‘Look, this guy has to stop.' Tenants are beating evictions by Akron 'slumlord' and son

Balanced on two halves of a crumbling cinder block, the last step rolled out under Candy Lauderdale. Her foot snapped when she hit the basement floor of the house she's renting in Akron.

Lauderdale pushed down so hard that the bone in her foot popped back into place. She dragged herself to the top of the rickety stairs, left a message for her boyfriend, Stepfon Brooks, and passed out from the pain on the couch.

The April injury cut the couple’s income in half. Lauderdale paid $900 in rent that month and $500 in May, not the $1,000 per month her landlord, Ross Thomas, expected.

“He said, 'Pay whatever you can,'” Lauderdale said of the weeks she needed to get back on her feet, physically and financially.

Thomas told the Beacon Journal he had a repairman fix the step months ago. But a visit to the home in September confirmed it still wasn't fixed.

He grew impatient waiting for the full month's rent while his tenants began complaining about other repairs needed at the Grant Street apartment home: stripped flooring in the upstairs bathroom; watermarked, sagging ceiling tiles below it downstairs; a foul stench from a sealed bedroom; towels stuffed under kitchen cabinets to keep their cat in and wild animals out; a wire dangling chest-high across the backyard; inoperable garage doors; tape holding walls from crumbling; and a load-bearing wall on the front porch that swings like it holds nothing.

Lauderdale kept every rent check receipt and text message from Thomas in case their tenant-landlord relationship got worse, and it did.

In late August, Thomas filed an eviction. A judge in October denied the request, ruling that no one should pay what Thomas was charging to live like Lauderdale and Brooks.

Lauderdale didn’t realize at first that she was dealing with the son of Gary Thomas, a landlord with a history of dodging housing code violations and tax collectors while squeezing profits from blighted rental units.

Thousands of tenants in the marginalized pockets of Akron’s rental market know Gary Thomas, his son or the dizzying number of shell companies at their disposal.

The Grant Street apartment where Lauderdale and Brooks lived is one of 17 Gary Thomas or his son manages with active housing code violations. Another unit four blocks east on Wilbur Avenue is in even worse shape but not yet documented by city housing inspectors.

Three sets of tenants who’ve lived in the Grant Street or Wilbur Avenue properties have all faced evictions by Gary or Ross Thomas this year. The Thomases manage these two rental units for the retirement account of Jeffrey and Socorro Magaziner, a married couple from California.

On Wilbur Avenue, a single mother faces eviction after refusing to pay rent because Gary Thomas won't properly fix anything, including the busted front door and holes in the walls big enough for her children to fall through. The tenant before her, who made and paid for some repairs, said Gary Thomas duped him into thinking the property might one day be his on a rent-to-own contract.

They, like other previous tenants interviewed by the Beacon Journal over the years, share a similar story of exploitative landlords who aggressively evict and fail to repair property.

Now, the Thomases are working for property owners who live hundreds or thousands of miles from the troubles of their tenants and rental units.

The Magaziners wouldn’t answer phone calls and texts from a reporter. Gary Thomas said he won’t talk to the Beacon Journal. And Ross Thomas won’t comment on the $164,000 in back taxes, the blighted units or anything else involving his father’s business.

“I can't speak for him, nor will I,” Ross Thomas said. “All my taxes are paid.”

‘We don’t want this happening to other people’

Ross Thomas said he’ll comply with the city-ordered repairs on the Grant Street property but not while Lauderdale and Brooks live there.

“And we'll get the house vacant," Ross Thomas said while pursuing the eviction. "And then we will proceed and fix every single one of those things. And you better believe the housing department isn't going to let us go on that.”

Lauderdale was considering living out of a car or voluntarily moving out, even if they survived the eviction notice Ross Thomas posted Aug. 25 on their front door.

At one point, she came home and found her landlord's father, Gary Thomas, standing in the kitchen, demanding the the money she owed Ross Thomas.

