Urine on the stairwell, broken elevators and broken windows. That’s how Abdullahi Haji described the Greenway Heights apartments.
“It’s been a nightmare,” he said, referring to his time there.
Since March 2020, inspectors logged 20 violations at Greenway Heights – 14 of which were citations for “life safety” issues, in keeping with city data. The overwhelming majority of those citations occurred in August of 2022.
Haji has lived at Greenway Heights in Minneapolis’ Phillips neighborhood for around a 12 months and a half.
Fardowsa Haji, his sister, said she began noticing issues once the brand new management company, Granite City Real Estate, took over. The previous management had cashed a money order, which Fardowsa Haji had given for the deposit. She said the brand new management promised to place that quantity towards the subsequent month’s rent as an alternative.
That also hasn’t happened, in keeping with Fardowsa Haji.
“They’re like, ‘I don’t care concerning the previous management. You will have to cope with it.’ But they told me they’re going to reimburse it. That’s the cash I already paid, and I even have the receipt,” she said.
Tenant concerns
Residents also raised concerns about cleanliness within the constructing and the upkeep of shared services, like laundry – so Fardowsa Haji called 311.
“It (the laundry area) was overloaded with trash, and no janitor was coming,” Fardowsa Haji said.
Within the winter, she said most of the laundry machines stopped working.
“I don’t even want to recollect; it was winter, I used to be a brand new mom, my daughter was vomiting, and there was no washer. Each floor that I went to, it was broken,” Fardowsa Haji said.
She and others living within the constructing are concerned that the constructing will not be secure.
“In case you pull on the door hard enough, which the homeless people have discovered, you possibly can just get inside the constructing through the side entrance,” Abdullahi Haji said. “They simply pull on the door, they get in, they sleep in the steps, they smoke in the steps, and the steps are only filled with trash. There’s vomit on the ground; they urinate on the steps; there’s graffiti on the partitions; there are needles that they use to inject drugs.”
Abdullahi Haji said management has not been aware of maintenance requests or conversations about safety.
The Hajis’ unit has several maintenance issues, Fardowsa Haji said. For instance, the refrigerator doesn’t work unless it’s on the very best temperature.
“I even have to unplug my fridge after I’m going to sleep at night in order that I don’t need to put my daughter and myself in danger,” she said.
One tenant, Koos Isse, is visually impaired. She has had issues together with her key fob for the constructing and was once stuck outside within the wintertime for one hour because she couldn’t enter, a friend translated.
Isse also has had issues together with her door knob for around two months, in keeping with the friend. The door doesn’t close easily, and she or he feels unsafe sleeping at night in her apartment as a consequence of fears that folks might break in.
One other tenant has a toddler in a wheelchair. Ferdowsa Haji said that sometimes the elevators don’t work, after which they need to go down the steps.
“We only have one elevator in the entire apartment constructing. If this one is down, then everybody has to make use of the steps, which makes it really difficult for individuals who survive the third floor and the fourth floor. Especially the woman who’s visually impaired. She’s gonna need assistance to go down the steps. There’s one other family that has a disabled child that’s physically disabled, so that they need to literally carry her downstairs, her wheelchair and the whole lot,” Abdullahi Haji said.
Abdullahi Haji said that as an alternative of accommodating the assorted safety concerns of residents, management has ignored many messages from residents.
“They show lots of retaliation for individuals who determine to talk up, and so they threaten them with verbal threats, and so they tell them they’re going to revoke their parking privileges and so they’re gonna file evictions,” he said.
His sister, Fardowsa Haji has written several emails to the direct managers of the constructing and the developers, PRG and Phoenix Development. Not one of the issues she reached out about have been solved, she said.
The tenants reached out to their councilmember, Jason Chavez (Ward 9), who also tried reaching out to management.
“I’ve been trying different people. And it’s been a scarcity of response,” Chavez said. “I believe having missing management and hands off management is resulting in lots of these problems and we want accountability to assist address it.”
He’s hoping to establish an on-site meeting between town’s regulatory services and the residents.
“The rationale I would like inspections on site is because I would like them to listen to directly from the residents of what’s happening,” Chavez said. “So it may be a right away response. Like what is occurring straight away, as an alternative of waiting a pair weeks for somebody to indicate as much as your constructing and then you definately perhaps not even noticing the person’s there and also you’re not capable of communicate with them with what issue you’ve.”
As the first point of contact on the resident side, the Haji siblings feel burnt out.
“I believe my mental health has definitely been deteriorating,” Abdullahi Haji said. “It’s definitely beginning to take a giant toll on me.”
Last month, Fardowsa Haji and her brother received a 60-day notice to vacate. They think management is retaliating against them because they’ve been outspoken about resident concerns.
“We were just like the only two those who were advocating,” Fardowsa Haji said. “They know in the event that they kick us out, they might be in charge, and they’re going to handle it the way in which they need.”
Abdullahi Haji then hired an attorney who sent the corporate a stop and desist letter, to which management responded that they’d take him to court, he said.
“It’s been pretty scary,” Abdullahi Haji said. “It’s been a ton of misconduct and mistreatment going together with a number of the predatory behaviors that they’ve been showcasing to us.”
Granite City Real Estate, the onsite management, didn’t reply to our request to comment on the resident claims.
Ethnic slurs, unfair treatment
Fardowsa Haji said that the onsite property manager, who’s Black, has acted rudely and hatefully towards most of the residents.
Several residents within the constructing are Somali elders, a few of whom don’t speak English. They’ve been off-put by the on-site manager’s responses once they attempt to clarify the issues they’re facing, Fardowsa Haji said.
“I witness lots of her screaming at people, slapping (slamming) the door at their faces, making comments of our religion and our culture, saying, ‘I’m not gonna let anybody within the constructing that’s Somali anymore,’ which is basically discriminatory,” Fardowsa Haji said.
Fardowsa Haji alleges the manager called the Somali residents “dirty” and swore she would never allow more Somali residents.
“I believe simply because we’re Somali and we’re first-generation immigrants, and we’re a vulnerable community, that’s what they decided to make the most of us. Due to communication barrier, and lots of the tenants within the constructing that don’t really speak English and so they need a translator present for them to sort of understand one another, and she or he takes advantage of that,” Abdullahi Haji said.
“She’s been swearing at them, attacking their ethnicity, their heritage, their culture, and likewise using religious hate speech,” he said. “We brought that to the upper management, and so they still don’t appear to care.”
Accountability
Abdullahi Haji feels not one of the people involved wish to take accountability.
When Fardowsa Haji sent a grievance concerning the manager’s alleged behavior, a couple of days later, she confronted her about it, Fardowsa Haji said.
“She said to me, ‘Well, you sent out those emails, and so they told me to handle it, so I’m handling it.’ Which just about is insinuating that, ‘It doesn’t really matter who you sent an email to. You’re still gonna be stuck with me.’”
When the siblings reached out to the constructing developers, Abdullahi Haji said they hit a dead-end.
“I told them what’s been happening, and so they told me that straight away they don’t have the budget to get latest property management for the buildings. Just about what they were saying is, ‘We are able to’t change the property management group straight away since the constructing will not be making enough money straight away to rent a brand new management group. So that you guys are just about stuck right where you guys are at,’” he said. “It was a giant slap to the face; it was a rude awakening (because) it sort of showed that they don’t really care as well.”
Fardowsa Haji is upset with the entire situation.
“It’s really stressful. It’s really frustrating. I feel like as a minority, no person cares about us. We don’t have a voice that can talk for us. They simply walk throughout us, and so they’re doing that on purpose because they know we’re a minority,” she said.