Caveat venditor, slumlords!

 

I have lived in cities across the US, from Las Vegas to D.C and a few in between, and I have never had a bad experience with a property manager until I moved to Colorado. What I have been through brought out my activist side.

In 2019, I testified in support of a Safe and Healthy Homes bill to strip away the landlord's presumption of good intentions in Colorado landlord-tenant law to make us equal in the eyes of the law; the bill also added habitability standards. My testimony described a nightmare situation in 2008 followed by another slumlord situation a few years later and I am still testifying for renter's rights today. Weak consumer protection in Colorado is not new, and it's time to end the exploitation. I'm sharing my testimony from 2019 and hope you will share your stories.

“I want to tell you about my personal experiences with substandard housing and unscrupulous landlords. In 2008, I moved into an apartment in Colorado Springs that was affordable based on my income. In the middle of a cold winter night, I woke up so dizzy and sick that I could not stand. I crawled across the apartment to the front door, opened the door, and fell out across the threshold into the snow. When my head cleared up enough that I could stand again, I opened every window in the apartment and shut off the heater that was burning bright orange flames. The next day, the manager was reluctant to tell me what had happened but the guy that did the work told me he didn't know how I was still alive. He informed me that the gas unit had been red-tagged by the City as hazardous and should not have been used until it had been repaired and inspected. I was that close to being a casualty of carbon monoxide poisoning because my life was not worth the cost to repair a red-tagged gas heater. I was eventually able to move to a larger apartment complex but left when the lease was up because management increased rent by $200 per month which was not affordable.

That move led to my second experience with a slumlord. On moving into an apartment in Fountain, I noted a long list of needed maintenance and repairs including apparent mold in a bathroom wall and ceiling, loose tiles around the tub, a broken window that could not be closed or locked, a sliding patio door that did not have a lock, and other problems. A month went by, then another with nothing but excuses from the manager.

Early the day after Thanksgiving, as I ran the water in the bathroom sink to brush my teeth I noticed the drain was sluggish, then the toilet bowl started to gurgle and back up with brown-colored water. The same gurgling sound crept under the bathtub followed by a stench, then debris and brown water—technically, greywater. I heard people running in the hall trying to figure out how to shut off the water main as greywater filled the bathtubs, sinks, and toilets of every apartment on the first floor. Someone finally reached the property owner. He was not eager to leave his $500,000 home in Monument on a holiday weekend to deal with a maintenance issue at his slum property in Fountain. When he finally arrived, about six hours later, he said he would wait until Monday to call a plumber because the repair would already be expensive; calling a plumber on a holiday would cost even more. I took out my phone and started dialing the local news, other neighbors made threats that I won’t repeat. He relented, but it took the rest of the weekend to get some kind of repair completed and the water back on. Not once did the owner offer to provide water or some other place to stay; he left us to live in that muck for three days.

In either of these situations, if I had an equal legal right to enforce the terms of the lease contract then I would not have faced retaliation or been forced to move out. But that's what happened to me, both times. I didn't choose to live in these places for any reason other than it was affordable based on my income. Rent in the Springs has increased year over year and moving expenses every year or two adds a greater burden, especially given the shortage of affordable housing.

All this bill is about is fairness. This is a health and consumer protection issue. No one should have to live in unsafe or unsanitary conditions because they can’t afford to move elsewhere or to live in a more modern property. I urge the committee to pass this bill. Thank you for your time.”

Safe and Healthy Homes was signed into law. As for the slumlord who hid needed repairs to a gas heater and almost killed me, he died on a tour bus in California when they were hit by a mudslide. The slumlord who left us swimming in shit over Thanksgiving weekend not only sold off the Fountain property but also several Victorian homes in downtown Colorado Springs after the Colorado Springs mayor was informed of that slumlord’s dirty deeds in Fountain. #FAFO, I guess. Never give up, never give in.