Editor’s note: This is the second of a two-part story looking at tenants living in rental units — owned and managed by United Management — who have alleged a multitude of complaints. In this story, CityView looks at resident concerns about delays in maintenance of their units. The first story in the series, which examined public safety concerns, was published Monday.
Four summers ago, Peggy Thompson became a resident of Sycamore Park, a subsidized apartment complex owned and operated by United Management II in downtown Fayetteville. Today, she estimates more than half of the four years she’s been living in the complex have been spent waiting for work orders to be completed.
Last month, Thompson reached out to the Cumberland County Community Watch Coalition to raise concerns about maintenance problems at the apartment complex; she said neighbors had experienced similar issues “due to improper maintenance” at the property.
“I have been here since August 2019 and had many issues,” Thompson wrote in a Sept. 8 email message to the Community Watch Coalition. “Many work orders have been delayed, unaddressed, redone, or blame was shifted to me.”
Thompson sent a list of unfulfilled work orders to the Sycamore Park management staff in January 2020; of those, two were finally addressed in 2022 and one is still pending. The work orders ranged from a ceiling fan that needed to be manually started, unsecured electrical outlets and a window that leaked when it rained, which she described as a “health hazard” due to the potential for mold to grow from the excess moisture.
“Under N.C. law you are required to make repairs within a certain time frame,” Thompson wrote in the list she compiled. “I would like to continue to rent from you and not move.”
N.C. Gen. Stat. § 42-42 states that landlords must “make all repairs and do whatever is necessary to put and keep the premises in a fit and habitable condition.”
Sycamore Park is one of seven HOPE VI properties in Fayetteville — all owned and operated by United Management — along with Azalea Manor, Cypress Manor, Dogwood Manor, Hickory Ridge, Oak Run I and Oak Run II. The HOPE VI program was an initiative from the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development that aimed to revitalize aging, distressed public housing projects by demolishing them and replacing them with new mixed-income buildings, many of which received funds from both HUD and private donors. Fayetteville received a HOPE VI grant in 2008.
Shannon Pow, chief financial and operational officer at United Management, which is based in Fayetteville, said she had “not heard anything” related to maintenance concerns over unanswered work orders from residents at HOPE VI properties. Pow said work orders state that they will be fulfilled within 30 days, but would not comment directly on complaints by some residents that some work orders had been piling up for months or longer.
“We follow up with every single one of them,” Pow told CityView.
Latoya Young, another Sycamore Park resident, said United Management recently began fulfilling work orders she submitted last year. It was only when she was fighting an eviction order, she said, involving rent recertification — a process of verifying that a tenant is still eligible for affordable housing that she later won — that United Management began fixing issues in her apartment that had previously gone unaddressed.
She believes this wasn’t a coincidence.
“They thought I was getting ready to leave, so they started sending people in,” Young said. “Now my toilet is getting fixed and the hole in my wall is getting fixed and all of that stuff is getting mended because you all thought I was getting ready to get out.”
Young also said United Management did not replace or repair the carpet in the unit she had moved into, despite it being in “terrible” condition. The property manager, Dinah Olay, said her request to have the carpet replaced may be denied because Young had a pet — an emotional support animal — and that she would have to speak with upper management because she had accepted the apartment in its current condition upon moving in.
Young, who said her request to replace the carpet was ultimately denied, said she did not see the unit before she started unloading her belongings. Young, who lives with her daughter, said she found it offensive that her request had been denied, believing it to be in part because of the emotional support dog.
“I felt discriminated against because of that,” Young said. “I have severe anxiety and my daughter has psychosis. So we have a dog and we've had her since we moved in.”
Residents at Azalea Manor, who have criticized United Management for not taking their safety concerns seriously, have also complained about work orders being left unfulfilled for months, including an out-of-order washing machine left for most of this year with dirty water inside. A resident in a September Community Watch meeting said they’d submitted multiple work orders for the machine to be fixed, starting in February; another resident affirmed that the work orders had been sent.
The machine, they said, has still not been fixed.
Pow, who was present at that September meeting, said she would have to “ask (her) staff on that one because that was not brought up in the meeting that (she) was in.”
Rosa Jones, another tenant at Azalea Manor, said in the same Community Watch meeting that she’d submitted a work order this summer — not yet addressed in September — for a crack in her door large enough for insects to get through.
