Rats, mold, ceiling collapses: Tenants describe years of foul conditions at KC apartments
For years before the Kansas City Fire Department condemned the Cloverleaf Apartments, conditions there had been a far cry from the good luck charm implied by the name. Bedbugs, mice and mice ran rampant. Flooding caused frequent mold. Repairs and maintenance never happened. Those were just some of the problems residents endured for years before the city stepped in and forced tenants out last week.
“I had to get rid of so many clothes, so many shoes. The mice would just bite through everything,” said Krystal Emmanuel, a longtime tenant.
Nearly 100 people were relocated over the weekend after the fire department conducted an annual inspection at the apartment complex at 14554 US-71 Highway in Kansas City, according to fire department officials. They cited several fire code violations and conditions referred to as “deplorable and unsustainable” in a news release.
Cloverleaf was shut down Friday, and tenants were given the weekend to move out.
But what residents recount living through in the years prior shows the failed inspection was a long time coming. And now — displaced from their home, however dilapidated it might have been — those tenants face a new set of challenges.
‘I had no choice’
Krystal Emmanuel and Shantel Verge lived in the Cloverleaf Apartments for many years, and witnessed the revolving door of management groups and the conditions within the buildings go from bad to worse.
Emmanuel lived twice at Cloverleaf, with a two year gap in between. She recalled living through a bedbug infestation that caused her body to break out and said she saw black mold spread. Later, mice and roaches invaded her apartment where she lived with her three kids.
Before Cloverleaf, she was homeless.
“I was getting denied other places and Cloverleaf had open arms,” Emmanuel said. “I had no choice but to go there. I know everybody didn’t like it, but that was my home and I took care of it. I had no choice.”
When Verge initially moved into Cloverleaf ten years ago, she recalled the unit looked okay, but had issues with the garbage disposal. Then, she said, the rats and roaches came. The main sewage pipe went through her utility closet, causing her apartment to flood several times.
Both women had their ceilings collapse on them. For Emmanuel, it happened three times in the same spot. Verge remembers her son having to help her from under the rubble.
“I remember it splitting and I’m looking up like ‘what in the world’ and then I was like, ‘oh God, this is about to fall on me’. I tried to run to the door and got trapped,” Verge said.
Six months went by before her hole was patched. For Emmanuel, each time they patched the hole up, cracks almost instantly reappeared.
Besides ceiling collapses, Verge and Emmanuel talked about the frequent apartment flooding, the lack of air conditioning and heating, as well as violence that made tenants feel unsafe. Verge was moved three times this year within the complex due to poor conditions including extreme flooding and ceiling collapses in various units.
The day they learned about the building being condemned, Leumas — a real estate management firm working with the Department of Housing and Urban Development — was meeting tenants in small groups telling them they had 120 days to relocate given the known conditions of the building.
It was during one of the meetings that a tenant received a call from a family member, saying officials were outside saying the building was condemned and was giving them 24 hours to leave.
The timeline was later extended to 48 hours.
“I was just shocked, I was happy that finally we are getting what we need,” Verge said. “Finally, HUD is going to do something. It was a relief.”
“We had to get kids off the bus and tell ‘em we gotta go within 48 hours,” Emmanuel said about breaking the news to their confused children coming home from school and seeing authorities all over the property.
When the inspector arrived at Cloverleaf, KCFD Battalion Chief Michael Hopkins told The Star they found several busted water pipes from the recent freeze and no management.
“They had water running from the third floor all the way down to the basements, through the walls, over active electrical,” Hopkins said. “Multiple basements full of water two, two-and-a-half feet of water, again, over active electrical. Sheet rock which is damaged and down. And then, just the health conditions. Mold, mildew. Just, in general, the living conditions were terrible, with no property management on site.”
Kansas City records show the owner of the property to be NB Affordable Housing, a limited liability corporation based in Somerset, New Jersey, whose owner has been identified in other media reports as Fredrick Schulman.
Schulman through various companies, has had a history of legal problems including, in July, pleading guilty in federal court to being part of a $119 million conspiracy to commit mortgage fraud.
Relocation efforts
Tenants were given funds, Verge said, for moving, storage and to obtain important documents. But when they returned to their units that weekend to move out, several tenants had already had their belongings stolen. A friend of Emmanuel was missing her deep freezer, television and portable air conditioner.
Leumas counted 76 legal tenants and relocated them to both temporary and permanent housing. The 20 tenants not on Leumas’ list were given resources through the city to relocate, though many relocated themselves, according to the release.
Tenants who needed somewhere to stay were placed in several hotels throughout south Kansas City. Verge and other Cloverleaf tenants had to be relocated again after some other tenants destroyed property, causing more stress and uncertainty as they figure out their next steps.
Emmanuel said she is going to work with KC Tenants, a local tenant union, and continue communicating with Leumas about connecting her with permanent housing and look for new beginnings, but was adamant that justice needs to be served for being subjected to such deplorable conditions for so long.
“Please don’t just throw us in a hotel and forget about the whole story,” Emmanuel said
The Star’s Eric Adler contributed.
