from cleveland.com: Mold, mice, roaches and more – Warrensville Heights tenants call on landlord to fix unsafe conditions

By Lucas Daprile

WARRENSVILLE HEIGHTS, Ohio -- Tenants of the Granada Gardens Apartments are calling on the building’s owner to make repairs to the buildings, which they say suffer from mold, roaches, mice, exposed wiring and a lack of security.

Tenants held a press conference Tuesday after a recent court decision allowed the apartments' landlord to return management of the property to a company that residents said let the complex fall into disrepair.

As residents spoke, water leaked off a curtain in the lobby and into a five-gallon bucket.

“I have to use my inhaler six times a day instead of four because of this place. When I’m outside my asthma is fine,” said Thomas Bircker, a Granada Gardens resident who showed a reporter with cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer his apartment. “I’m type one diabetic. I have heart problems. I don’t need all this.”

After the press conference, residents invited the reporter to view the disrepair.

Inside the building next to the one where the press conference was held, a reporter witnessed an egregious example of decay.

There were no locks on the doors leading into the building. Down the first-floor hallway, stagnant water pooled around doorways. A vacant apartment, across from ones that were occupied, was thoroughly covered in mold. In the corner was a squeege.

One need not walk into the decrepit apartment to witness its decay, however. Visible from the outside of the building was green slime on the windows and near the windowsill.

The Plain Dealer and cleveland.com have reached out to Granada Apartments Ltd. seeking comment.

Shirley Nunn, 90, lives on a different floor of that same building and has spent more than 30 years in the apartment complex, she said.

“It used to be paradise,” Nunn said. Under prior ownership, the trash compactor functioned properly, snow got shoveled and hallways and lobbies were heated and air-conditioned, she said.

“The government subsidizes Section 8. How could our government keep giving them money every month?” Nunn said. “And that’s Trump or no Trump.”

Nunn showed the reporter the second-floor laundry room, where rot ate at the ceiling, water pooled on the floor and wires hung exposed from the wall.

On another floor, where she lives, there’s only one washing machine that works, she said, but she doesn’t tell her neighbors for fear it would get overused. Many residents go to a laundromat down the street.

Though some living conditions in the complex - such as trash not thrown away in the dumpster - result from tenant apathy, major structural damages are the responsibility of the landlord, Nunn said.

“This is irreparable,” Nunn said of the apparent water damage in the laundry room.

Part of the reason many tenants haven’t left is because rent is affordable compared to other apartments in a market that’s projected to see rents rise even more in 2025, according to the Rental Housing Journal.

The cheapest apartment listed on Granada Garden Apartments' website goes for $725 per month. It has one bed, one bath and measures 624 square feet.

The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland is representing the tenant union and was handing out pamphlets instructing tenants on how to place their rent into escrow.

“It’s a lot of work” to escrow rent, said Catherine Donnelly, an attorney with Legal Aid who has been representing the tenant union since 2022.

For a brief time, tenants say conditions were starting to improve at Granada Gardens.