Editor’s note: This story is the first of two parts. Tenants living in rental units owned and managed by United Management are alleging a multitude of complaints. In this story, CityView looks at resident concerns about criminal activity and efforts to address them. Our second story, coming Tuesday, will delve into tenant complaints about maintenance of their units.
Janene Ackles had been horrified to learn that an elderly woman living at Cypress Manor — a senior subsidized apartment complex in downtown Fayetteville — was forced to sleep in the building’s lobby one night after the elevator broke down over the weekend. Residents had made multiple calls to the property’s management company alerting them of the malfunction, Ackles told CityView.
“She had to sleep down in the lobby,” Ackles said. “The other people couldn't get down the steps. So if there had been a fire, what would have happened to the other folks?”
Ackles, the founder of the Cumberland County Community Watch Coalition — an unaffiliated group that oversees and advocates for neighborhood watch groups in Fayetteville — shared her concerns in a public comment to the Fayetteville City Council on Aug. 14. She recalled several disturbing anecdotes from residents at the three subsidized senior housing projects run, owned and operated by United Management II: Azalea Manor, Cypress Manor and Dogwood Manor.
"Our esteemed elders deserve the utmost care, respect, and consideration, and it's truly disheartening to witness their struggle,” Ackles told council members.
United Management oversees 21 affordable and public housing apartments in Fayetteville. The company, notably, has received an F rating from the Better Business Bureau. In complaints listed on the BBB website — including three from renters in Fayetteville — tenants reported difficulties in communication, maintenance and proper handling of housing-related issues by the property management company.
United Management has denied accusations of maintenance and safety problems at its properties.
“We spend so much time and effort to make sure our residents not only feel safe, but are safe,” Terry Odom, the director of security for United Management, told CityView.
Still, some senior citizens living in United Management buildings would argue otherwise.
Two weeks after Ackles spoke to city council members, an elderly woman was attacked by a robber. The woman — a diabetic — was on her way to a dialysis appointment at 5 a.m. when, according to a witness, she was assaulted in the parking lot of Azalea Manor. A Fayetteville Police Department report from the incident described it as a robbery in which the victim sustained minor injuries, but the witness — who requested anonymity for safety reasons — said the attack had been severe, with the victim’s arms “scratched up” and bleeding.
“When I found her she was on the ground alive but battered, shaken and afraid,” the witness wrote in a message sent to United Management and shared with CityView. “This woman could have just as easily been killed.”
Notably, the witness said they had called the city’s code enforcement division a week before the incident with concerns that the overgrown bushes and trees in the parking lot presented a safety hazard — as an attacker could easily hide there and remain undetected. As of early October, United Management maintenance workers had trimmed the trees and bushes.
The attack came after Azalea Manor residents said they have been reporting frequent suspicious and illegal activity at the apartment complex for at least a year. Residents even renamed their community watch group to SLAM — an acronym for Seniors Lives Always Matter — to express that they felt their struggles as senior citizens had been largely ignored by both United Management and law enforcement. Though United Management is now taking steps to increase public safety measures, the disconnect between senior occupants and staff at United Management properties has come to a head in recent weeks.
Five incidents in two months
The Azalea, Dogwood and Cypress Manor properties have seen at least five incidents in the past two months alone, according to police data, with incidents including breaking and entering a building, vandalism, property damage and thefts.
Data from the Fayetteville police mapping tool shows 30 incidents within a quarter mile radius of Azalea and Cypress Manor in the past six months, while 22 incidents have occurred at Dogwood Manor in the same timeframe and radius.
Fayetteville Police Department Public Information Officer Rickelle Harrell said in an email to CityView that the police department’s crime prevention specialists “regularly reach out to the management company (United Management) to assist in establishing additional safety measures after receiving concerns from community members.”
Crime prevention specialists are civilian employees of the police department who collaborate with district commanders within the department to address community concerns and teach the public about safety measures.
“These properties regularly contact their assigned Crime Prevention Specialist with safety concerns,” Harrell added. “Once that contact is made, the crime prevention specialist coordinates efforts with the district captain to address these concerns.”
Shannon Pow, the chief financial and operations officer at United Management, said that the company works extensively with the Fayetteville Police Department and Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office to address crime at its properties. Pow believes the uptick in crime at United Management properties is a result of crime trending upward more broadly in Fayetteville.
“Obviously, as a management company and as owners, we also are now having to ramp up and change the way we're responding because it's different than it has been in the past,” she said.
Conflicts over communication
At a Sept. 12 meeting of the Azalea Manor Community Watch, residents described concerns over a litany of safety issues: frequent trespassers, non-residents parking illegally outside the building, suspicious vehicles and people in the parking lot and homeless individuals coming onto the property.
Ashley Schirone, one of the crime prevention specialists, said residents made 21 calls to police dispatch from June to August, mostly in reference to the above-listed concerns. Only two of those calls, though, led to written reports, including the Aug. 28 call — listed as an assault and attempted robbery on the dispatch log — and a theft from a vehicle theft on July 7.
“But within those three months,” Schirone added, “I have received quite a few emails and calls from other residents in this area about other activities and things that are going on that are police matters that I wasn't finding on the report.”
Schirone also said she had gotten emails “eight out of 10 times” from residents about suspicious activity that had not been reported in service calls.
Schirone said residents needed to call 911 first to report a crime — something also reiterated by Odom, who was present at the Azalea Manor Community Watch meeting.
