CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Residents of a Cleveland apartment building are calling out a local landlord for unsafe living conditions.
On Wednesday, residents of St. Clair Place on East 13th Street and St. Clair Avenue held a press conference calling for their Bedford Heights-based landlord, Owner’s Management Co., to take responsibility for the problems. The apartment is for low-income residents 62-years-old and up, along with people with disabilities.
The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, a nonprofit organization that provides legal services at no cost to low-income clients, filed a complaint against Owner’s Management with the Cleveland Municipal Court Housing Division in December on behalf of the St. Clair Place Tenants’ Association, which formed in 2022.
The complaint lists both the tenants’ association and resident James Barker as plaintiffs.
Among the claims is that Owner’s Management returned rent payments and charged late fees to Barker and other members of the association, claiming they were “under eviction,” when ledgers showed they were in good standing with their landlord.
The complaint also says the landlord has failed to address unsanitary conditions. The filing references a 2023 report made by the Cleveland Division of Police Bureau of Community Policing that notes a “strong odor of urine” in the stairwells and “noticeable fecal stains” on the landings.
Others issues that have been raised include unsecured entrances, limited security personnel and non-working security cameras, and that non-residents have been documented using drugs in the stairwells, overdosing in the building’s common bathrooms and engaging in sexual activity on the fire escapes.
Owner’s Management denies the claims in an answer filed with the court. The Plain Dealer and cleveland.com reached out to Owner’s Management for comment.
Marlon Floyd, a five-year resident of St. Clair Place and a leader of the tenants’ association, said living in the apartment building has been like “being in jail.”
“Security is only eight hours a day,” he said. “People’s doors getting pushed in. People sneak in these exits and set the alarms off. Cars get broken into. The people who want to use the exercise machine can’t use the exercise machine. We have bathrooms we can’t use.”
Floyd added that he does his best to bring some sense of security to the building as residents come to him to deal with the people that sneak in.
“If somebody knock on my door and say, ‘Marlon, just somebody in the hallway,’ I say, ‘what floor?’ I go and wake them up. I constantly go through that five straight years waking somebody up or forcing them mount. So that’s just something I do because I feel like, well, if I don’t do it, it’s going to get worse,” he said.
The landlord states on its website that its committed “to bettering residents lives and lives of the senior, disabled and multi-family communities,” said Lauren Hamilton, a Legal Aid Society attorney. “And we’re really just asking them to uphold that commitment. Some of the residents here are some of the most vulnerable among us and deserve to live in safe, and suitable housing.”
Owner’s Management own’s 17 apartments across Ohio, Connecticut, Delaware, Michigan and New York. Most of its properties are located in Ohio. In addition to St. Clair Place, it owns Regency Apartments in Parma, Presidential Apartments in Rocky River, Westwood Place in Strongsville and others.