Tenants complain about complex’s conditions

David Kihara

Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2005 | 10:44 a.m.

Trina Swain has no hot water in her apartment, but she has roaches.

And she has a leaky ceiling above her kitchen. She also has raw sewage drying in the parking lot of the complex and soiled diapers in her apartment complex pool area.

Swain lives in the Desert Gardens Apartments at 1720 W. Bonanza Road, at Martin Luther King Boulevard, in a relatively low-income area.

Swain and other tenants have a list of complaints against the owners of the complex, including collapsed ceilings from leaking shower drains, cockroach infestations and water damage.

"I wanted to move out three days after I moved here" on July 8, Swain said.

Swain and several other tenants are complaining about the conditions and recent eviction notices that were given for nonpayment of rent and other issues, such as nonrenewal of Section 8 housing vouchers.

She said she is withholding paying $700 in rent until the conditions of the apartment are improved.

"I told them I could not live in these conditions," Swain said, adding that she informed the on-site manager of her complaints but didn't receive a very good response.

"Basically they don't give a damn," she said.

Gloria Ruiz, the on-site manager, declined to comment.

Other tenants are also facing problems. Diane Grace has lived at the complex for one year but is leaving next month because of the conditions of her apartment and because the owners are not renewing her lease.

"It's terrible," she said. A large section of her kitchen ceiling was peeling off. A letter sent by the owners John and Susan Luker to the Las Vegas Housing Authority stated that Grace's lease was not being renewed because the owners chose not to renew leases of Section 8 housing participants, such as Grace.

But the tenants are not the only ones complaining about the complex. The Clark County Health District on Aug. 4 closed the public pool at the complex because of a violation, said Jennifer Sizemore, spokeswoman for the Health District. She would not provide details about the alleged violation but said the pool remained closed.

The city in April responded to a complaint from a tenant regarding a plumbing issue with a kitchen ceiling leaking in April. On April 14, the city told the manager that a tenant needed to be relocated and that no one could occupy the unit until it was fixed, said Mary Ann Price, spokeswoman for the city.

She said that no tenant has been permitted to re-occupy the property.

The city has recognized that an increasing number of residents are living in poor conditions and is now considering a proposal to begin "pro-active" rental responses, said Devin Smith, manager of neighborhood response for Las Vegas.

The program, which has not gained formal approval from the City Council, would employ inspectors to go to rental complex and inspect 10 percent of the units, Smith said. If a certain percentage of those are found to have violations, the inspectors would then check every unit for violations, he said.

The city could then start forced code compliance if necessary, Smith said.

"So many of the residents of Las Vegas are living in undesirable conditions in Las Vegas," he said. "We want to ensure the health and safety of residents in Las Vegas.

In Las Vegas, there are an estimated 59,000 apartments, and 5,000 have been converted to condos, said Smith.

The Desert Gardens Apartment was converted to condominiums, and those condominiums were then snatched up by various investors. There are 148 units in the complex and 46 different owners, said Jamie Rose, of Nevada HOA Management, the organization that manages the property under contract with the owners.

While Nevada HOA Management maintains the property, a separate entity, Coldwell Banker Premiere Realty, is responsible for managing the units for a majority of the owners, said Michael Mackenzie, a Realtor with Coldwell Banker Premiere Realty and the licensed property manager of Desert Gardens. Complicating the issue further, a majority of the owners live out of state, he said.

"They don't realize living out of state what they have to do," he said. "The owners don't want to invest the money to maintain the property."

One owner of several units, Susan Luker, in Van Nuys, Calif., declined to comment except to say that tenants with complaints should inform the on-site manager.

Mackenzie said Coldwell Banker is pulling out of the project in two weeks because of the ongoing problems it has had with the property, which include the problems with tenants as well as the lack of resources available to them from the investors.

Both Rose and Mackenzie denied that the management companies were responsible for the allegedly poor conditions of the Desert Gardens. The sewage problems occurred recently when workers on a neighboring property cut a water line belonging to Desert Gardens, Rose said.

She said plumbers have been out to the area multiple times and they are in the process of fixing it. She said the management company spent more than $110,000 in rehabilitation of the property.

Mackenzie agreed, saying that tenants often do not contact him when they have problems. He said an exterminator had been out to the complex several times, but in some instances, such as the case with Swain, the tenant wouldn't allow the exterminators to enter the units.

There were two cases where the ceilings caved in due to leaking showers, but he said workers fixed one of the ceilings on Tuesday and another was set to be fixed today.