A multi-part series by the Pioneer Press:
1/18/11: “At troubled rental sites, more pain for the landlords”
“Overall, it would be good to have stronger statewide tenant rights,” Hauge said. “But when you’re working with tenants in buildings like these, you’re working with low-income (people). … It can be a barrier to get into court and take time off to assert the law. It’s to their benefit to have a city inspector who’s making sure (the landlords are) abiding by the law.” Hauge said Minnesota is behind other states in regulating landlords.
1/17/11: “Sanctions? Fines? Charges? None have put the landlords out of business”
The landlords — who have owned at least 17 rental properties in the Twin Cities and Rochester over the past 10 years — allow problems such as bedbugs, cockroaches, mold and leaking pipes to fester, ignoring complaints from residents and failing to make repairs until faced with sanctions that would hit their pocketbook, according to public records and interviews with tenants and former employees.
1/16/11: “The buildings are squalid, the tenants are fed up, and the landlords? They’re still in business.”
The stories the tenants tell are outrageous. Mark Goodoien said an exterminator told him the cockroach infestation in his apartment was the worst he’d ever seen. Two floors below, Sue Hansen said squirrels lived in her walls. In Annie Almanzar’s unit, rotting kitchen pipes caused repeated flooding, and the bedroom walls were covered in mold.
1/16/11: “Many complaints resolved just in time”
Hyder Jaweed and his brother Asgher Ali bought the 17-unit Peters Place apartment building in Columbia Heights for $926,000 in October 2004. Inspectors first visited the property on a resident complaint five months later. Since then, inspectors have averaged about 20 visits a year and have logged more than 300 violations — mostly as a result of complaints from residents.
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