She told him she’d pay him once she drained a 401k retirement account from her days as a temp worker. She came home that night from work and found the eviction notice.

Then, she started searching online for Ross and Gary Thomas.

She discovered multiple Beacon Journal stories from 2017 to 2020 about Gary Thomas, the ruin he's caused tenants and an exploitative business model that prompted Summit County Fiscal Officer Kristen Scalise to label Thomas a "slumlord."

Lauderdale found no comfort in knowing she wasn't alone.

“We don’t want this happening to other people. And it’s going to keep happening until someone finally puts their foot down and says, ‘Look, this guy has to stop'. He’s putting [his properties] in other names," she said. "And nobody has caught onto that.”

In early 2002, Gary Thomas transferred a rental property on Girard Street from a company with his initials into his wife’s name. Then, five months later, he used his name when filing to evict Lauderdale’s ex-husband from that property.

“The sad part is, I didn’t know it at the time, but I dealt with Thomas back in the day,” Lauderdale said.

A judge threw out the eviction.

A decade later, in one of their financial downturns marked by bankruptcies and bad credit, Gary Thomas and his wife at the time defaulted on the Girard Street mortgage, and the bank foreclosed.

Why they stayed: ‘He took advantage of our situation’

In September 2022, Lauderdale and Brooks started renting from Ross Thomas on Grant Street after her daughter moved out. The daughter left the unit in bad shape, but Lauderdale agreed to clean it up in exchange for no security deposit.

“He took advantage of our situation,” Brooks said. The unmarried couple, who consider themselves husband and wife, wanted out of Timber Top Apartments. Tenants there were complaining of disrepair, flooding, mold and aggressive evictions even before a carbon monoxide leak killed one person and sent others to the hospital last October.

Lauderdale and Brooks loved the Grant Street house on the relatively safe Firestone Park side of Archwood Avenue, even though the unit was out of code the entire time they lived there. When they moved out of the Grant Street house in late October, there were still no state-mandated smoke alarms or carbon monoxide detectors, which the city has required in all gas-burning dwellings since the Timber Top incident.

Any repairs to the Grant Street house only happened when ordered and with a bare minimum effort, the couple said. A utility company, for example, wouldn’t turn on the gas until Ross Thomas got rid of an outdated hot water heater, which he replaced with a newer but used unit. A man sent out by the landlord couldn’t keep the pilot flame lit, so Lauderdale and Brooks said they had to figure it out.

Nothing else ever got repaired, they said. Early on, when Lauderdale called about a hole in the heating and cooling system in the basement, she said Ross Thomas told her to “put duct tape around it.”

Still, Lauderdale and Brooks cleaned up the house and lived there the last months of 2022. But nothing was ever in writing — which was another early red flag.

A lease was finally signed in January “because I begged him for it,” Lauderdale said. It was a month-to-month agreement, meaning rent — which was upped from $900 to $1,000 — could be increased whenever Ross Thomas said so. And the landlord could tear up the agreement at will, giving the couple as little as 30 days under state law to get out.

Eviction filing limits options for tenants

Ross Thomas told the Beacon Journal he prefers to use “an oral month-to-month lease. You still have the right to reclaim your property,” he said, meaning the right to evict.

“If they hadn't asked for [a written lease agreement], we would have just continued on the oral [agreement]. It doesn't bother me either way,” he said.

County records show that Ross paid an $862 delinquent tax bill on the property the same day he posted the three-day notice to evict Lauderdale and Brooks. It’s standard for magistrates to check for back taxes before moving forward with an eviction.

Before the case was filed, on the fourth day the notice was on the door, Lauderdale finally had the money from her emptied 401k account, she said, but refused to pay if her landlord wouldn’t back off the eviction. She’d be better off, she and Brooks figured, using the cash to find somewhere else to live.

But landlords screen tenants for past evictions. And active cases are hard to ignore.

