Tenants of Syracuse’s Nob Hill Apartments on Syracuse's south side will have to wait a little longer for their lawsuits against the apartment complex's owners and managers to be resolved.
More than 20 tenants filed individual suits against the owners and managers, claiming the right to lower rents and refunds on rents paid because of longstanding and uncorrected safety and security problems in the four building complex.
Those lawsuits were on the calendar in Syracuse City Court Monday morning, with residents and their advocates hoping for a final judgment. However, a representative for the property management firm failed to show up for the hearings. The judge postponed all of the cases until Friday.
“I expected something would happen today, for sure,” said Kona Mahu, who heads the Nob Hill Tenants Association. She said she had expected that Monday’s hearing would complete the testimony of the property manager at the complex but that he was fired “within days after our last court appearance because he was lying in court.”
Residents have been complaining to building management and to the city of Syracuse’s Codes Enforcement Office for more than a year about unsafe and unlivable conditions, including frequent water and sewer backups, no security officers in the buildings, lights out and handrails missing in stairwells, squatters and more. In the courthouse hall, a resident who did not wish to be named showed a reporter pictures of numerous floods caused by broken pipes or backups. The city has leveled hundreds of code violations against Nob Hill’s owners and managers.
The issues reached a crisis point Feb. 28 when a fire in an apartment in Building 3 resulted in two deaths and forced residents of the building to move out.
Mahu said that there has been some progress of late. There are now building security staff on hand and potholes in the parking lots have been filled but, “It's like one step forward, six steps back.” She said that bags of garbage have been piling up in a laundry room instead of being put in dumpsters. “I've literally from my bedroom watched Waste Management [the waste removal company] come and pick up empty bins because the garbage is sitting in the building.”
The federal lender Fannie Mae is suing to foreclose on the complex and appointed a receiver from Texas to oversee the property, but Mahu said she cannot understand why the receiver appointed the current property management company to continue running Nob Hill.
A request to the office of Syracuse Mayor Sharon Owens for an update on the city's actions towards Nob Hill Apartments was not answered Monday.
