Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim announced he is working to fast track a plan to decommission the crime-plagued Greene Homes city housing complex.

Ganim says city housing officials are calling an emergency meeting to come up with a plan for moving everybody out of Greene Homes Apartments, and then tearing the place down.

He says none of that can happen until the Housing Authority has filed all the necessary paperwork with state and federal agencies to fast track the decommissioning process. That, Ganim says, is what's happening now.

Greene Homes was in the news this week following a death there over the weekend, followed by violence in other parts of the city as a result of that killing.

Maureen Williams says she can't even drive by the apartments without bursting into tears. Her 22-year-old son Richard McDonald was fatally shot in the head there in July 2019.

"A part of me is gone that will never be replaced -- never," says Williams.

Filipe Bermudez, 54, who is disabled, says the chronically broken elevators in the complex leave him stranded, unable to get medical care.

Ganim says exactly one year earlier, he stood with housing officials, along with state and local leaders, at the Greene Homes and promised action. Now he says he's following through on that pledge.

Ganim says to get the apartments decommissioned, the Housing Authority has to prove they are too old and would be too expensive to renovate.