A new twist in the drama at Apple Village

Accused of being a bully, former property manager now says he was fired for being a whistleblower

The tale of Apple Village has taken a new turn.

Last year I sat in a courtroom in Salem for three days and listened to a sad story about the dysfunction at Apple Village, an apartment complex for low-income residents, including seniors and people with disabilities, located on Trask Lane off Route 128.

One by one residents walked to the witness stand — some using walkers, others requiring hearing-assisted headphones — and testified about incidents of bullying that had divided residents and even made some of them fear for their safety.

There were two sides to the story, according to their testimonies. Either the bully was Donna Lee, a resident who management was trying to evict. Or the bully was Edward Roaf, the longtime property manager.

By the third day of the hearing, Roaf, an attorney who lives in Beverly, was no longer around. A notice posted on a bulletin board at Apple Village said he was “no longer with the company.”

At the time Roaf wouldn’t tell me why he was fired. A good guess is that it had something to do with all of the controversy playing out in the courtroom.

Now here comes Roaf with what he says is the real reason. In a lawsuit filed last week in Middlesex Superior Court, Roaf said he was told he was fired for making maple syrup on the property while working. (Wait, what? More on this later.)

But the lawsuit says that was just a pretext. The real reason, it says, was because Roaf kept raising concerns about asbestos in the buildings at Apple Village.

Roaf and Kelsey Dale, the former assistant property manager at Apple Village who was fired a couple of months after Roaf, say they were both terminated for reporting their concerns about asbestos exposure to themselves and their tenants.

Nowhere in the 13-page lawsuit does it mention last year’s court case and the accusations that Roaf was a bully. In fact, the lawsuit says Roaf had an exemplary work record and “was beloved by residents for building a community atmosphere on his properties.”

Now back to the maple syrup. The new lawsuit, which was first reported by The Salem News, said Roaf made the syrup as a way to bring tenants together. What the lawsuit doesn’t mention, but what did come out in court last year, is that Roaf referred to the maple syrup as “Section 8 syrup,” a reference to the federal program that subsidizes rents at Apple Village.

On the witness stand, Roaf insisted he wasn’t using the term in a derogatory way.

“I am enormously proud of the work we do (with Section 8 housing),” Roaf told the judge. “I will not countenance its use as a pejorative.”

I texted Roaf on Wednesday to see if he wanted to comment on his lawsuit, and especially the absence of any mention of the turmoil at Apple Village and whether that’s what cost him his job. Roaf referred me to his lawyer, Hillary Schwab, who said she had no comment on that part of the story.

“This case is focused on my clients’ whistle-blowing and how that impacted the company’s desire to get them out,” she said.

Meanwhile, nearly a year later, the case in Housing Court over Donna Lee’s eviction is still ongoing.