'People in jail live better than we do.' Victory Square tenants push for improvements

CANTON – Byron McGee and his four children have lived for nearly four years in a Victory Square apartment where the baseboard heaters have never worked, leaky pipes have caused widespread mold and water damage and their toilet still sits unbolted two feet in front of the plumbing hookup like it did the day they moved in.

Marco Mack and Stephanie Jackson, residents in another Victory Square apartment, watched sewage and feces drip from the shower ceiling in May due to a leak in an upstairs apartment that the tenant couldn't turn off. Their nicely furnished apartment smells like an outhouse when it's hot because maintenance didn't remove all of the soiled portions of the wall.

Five-year-old Zion, who has a birth defect that prevents him from using his legs, must crawl on his hands over moldy carpet and broken stairs at Victory Square because his mother, Whitney Jones, can’t carry his wheelchair up the steps to her third-floor apartment. His father, Pete Clark, who was recently moved to a first-floor unit, has a radon pipe in his living room that he has tried to cover with a plywood board to shield it from Zion and his siblings, ages 6 and 1.

Annah Williams won’t let her two teenage daughters use the back stairwell of their Victory Square apartment building because the doors don’t lock and drug users often stay there.

“People in jail live better than we do right now,” Williams said. “… (People in jail) aren’t worried about plumbing. They are not worried about heat. They are not worried about drinking water with rust in it that can cause more health issues or breathing in black mold. We are.”

The tenants − many of whom once feared they would be evicted if they complained − have banded together and are demanding change. With the help of a Massillon cleaning company owner, they have grabbed the attention of local and federal regulators, who found the conditions alarming and have warned Victory Square's out-of-state landlord to fix the problems or face possible criminal charges and the loss of public housing assistance.

Meanwhile, Victory Square's owners, who have a history of neglecting federally subsidized properties, say they and their new management company are working diligently to transform the conditions at the 81-unit complex, which includes three apartment buildings at 1206 Lippert Road NE, 1209 Eighth St. NE and 1223 Eighth St. NE. Roughly 50 of the units currently are occupied.

Canton, HUD find numerous violations

Spurred by the tenants' complaints, Canton City Building Department's code enforcement unit began inspecting Victory Square in August. Their first inspection found 124 code violations in the nearly 30 units they visited.

Inspectors found faulty plumbing in kitchens, bathrooms and hallways that caused water damage to walls, floors, cabinets and often the ceilings of the apartments below. The units had defective electrical outlets, missing or inoperable smoke detectors, doors that were unable to be locked and baseboard heaters that had been installed improperly, according to the violation letters the city sent to Victory Square’s owner, Green Victory Square. They found nine violations in McGee's apartment and 11 violations in the unit where Zion and his siblings live with their dad.

City officials reported the problems to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which had given Victory Square a passing inspection score on Aug. 1.

HUD inspectors confirmed the numerous violations on Aug. 24 and demanded that Green Victory Square fix the deficiencies within 72 hours or it could lose the housing assistance HUD provides.

HUD, Canton’s code enforcement unit and the Canton City Public Health Department once again inspected Victory Square on Oct. 10 and found few, if any, of the previous violations had been corrected. City inspectors also found more code violations in each of the units they previously hadn’t inspected.

The city has fined Green Victory Square $100 for each of the nearly 30 units that failed its reinspection, and city attorneys are exploring legal options that range from issuing an order to vacate the apartments, citing owners under local or state buildings codes and pursuing misdemeanor criminal charges for failing to comply with an order.

Canton Law Director Jason Reese said the city's priority is to work with HUD to relocate the tenants to safer housing before issuing an order to vacate.

"The last thing we want to do is put people out in the street," he said.

Massillon cleaning company owner: ‘It was the worst of the worst of the worst’

Alison Koher, owner of Awesome A's Cleaning Service in Massillon, doubts Victory Square’s three apartment buildings could ever be cleaned enough to be a healthy environment for tenants due to the amount of black mold that exists.

Koher, who has been cleaning homes for 16 years and has been trained in hazmat cleaning, visited Victory Square on Aug. 18 at the request of the property manager who was seeking price quotes on how much it would cost to clean the vacant apartments so new residents could move in. Koher was so appalled by the conditions that she contacted city building and health inspectors and helped the tenants file their complaints.

“They were absolutely deplorable,” Koher said. “It was the worst of the worst of the worst. I could not believe what I was seeing.”

Koher found black mold on the interior walls of every unit she visited, as well as in kitchen cupboards, around the plumbing under the sinks, above bathroom sinks and showers and behind the toilets.

“It is my professional opinion that the three buildings are beyond repair or rectification,” Koher wrote in a letter to the city building department that included a 24-point summary of the hazards she documented. “Cleaning out the vacant units, decontaminating the biohazard units and doing a mold remediation treatment between the three buildings will cost well over what the property is worth.

"… The living situations that the tenants are currently in are beyond a health hazard and need to be addressed urgently and with quickness, as someone is going to get very sick and die due to the black mold alone, not mentioning all of the other factors that are on this property.”

Ohio has no regulations regarding the existence of mold or mold exposure limits, which is why city inspection reports reference water damage but not mold or mildew.

Koher’s letter prompted Don Ackerman and Gino Haynes of Canton for All People to collect donations in an effort to rehouse nearly a dozen families who have been deemed high risk. So far, they've rehoused three families, including Zion, his mother and siblings.

