I-Team investigation into deplorable living conditions trigger county sweep
DECATUR, Ga. - Lower-income residents have complained for years that poor, often deplorable, living conditions are becoming more prevalent. Renters feel stuck and not heard.
The FOX 5 I-Team documented for three months what we've seen at the Woodridge Apartment complex in Decatur. The conditions that some of these families are living in are simply shocking.
When then-tenant Vartavius Thorpe took the I-Team on a tour you couldn't help but gag from the odor of sewage wafting out of an apartment window.
"It’s sewage. It’s raw sewage," he told FOX 5's Dana Fowle, seemingly immune now to the smell.
This was late July, and behind that unit she saw a thick, dripping liquid. This apartment had no longer had tenants, but there were other families living in the area.
Thorpe, a father with a baby on the way, took Fowle to his nearby apartment in the same complex. She stepped on sagging and soggy floors on our way to a disturbing sight.
"When you flush the toilet," he said showing her, "it comes here in the tub."
This feces-stained bathtub is just one of the unbelievable conditions featured in our Fox 5 I-Team investigation. Our questions brought out the authorities to this Decatur apartment complex.
Raw sewage. He said his young son was in the bathtub when feces started flooding in.
He said for years he’s complained to management about this, rats, and garbage piling up outside, but he claims little here changes.
Thorpe said the complex's communications portal stopped working and messages were taken on what he called "sticky pads." The FOX 5 I-Team reached out to Woodridge management to talk about the issues at the complex. In a brief phone call, we were told, "No comment."
"And they’ve been through several different management and done sold the property so many times that every time a new management gets here they say they have no record of the complaints we’ve been making," Thorpe said in frustration.
DeKalb County tax records show the Woodridge apartments have been sold four times since 2015, with the sale price rocketing almost $19 million in just seven years. A moneymaker despite horrible living conditions that tenants say haven’t improved.
The Fox 5 I-Team tried repeatedly through emails to get hold of the owners, Sundance Bay Income & Growth, a private equity fund in Utah. We got no responses.
Chris Reynolds, another tenant the I-Team met during our July visit, walked Fowle through his apartment in the same complex. He showed her where a tree fell through the ceiling during a storm. Two weeks later, he said, it still wasn’t fixed then it rained.
"Everything I had was soaked through because the apartment flooded."
He was sleeping on the floor when the I-Team visited, paying almost $1,000 a month, he said, for this one-bedroom apartment.
Outside his door on the stairwell landing was a pile of debris from his now mildewing apartment.
"(The repairman) left all of that there," he said.
Reynolds has since moved out, tired of the piled up garbage and the crumbling infrastructure.
By late September and still on the case, the FOX 5 I-Team asked DeKalb County if the latest apartment complex owners had been cited for the conditions there. We were told no.
About a month later, in response to our questions, six county departments conducted a surprise property sweep. And they saw what we saw back in July.
A DeKalb County spokesperson said the owners were cited 30 times for raw sewage spills, deteriorating roofing, exposed electrical wires, vacant and unsecured units, damaged retaining walls, and more.
The Fire Marshall also found that 95 percent of the complex’s fire extinguishers were missing.
Thorpe and his young family have moved out of the Woodridge Apartment complex off of Panthersville Road. He said he’s waited years for help. He couldn’t wait anymore.
"I’ve been complaining since I been here," he told us.
A county spokesman said Woodridge Apartment ownership has a December court day. The FOX
5 I-Team will be there.