Residents complain of deplorable conditions, discrimination at Palmetto apartment complex

When 91-year-old Aliene Cox was told she had to move out of what has been home these past 24 years, she put her hands over ears and began to shake.

“She started crying,” her 71-year-old daughter Willie B. Davis said as she sat in her mother’s apartment in Bayside Villas on a recent afternoon. “She took her hands and put them on her ears. Then after that, she just tumbled down farther and farther, so that hurts.”

Despite having Alzheimer’s and diabetes, Cox had been stable. She was able to feed and dress herself and go to the bathroom with her walker. She could even go for a walk around the complex with her daughter.

But after first being told she had 12 days to get out, then being told her lease, which expires Dec. 5, was not being renewed, Cox had to be moved to a Bradenton medical facility where she doesn’t recognize her daughter when she first walks in during visits.

“She shut down in hours,” Davis said. “It hurts to see her go down so fast and the fact that she can’t do things for herself, which she was able to do before I got here and then since I’ve been here.”

In her 24 years in Bayside Villas, just off 20th Lane East in Palmetto, Cox has never been late with her rent and never had a complaint, according to Davis, who left her Arizona home more than a year ago to come help take care of her mom.

Asked why her mother is being forced out, Davis said, “I really don’t know. I would like to know. I’m going to fight it. Where am I supposed to put my mom? She can’t walk. She only has Social Security, so where? In the street?”

Robert Goodman, owner of the property, said Cox’s apartment has repeatedly had bed bug infestation. In September, Cox was offered $250 to help with the move if she moved out before her lease expired, Goodman said.

“The infestation has spread out to the units next to her,” Goodman said. “This becomes a huge problem in a community like this. Once the infestation starts, especially in a cluttered apartment like hers, the only way is to empty the apartment and treat it. ...It wasn’t out of racial discrimination or cold-heartedness or retribution. It was simply to protect our property.”

Cox is the second tenant whose lease was not renewed because of bedbug infestation, Goodman said, and the other tenant was neither African American nor Latino.

When asked about initially telling Cox she had 12 days to get out, Goodman said, “This is not true.”

“Any tenant is allowed to stay until the end of their lease,” he said. “A landlord can’t throw a tenant out. We did tell her she had to leave while we treated the bed bugs.”

Manatee County Commissioner Charles Smith contends the treatment of Cox is “retaliation because she’s complaining.”

“Twenty-four years paying her rent faithfully,” Smith said. “Twenty-four years ought to mean something.”

There is discrimination taking place in housing in Manatee County, Smith said.

“But it is across the board,” he said, adding that there are cases against whites, blacks and Latinos.

Manatee County government is in the midst of developing a plan for “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” in Manatee. Fair housing means protecting “people from discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability and familial status,” according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“It requires that states and local governments that receive federal funding to affirmatively further fair housing, which means not just standing still but moving forward, making sure the federal funds that you receive are used in a fair matter,” said Brian Sullivan, supervisory public affairs specialist for HUD in Washington, D.C. “There were some rules around this that date back many years that were unevenly applied across the country. Local communities have got to, and really have for many years, do an analysis of their housing market and identify obstacles to fair housing choice.”

Manatee County will be held more accountable under the new plan, Denise Thomas, Manatee County’s housing and community development coordinator, said in July of the plan.

“It is going to include achievable tasks that we are going to be able to handle as a county government structure,” she said. “We can make an impact and make a difference and that is what we are trying to do.”

HUD will be looking for outcomes, Thomas said.

“We definitely want to have some measurable outcomes,” she said.

Change in ownership

When the 44-unit apartment complex in Palmetto changed ownership in 2013, residents say, conditions started to deteriorate.

“It all happened out of a blink of an eye,” said 40-year-old Jermaine Hatch, who has lived in the complex for eight years.

In May 2013, Highland Associates Ltd. sold the apartments for $1.05 million to Bayside Villas LLC, which changed the name from Highland Apartments to Bayside Villas. In December 2013, Bayside Villas LLC sold the complex to Palmetto Equities LLC of Boca Raton for $1.595 million.

