Poor Tenants With Nowhere To Go Stay In Unsafe, Dilapidated New Orleans Apartment Building In Foreclosure While Rent-Skimming Slumlord Allows Complex To Crumble

In New Orleans, Louisiana, WWL-TV Channel 4 reports:

• Some residents in a New Orleans East apartment complex are in tears over how bad their living conditions have become.
  
  Some of the things you’d see in this apartment building at 6000 Chef Menteur Highway are things you might expect to see in a condemned building, but people are still living here.
  
  "We have children back here we have no where to go,” Winesha Wright said through tears. “Once these people tell us we have to go we have nowhere to go… It's stressful that's why I'm crying."
  
  She’s not alone. Other residents said they’re living with roaches, mold and trash strewn around the complex. They’re complaints have gone no where.
  
  One resident showed us how her overflowing toilet may have sent her neighbor’s sister to the hospital. "She was sitting the bathroom and the ceiling fell,” Rose Walker said.
  
  Hannah Adams is the attorney representing the injured tenant.
  
  "This property is in foreclosure it was actually seized by the Sheriff in February," Adams said. She’s contacted the apartment’s owners, but has struggled to get anything fixed. "Unfortunately the penalties for landlords to make repairs are very minimal,” Adams said.
  
  While the property is in foreclosure, it still belongs to Graham Packard LLC. We contacted Dan Packard, who came up as a registered agent and officer. His lawyer called us back to say that it’s an ongoing legal matter and that they had no comment at the time.
  
  "We living in danger right now,” Another tenant said. “I mean he got everybody money we just here I'm due July I'm almost 7 months pregnant I can't be living like that."
  
  Besides repairs, residents aren’t even sure who to pay anymore.
  
  "He was telling us to send him the money … don't worry about the these notices,” Wright said as she examined a notice left in her mailbox. "We are calling out for help. Each and every one of us have kids. Where are we supposed to go if they give us 24 hours? I'm trying to figure out where we are supposed to go."
  
  Many of the people we spoke with said they’re planning to move, but it can’t happen overnight.

Source: Tenants call for help as apartment complex crumbles around them.