“There's no exception to calling 911 when it's an emergency,” Odom told residents.
But residents shared at the community watch meeting that they’ve not always received a meaningful response when making 911 dispatch calls about their concerns. The witness in the Aug. 28 incident — who has since been appointed as a Community Watch coordinator with the police department — said residents reported being dismissed by police when calling about a trespasser.
“We have called the police about trespasses and they have told us that they can't make the people move off the ground because they're not on the trespassers list and we're not the manager,” they said.
In response, Odom said: “Don't let that deter you. Let them come out, they'll talk to the trespasser, tell them suspicious activity, that’s all you got to say.”
Still, residents at the meeting said that, in addition to reporting suspicious activity to Schirone, they have sent emails to United Management about repeated incidents and had mentioned them in prior community watch meetings over the past year.
Ackles, who ran unsuccessfully for the city council Dist. 2 seat, told CityView these incidents had been taking place for over a year at Azalea and Dogwood Manors. She said she’s been communicating with and collecting concerns from senior residents at the buildings in the months leading up to her address to the city council in August.
Pow was also present at the Azalea meeting — the first she’s attended — and introduced herself as the chief executive at United Management.
“I'm kind of hearing this for the first time, but what I will say is we will do a better job of being involved in making sure that whatever we need to do as a company, that we do,” she said, regarding residents’ safety concerns.
Pow acknowledged that residents may have already reported the concerns to the building manager, who is present in the building once a week.
“I'll take it on the chin — it's my fault, because I haven't been here,” Pow said. “I just didn't know that we were at this level. But again, I'm involved. We're all involved. We're going to make sure that whatever we can do as a company, we're going to make the changes that we can.”
United Management contracts with the Fayetteville Police Department to send off-duty officers to monitor the HOPE VI properties 40 hours a week, Pow said.
Pow admitted the Fayetteville police officers “probably spend a little bit more time over at Sycamore and Oak Run I and Oak Run II right around the corner.” The three properties are also subsidized under HOPE VI, but are not specifically intended to house seniors, as the Azalea, Dogwood and Cypress properties do.
“It sounds like the items that are happening here are either not getting to the officer's attention or we're either unaware of them,” Pow said, addressing residents. She added that United Management would increase oversight at Azalea.
Public safety concerns
On Sept. 14, two days after the Azalea Manor Community Watch Meeting was held, the community watch coordinator who discovered the victim in the Aug. 28 incident became a victim of a crime themselves.
Earlier that day, the coordinator reported to the police an incident involving a second resident — who has since been evicted. The resident had a male visitor who became aggressive to a separate, third resident, who confronted the visitor about his baby damaging her belongings. The woman threatened to call the police, and the man then left, the coordinator said.
Later that day, the aggressive male returned and confronted the coordinator, who, feeling threatened, used Mace on the male. The man then grabbed the coordinator’s keys and ran away, which is recorded as an individual theft in the police report of the incident.
“The previous lady that lived next door was 75 and he threatened her and she ran inside her house,” the coordinator said. “I’m 67, I sat in a chair and he came for me. Didn’t know me but must have thought I was going to run — wrong answer. He is lucky that’s all I had on me.”
The police returned after the victim called 911 and apprehended the man for robbery, according to a police report.
Less than a month later, on Oct. 4, a Dogwood Manor resident would experience a breaking-and-entering in their unit, according to another Fayetteville Police report.
Robert Ervin, another Dogwood resident and a former security officer, has raised concerns about residents’ safety in the housing community. In a June 28 letter sent to Delores Taylor, director of the Cumberland County Community Development Department, Ervin raised questions about how United Management and local law enforcement have addressed worries about public safety in Dogwood Manor.
In his letter, Ervin details concerns including false alarms disturbing residents in the middle of the night, unsecured doors, insufficient lighting in the parking lot and the need for security cameras. Ervin also reported incidents of vandalism, including slashed tires and damaged property.
“The residents are concerned that management would not or have not addressed these concerns,” Ervin wrote. “Management has given the impression that the building is private property. Even though the building is considered as private property, the residences should not be neglected if the residents (have) much-needed repairs in their units.”
Cameras installed
In response to concerns at the senior subsidized properties, United Management told CityView the company has installed security cameras at Azalea Manor and Dogwood Manor and is working on camera installation at Cypress Manor.
Pow said United Management is using its replacement reserves — intended for future maintenance and repairs — to fund the cameras at the HOPE VI properties. Odom said the cameras have cost “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to install.
Pow said the company has also recently switched to staffing sheriff's deputies in place of Fayetteville police officers to monitor the HOPE VI properties, though the company maintains relationships with both law enforcement agencies.
The Azalea Community Watch coordinator, a victim and witness of recent crimes at the complex, said they were glad that United Management seemed to be taking residents’ concerns seriously.
“One time it was hard to try to get people (to listen),” they said, “but I guess we had enough pitches and enough people had made complaints, so they couldn't just turn their head.”
Ackles believes the city should have more involvement in monitoring public housing projects in Fayetteville; United Management, which owns and operates several affordable housing projects in Fayetteville, has contracts with the city’s housing authority to run the subsidized properties.
“The city is really supposed to be looking over what's going on,” Ackles said. “They're the overseers. They're not the managers of it, but they’re the overseers, so they're supposed to be involved.”
Contact Evey Weisblat at eweisblat@cityviewnc.com or 216-527-3608.
