Purdue professor ducks accusations of being an "unethical" landlord; evictions mount

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the first part of a series of stories in which the Journal & Courier intends on investigating the housing crisis in Tippecanoe County. In this story, we look at how one landlord uses the law to his advantage when his tenants find themselves living in homes that do not meet the minimum health and safety standards.

LAFAYETTE, Ind. – For the last three months of their lease, Angela Moody and Randall Tanksely lived in a tent in their backyard.

This wasn’t because the couple wanted to experience the great outdoors from the safe distance of their rented apartment.

The couple said they had come to believe the house they were renting from Chaofeng Liu (or Charles Lee, as his tenants know him) was completely uninhabitable.

Tanksely told the Journal & Courier that during the first few months of living inside the house, the couple began developing respiratory issues, rashes on their bodies and were in a constant lethargic state. Tanksely believed that it was due to significant exposure to black mold.

The Journal & Courier, which spent two weeks addressing references in the couple's claims, reached out to Liu for comment about the allegations that his previous tenants were making about the buildings they rented from him.

Liu, an adjunct statistics professor at Purdue University, said he preferred not to comment.

The J&C reached out to Purdue University for a comment regarding Liu's history at the university.

Liu was hired in July 2010 and is currently active as an adjunct faculty member, according to Tim Doty, senior director of media and public relations of the university.

Smells, holes and an outhouse

On a visit to the building, the Journal & Courier detected an immediate pungent smell that persisted throughout the house and saw holes in the floors and ceilings and an outhouse in the backyard.

Moody and Tanksely claimed that they had requested Liu to fix several of these issues that had emerged during their time living there.

But they claimed Liu was unwilling to provide them with much help.

“You can try to be nice to this guy, and try to tell him what’s wrong with something, but he just doesn’t want to hear about it. Because if he hears about it then he has to fix it,” Tanksely said.

And for almost six months of their lives, they were willing to pay $875 in order to live in the house, just to ensure that they theoretically had a roof over their heads.

That was until they missed one payment on May 1. By May 8, Liu filed an eviction case against Moody, Tanksely, and Tanksely’s brother, Carl Tanksely.

What rights do renters have in Indiana?

One would think that in a situation like this, Moody and Tanksely could have potentially withheld their rent from Liu until he had fixed the issue.

However, unlike the majority of the country, Indiana is one of six states that does not allow tenants to withhold rent from their landlord if the landlord is unable to complete the maintenance request by the end of the contractual month.

The state’s courts interpreted the Landlord Tenant Act of 2002, which established that a tenant’s duty to pay rent and a landlord’s duty to maintain a habitable residence for a tenant are independent of each other.

Most Indiana courts find that tenants cannot present habitability issues as a defense against non-payment.

According to the law, in order for a tenant to obtain the ability to withhold rent due to a questionable habitable situation, a tenant is required to obtain the opinion from an expert witness who has determined that the residence is not habitable.

In other words, a tenant would need to call their local housing inspector, health inspector or engineer's office, and have them conclude that the residence is not habitable, in order to potentially qualify for some help.

When it came to Moody and Tanksely's situation, Tanksely initially wanted to get local officials involved to examine the house, but decided not to out of fear that Liu would retaliate against them and evict them.

For Moody and Tanksely, finding a landlord who would be willing to house them is an incredibly difficult task due to past evictions.

Prior to Liu's eviction, Tanksely only had one on his record; Moody had several that could potentially scare off future landlords.

Instead of creating an issue over the state of the house, the pair believed it would be better to deal with the decaying state of the house and live outside in their tent.

When Liu filed an eviction notice against the three, Tanksely decided to inform local officials about the issues in the house.

By that point, it was too late.

Eviction notice changes everything

Due to Indiana law, state and city officials are unable to examine a building's habitable status if the individual is in the process of being evicted.

Dr. Gregory Loomis, the Tippecanoe County health officer, reviewed photos of the property and told the Journal & Courier he had concerns about the state of the building but explained that there was nothing that the county do about it.

“There’s nothing we can do when a rentee has not paid their rent on time. And if they have paid it on time, then it’s a city issue,” Loomis said.

“The issues in the pictures I looked at, a lot of those issues are structural problems, and that’s the engineering division. But the city can’t do anything because they’re being evicted.”

The only thing that Loomis could do was hope that Liu would address the issue brought up by Moody and Tanksely.

What is Indiana’s “warranty of habitability” requirement?

The “warranty of habitability” is a legal doctrine that was established in 1970 after the landmark case, Javins v. First National Realty Corporation, was decided. It helped create the standard in which landlords have a duty to maintain in a safe and clean residence for tenants to reside in.

Although each state has a different way of defining the “warranty of habitability” in their state’s laws.

Indiana’s “warranty of habitability” standards are relatively lax in comparison to other states, according to Luisa White, the executive director of the Legal Aid Corporation of Tippecanoe County.

Within the state of Indiana, in order for a property to meet that standard it would need to be considered safe, and clean, it has to contain a working electrical system, a plumbing system that includes a reasonable supply of hot and cold water, sanitary systems, heating, ventilation, air conditioning, working elevators (if applicable) and supplied appliances.

Based on these requirements, Moody and the Tankselys claim that when they moved into the house, the apartment would not have met the “warranty of habitability.”

According to Randall Tanksely, when they first moved into the house, it did not contain an air-conditioning unit and many of the windows had been painted shut, which would have limited the ventilation in the house.

When the Journal & Courier visited the property, there were no air-conditioning units present within or near the property, but that does not mean that an air-conditioning unit was provided to Moody and the Tankselys moved in.

The J&C did observe a window that had been painted over, leaving it unable to be opened, and another window that had been partially damaged in order to remove the paint keeping it shut.