Ackerman hopes the deplorable conditions facing Victory Square residents will demonstrate the need for city officials to reform the laws surrounding rental properties in Canton, where 52.2% of homes are rented.

Where has HUD been?

Victory Square has been under HUD oversight – and has received HUD funding – since it was built in 1975 as replacement housing for senior citizens and low-income families who were displaced by highway or urban redevelopment projects.

HUD inspection reports show that the complex received high marks in 2012 and 2015. But in 2019, conditions began to deteriorate, and HUD inspectors warned then-property owner Stark Urban Holdings to improve conditions or face possible enforcement action.

By 2022, Victory Square’s inspection score had sunk even more, prompting HUD to notify Green Victory Square in November 2022 that it had defaulted on its contract to provide decent, safe and sanitary housing. It ordered the company to correct the deficiencies or submit a plan of correction within 60 days.

On Aug. 1, HUD conducted its annual inspection and gave the complex a passing score of 77, shocking tenants and local inspectors who said conditions had not improved. It was only three weeks later that Canton notified HUD of the tenant complaints it had received that prompted HUD's reinspection and subsequent demand letter.

The Canton Repository asked HUD spokesperson Ashlee Strong why the agency gave Victory Square a passing score on Aug. 1 when the same substandard conditions had existed at the property since 2022. Strong responded in an email, “Physical inspections are a point in time inspection and the physical condition score is just one tool the department uses in assessing the owner/management agent property management compliance with departmental agreements.”

She said HUD has changed its inspection protocols to focus on health and safety issues impacting residents and is now operating under the National Standards for the Physical Inspection of Real Estate protocol. NSPIRE focuses more on resident units and their conditions, identifying defects and areas where residents spend most of their time, she said.

An estimate of how much money HUD paid Green Victory Square last year was not immediately available.

Victory Square owner Troy Green has history of neglecting properties

Troy Green, whose Green Victory Square has owned Victory Square Apartments since 2021, has been permanently barred from owning, operating or managing affordable housing properties in New York after he failed to address significant code violations, ongoing safety concerns and criminal activity at his federally subsidized housing properties in Syracuse.

A New York state court in July found Green, an attorney and son of former NFL player Tim Green, and his Green National companies in civil and criminal contempt for disobeying a previous court order that directed them to comply with an agreement they made with the New York attorney general in February 2022 to address housing code violations. Besides barring Green from owning affordable housing properties in New York, the court also required him to pay more than $150,000 in penalties and required Green National to pay $299,000 in penalties.

Green could not be reached for comment.

Strong, the spokesperson for HUD, said the agency is reviewing how New York’s sanctions of Troy Green and Green National may impact his properties in Ohio that receive federal subsidies.

In Ohio, Green owns 13 other HUD-affiliated properties, most of which he’s taken ownership of since 2019 using companies that either begin with the word “Green” or “WG,” according to HUD records.

Victory Square is Green’s only Stark County property. He also owns Carroll Square in Carroll County. The others are located near Dayton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Steubenville and Youngstown.

New management company: Give us time to make improvements

Marcus J. Williams of Green National, which is the parent company of Green Victory Square, said the company acquired Victory Square in 2021 with the intent of redeveloping it once financing could be obtained.

He said Green National self-managed the property until the legal issues emerged in New York in 2022 and the company was tasked with selling the four Syracuse properties to a new owner. He said Green National's first management company for Victory Square was not "able to manage the property well due primarily to its distressed nature."

Arnold Grounds Property Management, a company that Green National previously used to rehabilitate its troubled properties, took over management of Victory Square in July. Williams said that correcting the outstanding concerns, starting with life safety issues, is "a priority to the company and owner at this time." He said Green National also is working to finalize a rehabilitation plan to transform Victory Square.

"Please note that this is not a situation where an owner has purchased an investment and is realizing any financial gain from it," Williams wrote in an email. "The owner has continued to make capital calls and under new management will continue to do so until the property is in a condition that all stakeholders will find acceptable."

Rita Strausborger, regional vice president of Arnold Grounds Property Management, believes she and her onsite team can correct the years of deferred maintenance at Victory Square if given the opportunity.

Since July 1, she said the company has tackled the high grass, spent roughly $20,000 on plumbing repairs and chased out the high number of squatters, which had contributed to the deteriorating conditions.

Strausborger, who plans to add locks to building entrances, estimates that 23 of the apartments that were listed as vacant had people living in them. County court records show that Arnold Grounds filed seven eviction notices on Aug. 31.

She said HUD’s passing inspection score on Aug. 1 shows they’ve already put a lot of money and effort into improving the property. She acknowledges more work needs to be done, and said onsite managers continue to seek price quotes to tackle the bigger improvements that are needed.

When asked specifically about the mold found in multiple apartments, Strausborger said the company cleans or removes mold and mildew growth as it is reported to them. She said residents also have been educated on how to vent rooms properly to reduce further growth.

“I think we’re doing a fabulous job there,” Strausborger said. “I’m confident that given time – and time is a very important piece to all of this – we can turn this community around.”

Reach Repository staff writer Kelli Weir at 330-580-8339 or kelli.weir@cantonrep.com.

This article originally appeared on The Repository: Canton Victory Square tenants demand better living conditions