Residents of KC apartments left in ‘squalor’ to be moved out, city officials say
Standing on the sidewalk near the Olive Park Village apartment complex he has called home on and off for about 15 years, Taryn Payne mulled the future, finding a new place to live, graduating from high school, the mounting problems management at the complex hasn’t dealt with in recent months.
“We depend on these people,” he said. “We pay them month by month to fix stuff, but they don’t do that. Just kind of using and abusing our money kinda. That’s the way I feel, pretty frustrating.”
“Stuff just isn’t being fixed,” he said Wednesday. “Thanksgiving’s tomorrow, and our oven doesn’t even work.”
A tangle of health and safety issues at the troubled Kansas City apartment complex has grown to the point that the federal government will no longer allow housing vouchers for low-income residents to be used at the site. Local officials are in the process of relocating about 30 remaining Olive Park Village families.
Trash has piled up at dumpsters, residents have reported issues like roaches and mice, break-ins and unaddressed maintenance problems. Boarded-up doors and windows, broken glass and abandoned units are common in the complex.
In a news conference Wednesday, city officials slammed Millennia Housing Management, a large property management company based in Ohio that owns the site, and said they were looking for new homes and moving assistance for residents.
“We do want people to move along out of these units as quickly as possible,” said Kansas City Council member Melissa Patterson Hazley. “That’s why we’re calling on the community, if you have rental apartments, if you have services to help the tenants get relocated, we would like to work with you, and we would like to partner with you.”
“(Millennia has) demonstrated yet again that they are unwilling to show humanity when they take care of their residents,” she said. “This is not the first time that I personally have tried to find ways to hold this particular landlord accountable. Those things have continued to fall on deaf ears.”
Joe Williamson, the director of Kansas City’s Public Safety Task Force, said there was no set timeline in place for moving residents out of the complex but said time was of the essence because of “life safety issues,” electrical problems, burst pipes, coming cold weather and other challenges.
“It’s not in good condition for people to still live here,” he said.
“(Millennia has) been responsive as far as being on the meetings (with local and federal officials), but very non-responsive to compliance and fixing violations and the life safety issues that still plague this entire complex,” he said.
The company didn’t respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
Conditions are what ‘shameless greed looks like’
Olive Park Village has residents both who receive housing assistance and who are “market renters,” according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the federal housing agency. HUD said it has issued a default notice to Millennia for Section 8 housing assistance contracts it has, and said the agency is providing special vouchers and relocation assistance for eligible households.
“This action is being taken because of the owner’s failure to remedy physical deficiencies which are major threats to health and safety at the property, and to maintain the property in decent, safe, and sanitary condition,” HUD said in a statement.
Brandon Mason, the general counsel for the nonprofit law firm, Neighborhood Legal Support of Kansas City, said the conditions at the complex were what “shameless greed looks like.” The firm has been working with the surrounding Independence Plaza neighborhood to deal with issues there for nearly a year, he said.
“The ownership group here has taken millions of dollars of HUD-backed money from tenants, for the purposes of providing clean, safe, affordable housing,” he said. “Instead, what they’ve done is they’ve taken that money, and they’ve left its residents in squalor.”
Mason said he’s heard reports of rodent infestations, flooding, electrical issues and mold that has left residents with health problems.
“The owners have left a massive mess, and it will not be fixed overnight,” he said. “The work continues. We’re going to continue to work with the neighborhood and with the city to bring litigation and use the law to try to force change and accountability from these owners.”
