timing of Monday's council meeting.
A council member who represents Harris's district told her the matter "sounds like it needs to be looked at" and said the mayor would reach out to her, adding that council members planned to raise the case with the mayor directly. No formal council action was taken on Harris's complaint during the meeting; the exchange occurred during the public comment period, which does not include a vote.
Harris told the council she has been given until August 10 to vacate the unit and find another place to live. Residents with code enforcement concerns can raise them during the public comment period at future Town Council meetings, or contact the city's code enforcement office directly.