Residents who spoke to the Bradenton Herald about their experience at Bayside Villas say that Cristina Guadarrama, property manager, is difficult to work with and discriminates against residents who are not Hispanic.

“It’s not fair and seems like we can’t do anything about it,” Hatch said. “We go through her. It’s bad and something needs to be done about the situation before it gets too far and further than we are already.

“All we wanted was to be treated fairly,” Hatch added. “After that first year she came, it went downhill. ... I feel that treatment of the elderly and treatment of other tenants out here aren’t getting treated fairly.”

They are being treated this way because they are black, said Barbara Williams, 67, another Bayside Villas resident.

“I honestly believe in my heart that Cristina or Goodman don’t like black people,” she said.

When asked about the discrimination allegations, Goodman said, “How does one respond to that?”

“Our staff has gone to fair housing seminars,” he said. “They continue to get trained in fair housing. It is a mixed community. There are people of all races there. ... Some people are Latino. Some people are African American. Maybe there are cultural differences. We’ve made every effort to make a community that is harmonious and peaceful. We’ve not renewed dangerous and criminal tenants that we inherited from previous owners. I think we’ve done a great job to do that.”

When the complex was sold for the first time, residents received a letter dated May 6, 2013, notifying them of the change in ownership and also that apartments would “no longer be financed by the USDA Rural Development under the federal Agency’s Section 515 and Section 521 rural rental housing and rental assistance programs.”

Tim Rogers, the Florida multifamily housing program director for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development agency, said they are the lender on certain properties, as “our programs are financed to provide affordable housing to low and very low income families.”

In 1986, the apartment complex became a property in USDA’s portfolio under the old ownership, Rogers said.

“The property became kind of run down and the owners at the time weren’t complying with loan requirements,” he said.

So USDA accelerated the account toward foreclosure. But before it went into foreclosure, the property was sold.

“We approved that sale and we left that portfolio,” Rogers said. “It was in default with the loan agreements with our program. They didn’t maintain the physical standards at the apartment that is required by our regulations.”

When an apartment complex is in the USDA’s lending portfolio, they do inspections every three years, Rogers said.

“That’s when it was found to be out of compliance,” he said. “The intent of our program is to be able to provide the financing to the owners so they will maintain safe, affordable rental housing to low and very low income tenants. If they fail to do that, they are not meeting those requirements.”

For the USDA, the most severe action is when they accelerate the account toward foreclosure as was done with the Palmetto apartment complex, Rogers said.

“They let the property physically deteriorate,” he said.

Goodman said since they bought the property, they’ve “made enormous improvements in the property.”

When they acquired it in December 2013, “it was in total disrepair,” he said. “We can’t go in, gut and renovate every unit. It’s not in our budget and it’s not possible. We work tirelessly to make repairs.”

Without the inspections by USDA, apartments such as Bayside Villas aren’t inspected in Manatee County. County officials are currently looking at how other Florida counties and cities inspect rental properties.

“At this time, we are only conducting research to identify what rental inspection programs are out there and their effectiveness,” said Thomas, Manatee’s housing and community development manager.

Even in Broward County where a rental inspection program is in place, it is just an annual external inspection of properties located in the unincorporated portion of the county, according to Jo Sesodia, director of planning and development management.

“It has helped to clean up some of those properties that were problems before,” Sesodia said.

During the past two weeks, Goodman said they’ve conducted interior inspections of all the units and some will be receiving new vanities and appliances.

“We address things we can,” he said.

Several residents complain about issues with management

When the air conditioning went out in 25-year-old Toni McNeal’s apartment in June, the four-year Bayside Villas resident called the emergency maintenance line, but it was disconnected. With two small children, McNeal said she went to Guadarrama’s home to put in the service request. Then McNeal got a call from Goodman, threatening if she ever went back to Guadarrama, her lease would not be renewed.

“He degraded me like he was God and I’m just trash,” McNeal said.

Keanna Newman, who has lived in Bayside Villas since February 2013, started having issues with the management from the time she moved in. Most recently, a request to fix a leak, which left her apartment’s floor flooded, has gone unanswered for several days. On Monday, eight days after the initial request, Newman’s carpet was replaced.