“The only reason why I put it in is because I was getting tired of being overloaded with crickets,” she said.
Another resident, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal, also said that the weather stripping on her unit had deteriorated to the point of being nonfunctional.
“I can lay there on my bed, and look out, and I can see outside because the stripping is gone,” she said.
In response to the concerns, Pow said that maintenance of weather stripping is something United Management typically takes care of in the winter.
“So I don't mean to say it's not important, but when we're normally doing a work order, we're looking at things that are breaking down, that are functional things that we need to make sure we get immediately,” she said.
Inspection time
Several residents who spoke to CityView for this story, including Young, have accused United Management of only fulfilling work orders when a state inspection is due. Young said she had put a work order in for holes in her window screens, but they were only fixed when the state inspector told maintenance to repair them after examining her apartment.
“When they do send a maintenance man in there, it's only when the state is coming,” she said. “On a day-to-day basis, you put in a work order, you're waiting months until it's time for the state to come do an annual walk-through.”
Documents from fall 2020 show United Management sent a letter notifying Sycamore Park residents who had unfulfilled work orders older than 30 days that those fixes would be made the following week. A health and safety inspection performed by United Management, the documents showed, was set for Nov. 9 — roughly three weeks after maintenance had presumably begun fulfilling late work orders during the week of Oct. 19.
Sycamore Park residents who fail an inspection from the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency (NCHFA) will have their leases terminated, a United Management inspection notification document states.
Pow said United Management routinely conducts its own inspections to address maintenance concerns prior to inspections required by HUD and the NCHFA.
“We're inspecting plumbing, we're inspecting the HVAC,” Pow said. “We also are inspecting block egresses and things like that. That's a requirement of HUD. It's also a requirement of North Carolina housing finance to keep those things free and clear.”
Robert Ervin, a Dogwood resident, raised concerns about residents’ safety in a June 28 letter sent to Delores Taylor, the director of the Cumberland County Community Development Department. Ervin said that one of his biggest maintenance concerns has been routinely spotting pests in the building. He’s found a dead baby snake and a live lizard in his apartment and has seen water bugs, roaches and bed bugs in the complex.
“When I moved into Dogwood Manor I did not see any evidence of bugs,” Ervin said. “Ever since some people moved out of the building and shared their furniture, I started to see a lot of bugs crawling. There are so many bugs crawling through my whole apartment it is driving me nuts.”
The maintenance issues — and public safety concerns — reported by residents come at a time when United Management continues to own a substantial portion of affordable housing in Fayetteville.
At an Aug. 7 Fayetteville City Council meeting, Councilwoman Shakeyla Ingram acknowledged that she’d heard “concerns” from her constituents about United Management properties in her district, which includes the downtown apartments. In the same meeting, Mayor Mitch Colvin later mentioned that while debating whether to move forward with a 10-year loan extension of $380,000 for United Management’s Blanton Green II apartments in central Fayetteville, he would be meeting with Pow soon to “talk about a number of things.” He asked the council to delay a decision until that meeting occurred; the council agreed.
According to the legislation in question, the extension of the loan will allow for rent to remain low at the property, since United Management would otherwise have been required to refinance the complex and subsequently raise rents because of the current interest rate environment.
The council approved the loan extension on Oct. 23, passing it in the consent agenda. The approval, according to the legislation, may require the city to rework its HUD Annual Action Plan, which is expected to come up at a later date.
Janene Ackles is the founder of the Community Watch Coalition who spoke to city council members about resident concerns regarding some of United Management’s properties in a public comment section of an Aug. 14 council meeting. Ackles also previously ran for the District 2 council seat; she told CityView she sought public office in part to better address residents’ concerns about United Management, which she has critiqued Ingram for not doing enough about. She said that, despite losing in the primary, she is going to continue speaking out about residents’ concerns regarding United Management.
“Although I didn’t win my bid for city council, I will continue to advocate for my underserved and vulnerable communities as I have promised and will continue my fight for injustices,” Ackles told CityView in a text message. “Somebody has to be the voice. My choice will always be the community first!”
If you are a former or current resident of United Management properties and would like to share any personal experiences related to public safety, maintenance, or rent, please email talk@cityviewnc.com.
Contact Evey Weisblat at eweisblat@cityviewnc.com or 216-527-3608.
