Brookfield Mews resident Florence Dean is to be evicted from her apartment on Saturday, July 21. Is she being evicted because she filed a complaint with code enforcement?

Marilyn Eubanks, Brookfield Mews site manager, says no, Dean was written up three times and now she is out. But Dean and her father, Morris Bell, are raising questions about the living conditions at the HUD managed, low-income apartments.

It sounds like living conditions in a third world country: An apartment covered in sewage and infested with roaches.

It is, however, the way Morris Bell describes the apartment where his daughter, Florence Dean, lived with her four children. Dean, 21, leased the apartment at Brookfield Mews and lived there with her four children, ages 7, 4, 3 and 1. That is, she lived there until Bell said he could not tolerate it any more.

“Everybody’s commode ran over and it ran into her apartment,” Bell said. “I came down there and she was there by herself trying to clean it up. They wouldn’t even get a wet vac to help her.”

Bell said, “There were feces in the kitchen and all up under the refrigerator.

“My grandkids are there,” Bell said. “I had to have some help.”

Tony Banks, maintenance man at Brookfield Mews, said, speaking of the wet vac, “I took it down there myself and I left it there a couple of days.”

Marilyn Eubanks, site manager, said they had tried to fix the plumbing on several occasions. “I’m not sure what caused the problem,” she said.

Florence Dean signed the lease on 13-F, a four-bedroom two-bath apartment, on Nov. 3, 2006. By mid-December, she was having plumbing problems along with some other problems.

“It turned out there was a plumbing problem between the walls of 13F and 13E,” Eubanks said. “They had to take part of that wall out.”

Another problem had to do with a leaky roof that caused the ceiling tiles to get wet and fall down.

“We had patched and patched the roof,” Eubanks said. “We paid $11,000 to have the building re-roofed, plus the siding had started to rot so we replaced it.”

Bell, unhappy with the situation his daughter and grandchildren were living with, got help by filing a complaint with the county’s department of code enforcement. He said before filing the complaint with code enforcement, he had made other complaints to the apartment manager. “They would send the maintenance man down there and they would not do anything,” he said.

Eubanks showed The Gazette four maintenance requests, two for plumbing and one to repair the mailbox and another to repair the air-conditioner. She said all of the complaints had been addressed and repairs made.

Bell said to cut costs, the apartment management wanted to clean the carpet. “No way in the world was cleaning going to help that carpet,” Bell said.

The complaint about “an apartment covered in feces” went to Officer Chad Shadle with Tift County’s code enforcement office and on April 23, Shadle did an inspection of the apartment. He was accompanied on the inspection by Rusty Floyd, the HUD representative from Macon, Bell, Eubanks, Banks, and Officer Terry Allen, also with Code Enforcement.

Shadle made the inspection, took photographs and filed his report.

“I told Mr. Bell and the landlord that according to the Southern Building Code, there were about 20 violations regarding rental property that we can enforce,” Shadle said in his report.

According to Shadle’s report, his inspection revealed the following information:

• “We found that the carpet was dirty/moldy although it was impossible to know how long it has been this way. There was a fire in the apartment previously and there had been water damage in the kitchen/living/ and bathroom areas. The damage had also come from the neighbor’s sewer backing up and running into the apartment causing another incident. It is possible that the pad as well as the carpet is heavily damaged as a result of continuous exposure to water and sewer.

• There is evidence of mold in the downstairs bathroom. This could also have been caused by exposure to water and sewer leaks.

• The air handler is exposed as well as the pipes and power lines. It is my recommendation that a door be installed to cover this hazard.

• The ceiling covering is falling down in numerous spots.

• The drywall also has numerous holes in various areas of the apartment.

• When we opened a door in the upstairs area, there were an estimated 100 roaches on the door. I got a quick picture of the bugs that remained on the door after they were exposed to light.

• The upstairs air/floor duct was found to be ripped and shredded and in various levels of rot.”

Shadle cited Brookfield Mews for four code enforcement violations:

— 302.5 – Heating facilities (air duct)

— 302.9 – Smoke detectors (smoke detector hanging from the ceiling)

— 307.5 – Extermination (bugs and roaches throughout)

— 305.16 – Interior floors, walls and ceilings (walls have holes, ceiling falling, carpet, living room ceiling bowing)

Eubanks disputes Shadle’s report about the roach infestation.

“We never had any sign of an infestation before or since,” she said. Eubanks said the exterminator comes every three months and had been there on March 5 and 6 — a little more than a month before Shadle’s inspection on April 23. Eubanks said the exterminator had never indicated there was a problem.

Bell said, “The place had burned before, and they left that old nasty carpet on the floor. When it burned, they didn’t go in and fix it up.”

“They talk about having inspections every month,” he said. “But they can’t be having them.”

Bell said the apartment had suffered a lot of water damage from when the fire department put out the fire. “The baseboards were rotted slap out,” he said.

“I don’t know if the carpet was replaced after the fire,” Eubanks said.

Bell said after the complaint and inspection by code enforcement, the apartment management did agree to move his daughter and her children into a different apartment. “But it took until June before she could get in it,” he said.

“The apartment was vacant and waiting on her,” Eubanks said. “Colquitt EMC requires that the bill be paid in full before they will transfer the utilities. She required extra time to pay the bill.”

Shadle’s report indicated the owner of the apartment (HUD) had 45 days to comply with major violations and 60 days for minor violations.

“The case is still under investigation,” said Carl Fortson with code enforcement. “The majority of the violations were minor and they should be able to fix them pretty quickly.”

Fortson said they will go out and re-inspect the apartment when they get a call that the work on it is complete.

Bell said that because of the complaint filed with code enforcement, his daughter’s family is now being evicted from their new Brookfield Mews apartment.

“It’s just really sad,” Bell said.

“It’s got nothing to do with the complaint,” Eubanks said.



Tomorrow: More about the Dean family’s impending eviction.



To contact reporter Jana Cone, call 382-4321, ext. 208.