Related to black mold, White explained that current Indiana legislation does not have a provision in place to address the issue directly.

“Mold is a very tricky subject. Because in some states like Texas, they have a lot of renters’ rights and mold rights and very specific litigation law about mold,” White said.

“Indiana does not have that.”

In order for a tenant to directly deal with the issue of mold, White explained that the tenant would need to get local officials involved prior to any notice of eviction.

Fairfield Township denies aid to all of Liu's tenants

After Moody and Tanksely discovered that local officials could not help them by showcasing the state of the property, they decided to head to the Fairfield Township office in hopes of receiving some financial aid.

But unbeknownst to them, the trustee, Monica Casanova, had put into place a new policy that stated that the Fairfield Township office would no longer be providing any aid applications from Liu’s tenants.

This new policy was not put in place because of his tenants; in actuality, it was because of what Casanova described as Liu’s “unethical” behavior and actions when dealing with the trustee's office.

“We started seeing a pattern of his tenants coming in and complaining about him. They would show us videos of him screaming at them. I would be sitting next to the tenant, and they would talk to Mr. Liu, and he would be yelling at them,” Casanova said.

“And we were still helping people throughout that time, but we just started seeing that pattern. And what really tipped it was one moment.”

Another tenant tells her story: Liu evicted her two weeks after moving in

April Taylor, a Fairfield Township resident, independently reached out to the Journal & Courier and gave the newspaper permission to share details of her story.

Casanova explained that she had reached out to Liu in hopes of discussing Taylor's situation.

Taylor had been experiencing seizures prior to moving into the property. This left her bedridden and "desperate" for housing as she was on the verge of going homeless.

In her state of desperation, Taylor said she signed a lease with Liu without seeing the property in person and explained that the rent was $1,250 a month.

When she arrived at the property she alleged that the property was not in a habitable state of condition.

According to Taylor, the floors felt as if they were buckling in on themselves, the carpets were filthy, black mold was littered throughout the apartment and there was a water leak in the basement of the property.

"It sounded like it was raining down there; that's how bad the leak was," Taylor said.

She informed Liu about the situation and he took his time "fixing" the issue, Taylor added.

"He sent over a guy to fix it, but all he did was add tape to the leak, which didn't fix it," she said.

When she informed him about the situation again, he allegedly said that he would send someone to fix the issue, but Taylor would wait all day just for no one to show up.

This wasted time cost her several job interview opportunities. Dealing with both her declining health and lack of additional time, it left her in a situation where she wouldn't be able to pay her rent.

And during her stay at the property, she alleged that there were moments when the apartment didn't have hot water and that the electricity didn't work occasionally.

Liu eventually filed an eviction notice against her, "not even two weeks after my move-in date."

Taylor was in a desperate situation and unable to pay Liu's rent for the month. She decided to go to the trustee’s office in hopes of receiving aid.

Casanova was hesitant about providing aid to Taylor since the trustee's office normally doesn’t offer any financial aid to people if their landlords had already started the eviction process.

But in this case, Casanova decided to call Liu to explain the situation and told him that the trustee’s office would pay for Taylor's rent if he assured Casanova that he would not continue the eviction process.

“He assured me that he would not, however, he had already had an eviction filed against them,” she explained.

Since the trustee’s office had paid for the outstanding rent for the client, Casanova attended the eviction hearing to make sure that Liu would address the situation.

He did not, Casanova said.

“So, I went to the hearing to make sure it would be dismissed. But he just asked for a continuance and hit her with a legal fee of $125,” Casanova said.

The $125 was paid out to the court.

“I tried to approach him then, but he just took off and I didn’t see him after that.”

Since he decided to do a continuance and not dismiss her eviction, Taylor ended up leaving her residence and the trustee’s office was out the amount of money they provided to Liu, Casanova said.

“I decided to keep going to the eviction hearings, and it was the same pattern. There was just no mercy,” she said.

Liu's record of evictions is high

According to public legal records, Liu files an abnormally large number of eviction notices when compared to his colleagues.

As of June 9, 2023, Liu had filed around 56 eviction notices as of 2023 but when looking at the previous year, Liu had filed around 111 eviction notices.

Within the past year and a half, Liu has filed around 167 eviction notices, across the almost 80 properties that he owns in Tippecanoe County.

After witnessing Liu’s behavior in the courtroom, Casanova decided to enact a new policy that would bar her office from providing Liu with any more of the taxpayers’ money through rent payments.

The policy was put in place on May 4, four days before Moody and Tanksely received their eviction notice. When they arrived at Casanova’s office, she had to inform them that her office could not help them due to who their landlord was and where their case currently stood in the legal system.

Moody and Tanksely run out of options

After spending countless days trying to receive help from anyone in the city, Moody and Tanksely finally conceded after losing their eviction hearing on May 18.

They were told to be out of the house by June 6, 2023.

The court ordered Moody and the Tankselys to pay Liu the $845 they owe for rent, $200 in late fees, and $135 to the court for court fees.

Over the next few weeks, Moody and Tanksely attempted to look for a place to store their belongings, but by June 6, much of their stuff remained at the property. The only significant item that they were able to take with them was the tent they slept in for the past three months.

Since their eviction, the Journal & Courier has observed Liu visit the property and as well as observed workers clear the property of what Moody and Tankselys left behind.

Moody and Tanksely were staying in a motel as they tried to find any new housing opportunities in the county.

Noe Padilla is a reporter for the Journal & Courier. Email him at Npadilla@jconline.com and follow him on Twitter at 1NoePadilla.

This article originally appeared on Lafayette Journal & Courier: Purdue University professor accused of being an "unethical" landlord