“If you’re trying to kick us out, how are we supposed to find someplace else to go if every time we try to apply to places, we can’t get in nowhere because this [eviction filing] is on our background?” Lauderdale asked two weeks before her eviction hearing on Oct. 3. “That’s the thing. We got nowhere to go right now because everyone is denying us.”

Brooks was furious. How could they get thrown out when his girlfriend broke her foot because their landlord wouldn’t fix a basement step? It was one of 22 code violations an Akron housing inspector found after Lauderdale called the city to complain.

“You’re beating people out of their hard-earned money. You don’t want to fix nothing,” Brooks said. “All you do is come over here and collect rent. That’s it."

Two properties, one owner, three evictions

Four blocks east on Wilbur Avenue, a single mother still doesn’t have a key to the house Gary Thomas has been renting to her since July.

She can’t lock the door when she leaves. And she never bothered to unpack because she quickly realized this was no safe or healthy place for her kids.

She said she's refused to pay rent because Gary Thomas won't fix major hazards like missing grate covers for the cold air return. The hole, which she covered with an ottoman flipped against the wall, is big enough to swallow any of her three children.

The backsplash in the kitchen has separated from the wall. The tiles, which would otherwise fall into the sink, lean against the faucet.

Layers of paneling have come apart on the front door. And the newest window in the house was installed improperly. It doesn’t stay up.

The tenant said Gary Thomas had someone cover a hole in the sink with a large washer that just rattles around, leaving an opening for bugs to come and go. Plaster under a window air conditioner crumbled to the floor.

Thomas is trying to evict her, like he did the tenant who lived there before her. The woman is not being named because she doesn’t want to suffer the stigma of being evicted.

She has text messages that prove Gary Thomas refused to make repairs or work with her on getting rental assistance. It’s standard now for magistrates to pause eviction cases with open applications for rental assistance, and tenants have won cases by proving poor living conditions.

The two-story rental home with an unfinished basement is also owned by the Magaziners' retirement account.

When she moved in, the woman was told she would have to pay the outstanding water bill, even though municipal water is the responsibility of property owners in Akron. But she and her kids needed to bathe and drink. She got a $500 voucher from her church so municipal workers would reconnect service.

The woman found the apartment from a friend on Facebook whose brother thought he had a claim to the property through a land contract, or rent-to-own agreement, which Gary Thomas dismissed.

The verbal land contract deal sowed confusion. The former tenant received the new tenant's $1,100 security deposit and $1,100 for the first month’s rent – not Gary Thomas.

Nonetheless, Gary Thomas signed a lease July 7 saying he received the $2,200.

Seven days later, and every week afterward like clockwork, Gary Thomas texted and called for the rent. The woman sometimes responded with a list of repairs.

“Why would I pay you $1,100 a month and you won’t fix anything?” she asked.

Prior tenant beats eviction because there was no lease

Reached by phone, the former tenant asked that he not be named because he doesn’t “want everybody to know my business,” which includes a denied eviction and a frustrating experience with Gary Thomas.

“I never seen a lease in like two years,” the man said. “So, I didn't even say nothing about that. But then when he tried to write me an eviction, they said I didn't even have a lease.”

The judge would not approve the eviction for a tenant who Gary Thomas could not even prove was living there.

The former tenant said he put $1,500 down for a verbal rent-to-own contract. Even then, the front door never latched and was missing windows. The upstairs bathroom was leaking down through the kitchen ceiling around the light fixture, which is anchored by a sloppy and massive patch of drywall compound.

“I'm like, 'Dang, Gary. The front door don't work. The carpet is filthy. The paint is chipping on the walls,'" the former tenant said.

The man said Gary Thomas told him to make necessary repairs and that they would sort it out later. "My money. No refund. No nothing,” the man said of how that deal turned out.

Thomas always called about the rent, sometimes days in advance of the due date. The landlord otherwise wouldn't answer his phone, the former tenant said.

But the man, 23 when he moved in, was enticed by the “hundreds of properties” Gary Thomas said he wanted to offload.

