PETERSBURG, Va. -- “I shouldn’t have to live like this! I shouldn’t have to live like this!”
70-year-old Corriene Brown says she feels frustrated and hopeless after living nearly four years in Petersburg's Carriage Hosue Apartments.
“I just need to move out and move into another place because I can’t keep going through this," Brown said.
Like the many others who live in the Apartments, Brown believes the owners could do better.
“Yeah they can, they can do better, they can do better. They can remodel this place and fix it up like it’s supposed to be.”
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Another issue has piled onto the already mounting list of troubles beleaguering the apartments. The air conditioning in the building is no longer working, on a late summer day when temperatures reached near 100 degrees.
In April, residents were forced to move out for two months due to elevator issues and were greeted upon return to find a mouse, bed bug, and roach infestation.
“I’m very frustrated that we have residents living in these conditions," Congresswoman Jennifer McClellan said in a letter to the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, which oversees the property.
“We don’t want anybody living in unsafe conditions, in unsanitary conditions and so we want to make sure that HUD coming in and holding the property owners feet to the fire, works with them.”
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Petersburg City Manager March Altman says he understands the city’s limitations and the need for help on the federal level.
“Within the last six months, I know we’ve issued over 100 different citations for the property," Altman said. “HUD as the note holder, if you will, has the ability to bring additional pressures that we don’t have, to really get that issue addressed.”
However, Altman says the Apartment owners, based in Alabama, have not been responsive to concerns.
“When you have absentee landlords who are benefitting locally from rents that are being paid but they are not making investments back into the property, that is disappointing," Altman said.
Both Senator Kaine and Congresswoman McClellan say they are getting weekly updates from Petersburg city officials on the status of the Carriage House Apartments.
McClellan tells Covil that it's critically important that HUD gets involved soon.
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