HAMILTON, Ohio — Residents of Nielan Park Apartments in Hamilton are complaining about unsafe and unhealthy living conditions — and this is not the first time their landlords have faced these accusations.
We spoke with Nielan Park Apartments resident Marandah Earl, who showed damage from flooding in her apartment dating back to early July. She's been dealing with wood rot in the baseboards, floors peeling up, paint bubbles, mold and floor tiles coming up.
“All this damage is from (the flood), and they refuse to do anything,” Earl said.
It’s now been over a month since the flooding, and Earl said maintenance has made only a few repairs — reinstalling the toilet, patching up walls damaged by the floods and adding a baseboard tack strip to one area of her dining room.
But she said when she asked maintenance to fix the rest of the damage in her apartment, they called her ungrateful.
“I feel like I've been belittled and made to seem like because I'm low income, that I don't deserve to have a clean, safe environment,” Earl said.
This is the same apartment where we spoke to residents in 2018. They spoke to us about the unhealthy living conditions in their own units. One of those residents was Linda Thompson, who we reconnected with, still living in the same apartment.
We asked Thompson if anything had changed since we spoke with her in 2018. She replied with a simple, “No.”
It was in December 2018 that Thompson showed us chronic water leaks, potential mold, her broken kitchen drawer, an unreliable oven and a rusty-looking refrigerator with rubber seals bulging out of the doors.
Thompson said those problems are still prevalent in her apartment. But now, over the years, a new problem has emerged.
“In our building, every one of us has had bed bugs,” Thompson said.
She added that management has not sprayed for the bed bugs despite her and other residents asking multiple times.
We spoke with John Kennedy, executive vice president of operations for Evergreen Real Estate Group, the company that owns Nielan Park Apartments.
When asked why residents say issues have not been addressed, Kennedy said that their corporate office has been in contact with the residents, and calls for work submitted to date have been addressed or are being scheduled.
He added after the flooding in Earl's apartment, the city building inspector conducted an inspection of the apartment and approved the work and condition of the unit at that time.
Kennedy said that Evergreen representatives will always respond to resident complaints and any requested work orders will be followed through on.
Thompson and Earl claim they aren’t the only ones facing these issues. And that if they could, they would leave.
“Cause we can’t move out, ain’t anywhere to go. The rent is so high,” said Thompson. “I want to move out of here, but I can't afford it.”
