Mold, rodents and leaking faucets: Ferguson tenants want apartment management held accountable

FERGUSON, Mo. (KMOV) - North St. Louis County renters say they’re forced to live with shoddy plumbing and broken appliances. Some even saying there’s mold inside their units. It’s happening at Pleasant View Gardens Apartment Complex off West Florissant Avenue, formerly known as Canfield Green Apartments in Ferguson.

“This is supposed to be off, you can’t turn it off,” Eric Graves said.

Graves, who’s lived at Pleasant View Gardens for years now, showed News 4 his bathtub faucet that doesn’t turn off. We watched Graves battle with the tub for minutes, with water still leaking.

“It’s been like that for months,” Graves said.

Graves said water leaking from faucets isn’t the only issue. He says his stovetop wasn’t working and knobs for the stove were hanging on by a thread.

“For two years it was broke, and they wouldn’t come. For the life of me, I wouldn’t understand why they just couldn’t come and fix the damn thing,” Graves said.

Graves said maintenance eventually came and fixed his stove. A fix, he says, only took two minutes. Another tenant told us he experienced the same thing.

“As far as them keeping up the main, they didn’t. You’d call them to come fix it up, they wouldn’t come, take three or four days. They’d patch instead of doing the repair,” Rudolph Childs said.

Childs lived at the Ferguson apartment complex for seven years. He said his biggest issue with it was the mold inside his unit. He said he knows there is mold in other units as well.

Childs said he moved “because of the conditions and they wouldn’t repair. [I] didn’t want to move, but my daughter and son wanted me out of here because of the smell and didn’t want me to get sick or anything.”

Childs and Graves aren’t the only tenants expressing concerns. There are dozens of Google reviews reflecting similar conditions inside Pleasant View Gardens units.

Reviews like this “it’s horrible and roaches really bad,” “very unsanitary, unsafe, I’d rather live in a shelter than to live here,” and “I just moved in and it’s going on three weeks I’m having problems especially with mold in my bathroom water comes through the floor and sometimes it’s black and it always stinks. I’ve told them multiple times and nothing is done about it.”

News 4 took those concerns straight to management on Thursday. When we walked up to the front office, an employee shut the door and locked it in our faces. We tried knocking and asking questions for several minutes. Then called the office.

When someone picked up inside the office and talked with News 4′s Jenna Rae, they referred her to the Sansone Group. It’s the St. Louis-based real estate company that owns Pleasant View Gardens. We also called their office and sent their management team emails.

Tenants tell News 4 the lack of response from apartment management and its ownership is typical.

“This is not new, they don’t do anything about it,” Graves said.

Childs recommends people not to move there.

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