Tenants face issues with black mold, collapsing floor, no AC
LAWTON — Jenny Ellis is facing eviction from a rental home where the bathtub is collapsing and black mold covers the carpet, but she’s fighting the landlord as they head to court.
Another woman, Akei Guice, also faces possible legal action from a landlord who took months to rid the house of mice and now won’t fix the air-conditioning unit at a time when the temperature is starting to rise.
Both women wrote letters to Legal Aid in Lawton and the letters were forwarded to state Rep. Daniel Pae who authored legislation that would provide anti-retaliation protections for tenants. However, that bill stalled in the state Senate this year and can’t be brought up again until 2024.
These women are like thousands of other tenants statewide who have faced retaliation from landlords because they reported issues that required maintenance.
Ellis’ letter was dated April 24 and contained information that demonstrated lack of concern by the landlord for the amount of black mold that had grown in the rental house. She also wrote that sewage was coming up through the floor in the bathroom.
“It (mold) is way worse,” Ellis said in a June 4 interview. “And they haven’t done anything about it. The bathtub is also collapsing (into the floor).”
Ellis acknowledged that she owes rent for May and June and was scheduled to appear in Comanche County District Court June 5. Ellis maintains she wasn’t served properly with court documents since the process server handed the documents to her babysitter.
Ellis can’t afford an attorney, so she turned to Legal Aid which helped prepare her for the June 5 court appearance.
At one time, Ellis’ landlord threatened to shut off the water, but Legal Aid attorneys notified the landlord that action would be considered illegal. The water remained on after that, Ellis said.
After receiving rent payments for February and March, the landlord gave Ellis a 30-day notice to vacate the property claiming he wanted to fix the house.
“They promised to fix the plumbing for a year but did nothing to address the root cause while I was there,” Ellis wrote in her letter.
If her rental problems weren’t enough, Ellis also has heart and colon cancer issues.
“My doctor had some concerns that I am being exposed to black mold or lead paint and I will be tested for that in the future,” she wrote in the Legal Aid letter. “I do not believe my landlord wants me to vacate to fix the issues with the house. I believe they want me to move to do the bare minimum to hide the issues with the house and move in another tenant to expose them to the same horrid living conditions.”
In many cases, rent houses and apartments are plagued with insects or have no air conditioning, heat or water, Legal Aid attorney Cade McClure said.
When tenants like Ellis fail to pay rent because of the poor conditions, they are evicted, he said. The evictions have increased dramatically since a federally mandated moratorium was lifted. The moratorium ended when regulations surrounding the COVID-19 outbreak were eased.
“Landlords are unfairly letting people rent shacks that are in disrepair,” McClure said. “They must be inhabitable with heat, water, AC and free from insects. In many cases, they (landlords) are leasing to people on a month-to-month, and when a tenant complains (about the conditions) the landlords move to evict them.”
No air conditioning
Guice, the woman whose air-conditioning doesn’t work, admits she’s behind on her rent but the landlord isn’t fixing the AC.
“We’ve been without air-conditioning for 30 days, and it’s starting to get hotter,” said the single mother of four children. “They took care of the mice after Legal Aid sent them a letter.”
Since the AC stopped working, Guice has asked to move to another apartment, but the landlord won’t allow it.
“We have to remove almost all our clothes during the day,” she said. “For the price I’m paying, this isn’t fair. They said they ordered the antifreeze or whatever they need but the problem hasn’t been corrected. It shouldn’t take this long to get some help.”
The apartment does have a window unit, but that doesn’t cover the bedrooms where she and her children sleep.
Guice said she lost her job after suffering injuries in a car accident. Now, she has a new job but it’s taking time to recover from the lost wages, which caused her to be in arrears to the landlord.
The landlord continually sends Guice text messages warning that “legal action” will be taken if the back rent is not paid.
“I understand that, but we still don’t have any AC,” she said during a June 4 interview. “It’s 83 degrees inside here today. We can’t even cook because it’s so hot. It’ll make it worse.”
State Rep. Mickey Dollens (D-Oklahoma City) introduced a bill during the 2023 legislative session that would have required working air-conditioning in all rental units, but the measure failed to get out of committee.
“Air conditioning is an interesting issue because it’s not defined as an essential service in the Landlord-Tenant Act,” said Sabine Brown, an infrastructure and access senior policy analyst with the Oklahoma Policy Institute. “The problem is when a tenant doesn’t uphold the terms of a lease they can get evicted.”
Brown said it’s difficult to quantify the number of stories like those told by Ellis and Guice, but she’s heard “a lot of them” from people across Oklahoma.