“I can rent-to-own, have a house in my name by the time I’m 28," the young man thought. "I can own me a crib. I’m wit’ it.

“Then, I started noticing he’s just putting up to get his rent. He don’t want to talk about nothing else,” said the young man. “I felt like I was played because I feel like I was supposed to own a house in a couple of years.”

Their day in court

In October, the single mother went to court with a friend for support by her side. Over the objection of Gary Thomas, her case was continued until mid-November.

Meanwhile, Lauderdale and Brooks had their day in Akron Municipal Court a week earlier.

Ross Thomas gave a sharp glare as he passed his tenants in the hallway, where they'd been waiting an hour for their hearing.

Moments later, Gary Thomas passed through the entrance marked "small claims and evictions." The father and son took their usual route, walking by other landlords seated with their tenants in the waiting room and disappearing into a conference room with their attorney, Tyler Whitney.

Another hour passed. A court employee called Lauderdale's name.

In a cramped room down the hall, Lauderdale and Brooks took their seats opposite Whitney and Ross Thomas, who spoke first after Magistrate Scott Newman read in the case.

The landlord explained the terms of the lease and how he hadn’t collected rent since posting the three-day eviction notice Aug. 25. He never got a full month's rent, he alleged.

When the magistrate turned toward her, Lauderdale unfolded her hands resting on a manilla folder bulging with documents and photographs.

Whitney objected to the use of some text messages. Lauderdale flipped that evidence face down and moved on to the rent check receipts, which refuted the landlord’s claim of not getting paid.

Then she talked about the wobbly step and her broken foot. She shared photographs of someone else's belongings piled in the basement the entire time they lived there. Whitney said he wasn’t sure why that was relevant but didn’t object.

Then, Lauderdale explained that they’ve made some repairs out-of-pocket. They bought cleaning products before moving in and pest control products while living there.

She noted the 22 code violations housing inspectors found – and how they all still needed fixed.

The judge asked Lauderdale if she and Brooks filed for an escrow account, which allows tenants who serve landlords with lists of repairs to deposit their rent with the court. The court only releases the rent to landlords for repairs. Sometimes, as has happened to Gary Thomas before, months of escrowed rent is returned to the tenant, who gets to keep the money because the landlord failed to fix anything.

“No, sir,” Lauderdale said of the escrow account. “This is kind of new" for us, she added.

Next, Brooks showed how Ross Thomas used a business with an address for a chiropractor’s office in Wadsworth, instead of his personal address, on the lease. Nowhere is Magaziner mentioned. Brooks told the magistrate that Magaziner told them “he did not know what’s going on. He said he never got the lease.”

Ross Thomas said fixing roofs and porches “is not something we can physically do” with tenants present. He also stated that his current tenants should owe what the former tenant, who is Lauderdale’s daughter, did not pay. But Whitney, the attorney, confirmed to the magistrate that the eviction dealt only with money owed by Lauderdale and Brooks.

A half hour into the hearing, Magistrate Newman said he didn’t feel comfortable ruling from the bench on the writ of restitution, which is a legal document granting the eviction. He would need time to review materials and arguments.

But he cautioned Lauderdale and Brooks that they could lose this war even if they won this case.

Landlords can immediately refile cases they lose, the magistrate explained.

“If you don’t have somewhere else to go, I would start looking,” Newman told Lauderdale and Brooks.

The magistrate issued his order, which was approved by the presiding judge, to deny the eviction the next Tuesday. By Friday, Ross Thomas had posted another three-day eviction notice on the front door. The landlord never re-filed his case, though.

His tenants, wary of going back to court and too exhausted to initiate the rent escrow process, were able to find a new place to live and left the Grant Street house at the end of October.

“He never fixed anything at the house, and we couldn't take a lot of stuff with us due to the condition of the house," Lauderdale said. “Ever since we moved, we can sleep better and breathe better.”

Reach reporter Doug Livingston at dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com or 330-996-3792.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Akron tenants of Gary and Ross Thomas beg for repairs, fight evictions