For several years now, residents of Hickory View and Cedar Gardens Apartments in North Little Rock have been sounding the alarm about horrid living conditions.
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the same problems at the apartments, which are subsidized by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD. Some of the same faces and voices continue calling attention to extensive mold, violent crime, leaking ceilings, possible structural issues and other conditions that have been negatively impacting their daily lives. Residents have gone to the media as well as contacting management, whom they say never address any of the root issues with the properties.
One of those familiar faces is former Hickory View resident Hattie Temple, who lived at the 11-story building for several years. She said she has been complaining about Hickory View for six years and nothing has been done. Temple is the North Little Rock president for Arkansas Community Organizations, or ACO, a community group that advocates for renters’ rights.
She, along with a few residents of Hickory View and Cedar Gardens, held a press conference in the park across the street from the complexes Thursday morning. A couple of residents also let reporters inside both buildings, where mold and holes in the ceilings were unmistakable. ACO organizers were also there.
The complexes, adjacent to one another on Division Street, are administered through the federal Rental Assistance Demonstration program,
which converts certain HUD properties into privately managed housing
. The North Little Rock Housing Authority still owns the land that the two complexes are on, but the buildings are managed by Knight Development, based in Ruston, Louisiana.
Temple says that there are cracks in the building on the 11th floor that have only gotten worse, which were seen by reporters with several news outlets, including the
Arkansas Times
. Additionally, she said, there is structural damage on the roof. She pointed the media to a darkened spot in the back of the building where she says water has been running down the exterior.
Temple and other residents are also worried about violence on the properties.
“I don’t feel safe in this building,” current resident Chandra Profit said. Profit and Deena Stickford, who lives in Cedar Gardens, said that there was a shooting recently in the area of the complexes.
Before speaking to reporters, Profit and Temple said they had to walk down the stairs from the eighth floor to the first floor because the elevator was stuck. Profit, 65, says she has emphysema and was out of breath and barely able to stand when she reached the park where reporters were waiting.
“Most of the time, I don’t move around because of my sickness, and I take sertraline also for my nerve problems,” Profit said. “So I don’t need any of this to add on to my issues, my health issues.”
There are many sick people in the building due to the mold, she said.
Both Stickford and Patricia Hamby, 68, who live in Cedar Gardens, say that their lung issues have stemmed from mold in their apartments. Many elderly and disabled people live in both Hickory View and Cedar Gardens, as that was whom the housing was originally intended for before the management was outsourced to a private company.
Yulunda White is the executive director of NorthBridge Housing Solutions, the official name for North Little Rock’s Housing Authority. White said the role of the housing authority at Hickory View and Cedar Gardens is to provide rental subsidies to approved applicants and that inspectors examine units prior to new move-ins and once every other year.
“If a unit does not pass upon initial inspection the housing authority issues a ‘fail’ score and the applicant is not allowed to move in until the failed items are corrected. If the unit ‘fails’ upon biennial inspection, payment is withheld until the failed items are corrected,” White said.
White said tenants can contact the housing authority to request an inspection if they have additional concerns. If those issues don’t get resolved, they can request to move to another unit or property, or request a voucher to get housing on their own, she said.
Temple disputed this, saying the housing authority’s policy and practice are at odds with each other. She said apartments have to be in absolutely terrible shape before the housing authority decides to move someone to a new unit. She also said that the housing authority told a friend of hers that her apartment was unlivable due to mold and it took six months for the agency to give her a voucher.
“They say one thing, but do another,” Temple said.
White said that the housing authority doesn’t oversee the daily operations of the properties and referred the
Arkansas Times
to Knight Development.
Knight Development CEO Lisa Phillips said that their teams are investigating the tenants’ issues and will “certainly” address them in a timely fashion.
“With regard to operations, the property management team operates the developments in question under the housing guidelines of HUD and all programs affiliated with its operations. Part of our procedures include ensuring all units pass housing quality standards inspections prior to any tenant moving into a unit,” Phillips said.
Substandard conditions
The
Arkansas Times
had the chance to go inside both buildings.
As we walked up the ramp to get into Hickory View, part of the handrail was missing. Inside the front entrance to the building, there was a hole in the ceiling; residents say raccoons have sometimes fallen out of it. The hallway smelled like stale cigarette smoke.
Inside the elevator, there was no cooling when reporters first entered the building — though that changed as we all exited — and someone had left a cigarette butt on the floor. On the 11th floor, cracks could be seen in the building’s walls and ceiling on the inside hallway and outside on the balcony.
As reporters and an ACO organizer tried to get downstairs, the elevator was stuck for about 10 minutes and we waited in the hallway, which was very humid on a hot July day. The air conditioning seemed to not be working properly.
On the ninth floor, one apartment had a filthy air conditioner unit plugged in, the bathroom was full of mold and a pipe was visible through a giant hole in the wall. To the left was another hole with electrical wiring inside of it. Mold was on the toilet seat, the bathroom wall, the bathroom ceiling and the window blinds outside of the bathroom. There was water damage on the ceiling.
Walking into Cedar Gardens, one of the first things we noticed was the strong smell of mold. Mold could be seen on the ceiling near the elevators and inside a vent that was leaking water. Mold was also on other parts of the ceiling on the first floor. The first floor stairwell was filthy, with what looked like possibly dried vomit or feces on the floor, along with trash and other mysterious dark spots.
A storage room, which residents say has been locked for at least a year, was covered in blotches of mold from the ceiling to the floor. There was standing water on the floor.
Inside the elevator, dried brown spots were splattered against one wall. Stickford claimed it was blood from the shooting that Profit referred to earlier. There was no air conditioning inside the elevator.
Hamby took the
Times
inside her apartment on the third floor, which also smelled like mold. Hamby receives oxygen through a tube and uses a rollator to get around. White spots of mildew lined her white living room chair, and the walls of her bedroom were stained brown from liquid that had leaked from the ceiling. Dark mold could be seen around the vents in her apartment and her kitchen ceiling.
Stickford said she lives below Hamby and the liquid coming from Hamby’s back wall is dripping down into Stickford’s apartment. Hamby said that maintenance has simply tried to paint over the areas damaged by leaks in the past. Stickford said that the apartment’s windows don’t open, making it nearly impossible for them to get fresh air.
“They [management] say it’s dust, they say it’s condensation,” Stickford said, pointing to what appeared to be mold in Hamby’s kitchen. “But that’s not dust, that’s not condensation.”
Residents say that they will continue to bring light to the issues in their apartments. They say they just want the root issues to be addressed, not painted over — literally and figuratively.
“We just need help,” Stickford said. “We’re trying to reach out for help.”
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