Tenants of several Cincinnati low-income apartment complexes will see relief from the starkly sub-standard conditions found in those buildings after a court decision today.
Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Beth Meyer ruled that five buildings with more than 600 units of affordable housing owned by New Jersey-based PF Holdings company will be placed in receivership with a third party, effectively keeping it from collecting rent from tenants and the more than $5 millions it gets annually from the Department of Housing and Urban Development until repairs are made. Those funds and repairs will be handled by court-appointed receiver Milhaus Management, a property management company requested by U.S. Bank Wilmington Trust, which holds mortgages on the properties.
CityBeat in March reported on conditions at The Alms Apartments in Walnut Hills, one of the properties placed in receivership. Tenants in that building suffered from lack of heating, plumbing problems, insect infestations and other substandard conditions. In November, the roof collapsed on another PF Holdings-owned building, the Burton in Avondale, due to heavy rains and lack of maintenance. All told, that building had more than 1,800 municipal code violations, city inspections late last year found. The total cost of fixing the buildings is more than $3 million, according to court filings.
Tenants at those buildings and others owned by the company organized to demand better conditions in their buildings with the help of the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless and the Society for Legal Aid of Greater Cincinnati. Advocates and tenants say the company "willfully" hid conditions in the buildings and failed to do basic maintenance. They hailed today's decision as a step in the right direction.
"Finally, after a year of fighting, residents should start to see improvements soon," the Homeless Coalition said in a statement. "We still have a ways to go and a lot of work to do to ensure these buildings become what they should have always been, but today we took a major step forward at saving these invaluable affordable homes."
Trouble at the PF Holdings properties has come as the Greater Cincinnati area and many other areas around country face historic shortages of affordable housing. Federal guidelines say housing should cost no more than 30 percent of a household’s monthly income. However, 11 million people in the U.S. pay more than 50 percent of their income for housing, and that’s expected to swell in the coming years as rental markets across the country continue to heat up.
