Roosevelt Park helps freezing family

Jennifer Johnson was freezing cold and so was her 5-month-old baby.

It was January, and the heat in her apartment wouldn't go above 60. When the wind blew outside, her drapes fluttered inside.

She called the maintenance department at Lakecrest Park Apartments in Roosevelt Park. The man who answered was rude, then crude, then hung up on her.

Desperate and shivering, Johnson called the police.

The result? Inspectors were called who issued citations, city leaders changed the ordinance to allow stricter enforcement of building codes and the apartment complex's East Coast owners became "cooperative" with city officials.

And what about the apartment's management and maintenance department she dealt with? All fired.

It's unusual for officials of any city to move so quickly to step into a tenant-landlord dispute. But with only a few large apartment complexes in the one-square-mile city, inspectors and leaders decided change was needed fast.

A lease nightmare
When Johnson and her boyfriend moved into the apartment last April, the expectant couple was excited to have a place of their own -- even if it wasn't fancy or new.

By August, the couple welcomed a baby boy, Alexander, into the one-bedroom unit at Lakecrest Park Apartments, 3050 Maple Grove. The rent was cheap -- $450 a month -- so, despite less-than-perfect living conditions, the couple decided to stick it out.

But when the weather started to turn cold, the couple realized they were locked into a year-long lease that had turned into a nightmare, Johnson said. "We had no problems at first," she said. "But when winter came, everything started."

First there were minor issues -- a broken toilet, which the couple eventually fixed themselves. Later they suffered weeks of cold showers when one of two hot-water heaters in the building shut down and wasn't repaired for months, Johnson said.

All the while, their shower leaked into the tenant's apartment below them, and the tile on the shower wall began to cave in.

When Johnson reported that problem to the office manager, a maintenance man was sent over to fix it. He covered the hole in the wall with a "trash bag and duct tape," Johnson said. "It was ridiculous."

In January, with temperatures dropping below freezing, the couple found themselves without heat. It was the final straw for Johnson, who was concerned for the well-being of her newborn.

"I had frost on the inside of my windows. It was 60 degrees inside. Even after we tried to turn the heat up to 90, there was nothing," Johnson said.

"I had to put a hat, booties and two pair of pajamas on (the baby). He was so cold."
Johnson said she called the apartment's emergency maintenance "hotline" on a particularly cold Sunday. She was told property managers wouldn't pay maintenance staff "overtime" to fix the problem.

"He told me to go get some plastic from Meijers and put it over the window," she said. "I told him it was freezing and when the wind blew my curtains inside moved. I told him I had a baby."

Johnson said the man on the other line uttered a vulgarity and then hung up on her.

Desperate to warm her newborn, Johnson tried using the warmth from the oven to heat the small apartment. Realizing the heat-by-stove method was neither safe nor effective, she contacted the Roosevelt Park Police Department and reported her situation.

Health and safety concerns
Police officers who came to Johnson's aid that cold Sunday in January notified the city's building inspector, Tim Villanueva, and Norton Shores Fire Marshal Norm Hosko of other housing violations inside the building.

City officials have since investigated a number of other complaints from Lakecrest Park tenants, ranging from leaky showers to excessive heat in the apartments. Some tenants couldn't open their windows; others said their stoves weren't working properly.

A number of fire and plumbing inspections have been made and several fire code violations have been discovered, Villanueva said.

The property owners, Metropolitan Properties of America Inc. of Boston, have been contacted and are "cooperative," Villanueva said.

The owners replaced the management staff and maintenance crew at Lakecrest Park, Villanueva said. Metropolitan Properties officials have not returned calls seeking comment.

"We're still working with them," Villanueva said. "They have already taken care of a lot of stuff. It's costing them some money."

Behind closed doors
At a March 17 Roosevelt Park City Council work session, Villanueva reported the situation at Lakecrest Park to council members. He told the council after personally observing the living conditions inside the apartment buildings, he had seen a "new low standard."

"We got in there and I was really quite amazed at the number of people who requested help," he told the council. "I've met with Lakecrest tenants and tried to get a handle on a number of complaints."

Hosko accompanied Villanueva to that work session and said about 200 violations were discovered in each of the four buildings, ranging from major fire and plumbing problems to minor concerns.

"Most of the apartments had some kind of issues -- doors missing on closets, leaky faucets. The majority of the apartments had something wrong," he said.

Roosevelt Park's city council moved quickly to amend its rental ordinance, expanding its licensing requirements to all apartment buildings in the city, including the two larger complexes: Lakecrest Park, which has four buildings with 60 units in each; and Tiffany Woods Apartments, owned by a Lansing-based company, which has 30 buildings of 11 units each.

The city's original rental ordinance had applied only to licensing of smaller rental facilities.

"We had already seen boiler rooms and common space, but we couldn't just go into an apartment," Villanueva said of the larger complexes.

The amended rental ordinance will give Villanueva and fire authorities more leverage when it comes to addressing "health, safety and welfare of the general public," according to amended ordinance language.

Lakecrest Park owners are now required to add smoke detectors in all the sleeping areas in each unit. Inspectors only found one smoke detector in each unit, and that doesn't meet fire code, Hosko said.

"I think by the time we're done, I wouldn't see any issue of moving into the apartments. You just have to make sure people have safe accommodations," Hosko said.

But those improvements will come too late for Johnson.

The carpet inside her apartment remains stained and torn from the last tenant, the cracks running down the walls are getting larger and still there is no spout on the bathtub faucet.

"I've had it with these people," Johnson said, adding that her lease expires May 1. "I'm done. We're definitely moving out when our lease ends."