“My house now smells moldy,” the 25-year-old said. “Now I don’t understand what is going on. They say they are going to fix things. I’m worried about my floor. It is really bad and my son has bad asthma and allergies.”

Now, Newman said she has been told that when her lease expires Jan. 31, it will not be renewed.

“He didn’t give me a reason why,” she said.

When Kathy Powell moved into Bayside Villas nearly five months ago, she was told she had to sign what was wrong with the apartment before she even got the keys to move in.

“I moved in and my family wasn’t too happy to see the place,” she said. “It was roach infested.”

When Douglas Times moved into his apartment close to two years ago, there were little roaches and all the cabinets and sink were dry-rotted. They’ve had to replace his refrigerator twice, and each time they replace it with another used one.

“To be honest, it could go at any day,” he said of his current fridge. “Every other day it makes a funny noise.”

Tenants say they’ve submitted work orders, but the office manager says they have not, Goodman said, adding that they’ve just hired two additional people to do repairs.

“We are actively making all the repairs as we have always done,” he said. “Tenants will say their problems weren’t addressed properly.”

There is nothing fair about this housing, Williams said.

“It is very difficult in this county to find decent affordable housing,” she said.

But Goodman said that any discrimination claim “is a very hard thing to qualify, and it’s a very easy accusation to make.”

“It is absolutely untrue,” Goodman said. “I think tenants are upset that we have raised rent, usually fairly nominally. We’ve done it to continue to make improvements. I think we’ve done a great job. We’ve worked very hard to make this a mixed community.”

Bayside Villas is just the beginning for Manatee County

What is happening at Bayside Villas is “just the tip of the iceberg,” Commissioner Smith said.

“There is an organized effort that if you complain you get evicted, so be happy with what you have,” he said. “This is one of the worst cases of civil rights violations that I’ve seen.”

On a recent afternoon, Smith held up a stack of complaints as he sat at the desk in his county commission office.

“Complaint after complaint,” he said. “These issues will be addressed.”

After trying to work with Manatee County government, Smith said he plans to meet with State Attorney Ed Brodsky, as well as reach out to federal civil rights officials. Local complaints filed with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development currently go through the Atlanta office.

“Manatee County has got to step up to the plate,” Smith said. “We need a local office here where we can file complaints locally.”

Holding Manatee accountable

As a way to identify barriers to fair housing, the county is developing the fair housing plan, which is currently available for public review until Dec. 13 when it goes to the county commission for approval.

Unlike previous fair housing plans that the county developed in 2005 and 2010, Manatee County will be held more accountable by HUD, which requires the plan for the county to receive Community Development Block Grant funding.

“It was designed to bring clarity to the marketplace, to give local communities that have always been required to make an affirmative effort to promote fair housing to provide them with the tools they need to satisfy these requirements,” said HUD’s Sullivan.

While HUD receives complaints based on all the protected classes, discrimination based on someone’s disability status is the most frequent complaint HUD receives, Sullivan said.

“We, or our fair housing partners, look into it to determine if there is a cause to bring an action against the housing provider or mortgage lender or whoever is at the end of the complaint,” he said.

As a Manatee County attorney who is on the Florida Bar Lawyer Referral Service and handles landlord/tenant matters, Andrea M. Johnson said she gets 10 to 20 calls a month from tenants who are having problems with their landlords.

“I do get many calls from tenants in our area with complaints of landlords not fulfilling their obligation,” she said, noting that there are landlords in the county who do meet these obligations. “When things aren’t going the way they are supposed to, that’s when I hear about them.”

With the current housing situation in Manatee County, a federal court decree may be needed to handle housing in Manatee County and “to compel Manatee County government to do what’s right,” Smith said.

“The patience is running out with law-abiding citizens,” Smith said. “We need a federal judge to oversee the housing situation in Manatee County. Talk is cheap. You have to have a will.”

This story was originally published November 25, 2016 at 3:17 PM with the headline "Residents complain of deplorable conditions, discrimination at Palmetto apartment complex."