Titusville apartment residents seek better conditions

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http://www.floridatoday.com/!NEWSROOM/localstoryA22413A.htm

Jun 21, 10:33 PM

Titusville apartment residents seek better conditions

If owner doesn't fix up complex, HUD will issue vouchers to tenants

By Marilyn Meyer and Victor

FLORIDA TODAY

TITUSVILLE -- Residents at the Apartments are fed up with leaking

plumbing, falling ceilings, roaches and other intolerable conditions.

ny Dublin and Dorothy Denson headed a petition drive earlier this year,

asking the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to intervene.

All of the complex's tenants signed it.

HUD sent employees from its Orlando office to investigate and talk with

tenants at the 48-unit complex at 1350 S. DeLeon Ave. An inspection in

December had determined the apartments were in poor condition.

Pending the outcome of another inspection by HUD, housing officials said

apartment owner will be given the chance to make repairs or

sell the property.

If cannot do either, the families will be issued federal Section 8

vouchers, which would be administered through the Titusville Housing

Authority, to find new homes.

, a retired educator, told a reporter he has been ill but expects to

be in condition to speak about the apartments next week.

" What's happened is a long, involved story, " said. " Nobody would

see the story, but the way it is presented in the paper. People want to see

the worst. "

said the problems have been blown out of proportion to gain

publicity. He also said the complex provides housing to people who could not

afford to live anywhere else.

Dublin and his mate, , have a hole in the ceiling over the

bathtub and toilet area of their apartment. Dublin said the owner attempted

a repair by replacing the sheet rock, but the leaking plumbing from the

apartment above quickly ruined the fix. The second time the panel fell, it

hit , who at the time was pregnant.

" We have to keep our bathroom door closed because of the bacteria and mold

in there, " Dublin said, cradling the couple's 2-month old son, Jabori, while

sitting on a plastic chair on the front porch. " We stay outside as much as

we can so that the children get fresh air. "

Most of the 24 families who live in the complex have young children. A few

tenants, such as Denson, are on disability.

If HUD gives the families Section 8 vouchers, the families will take them to

prospective landlords elsewhere and receive federally subsidized rent

assistance.

As part of the 1970s project-based program under which the

Apartments operates, assistance is paid directly to the apartment owner. The

federal money stays with the apartments, not the tenants.

That means when people move from the complex, they no longer have

federal assistance. That's why if the Apartments is forced to

close, the government would have to issue its tenants a new form of

assistance.

Most current vouchers are issued to the tenants, who then can live anywhere

they want as long as the landlord is willing to accept a HUD voucher.

During the past several years, HUD has been phasing out project-based

complexes, most of which are in poor condition. The program was started

during the Nixon era to give developers incentive to build low-income

housing by giving them breaks on taxes and mortgage interest. Eventually,

those breaks no longer were benefiting the developers and most of the

complexes were sold.

New owners received HUD contracts to operate the complexes. HUD pays the

difference between the fair-market value of the rent and the amount tenants

can afford to pay. Many of the tenants are given utility vouchers, which are

paid to the owner/operator to administer.

Some tenants, who have no sources of income, pay no rent.

Dublin is among a group of tenants who say they stopped paying their rent

entirely. Most say they have not set aside the rent money in escrow because

they can't afford it.

" He () keeps coming around here telling us to move out, threatening

us, " Dublin said.

But the tenants say they aren't paying until their apartments are fixed up.

Denson said she continued to pay her $126 monthly rent out of her

$364-a-month disability payment, which she received for a heart condition.

She said she's made repairs to her own apartment, replacing the seal under

the commode and replacing a leaky faucet.

But, Denson said, she helped Dublin with the petition drive because of the

conditions in which her neighbors, friends and relatives are living in at

the complex, she said.

Denson said one woman with two children moved out after she was unable to

get hot water for months; another woman has a leak over her bed, which she

cannot move because of the size of the room; another woman has no

refrigerator, and although she was given a new stove, it has no knobs on it.

Debra LeBlanc said leaks create puddles under her kitchen sink and there's a

hole in the ceiling over her shower from leaky upstairs plumbing.

" The roaches are ridiculous, " LeBlanc said. " It's so bad they crawl into my

refrigerator, which must mean it has a bad seal. I've not seen an

exterminator since I moved here in March 2001. "