Apartment owner plans to work with county on issues

Ken Lazaro, the owner of the Crestview Apartment complex on Halifax Drive in Collinsville, plans to meet with the Henry County Board of Supervisors this month to discuss the issues neighbors are having with his property and its tenants.

During a July 29 interview, Lazaro said the meeting time has not yet been set up.

“Two of the people were in training, out of town, and couldn’t make it. So, I would imagine sometime in August. I think” the supervisors said they’d “give me at least three dates,” he said.

Several neighborhood residents attended the July 23 board meeting to detail the issues they’ve encountered with the apartment complex including multiple acts of violence, drug issues, dead bodies, vermin, the apartments’ derelict conditions, and numerous others.

One of the residents was Donald Gilbert, who noted these issues have existed for more than 20 years and were presented to the board in 2008.

“It’s been 16 years and very little improvements have been done,” he said at the meeting.

Lazaro said he’s doing what he can to improve the apartment complex, and that he has a building permit to install new decks and siding on the buildings.

Part of the issues stem from the pandemic, he said, and while he doesn’t want to shift the blame, Lazaro said the government made it hard for him to take action and fix the issues.

“I had issues during COVID, and people didn’t pay their rent, and I couldn’t throw anybody out. For months, I could not throw anybody out, and I had a lot of deadbeats move in here. It was like 22 months, the government said you can’t throw them out, we don’t want people that could be sick on the street or get sick on the streets, so I couldn’t throw them out,” he said, adding while this was going on, these tenants weren’t paying rent.

Lazaro noted he evicted those living in one apartment, and they simply moved into another unit.

“If there was somebody else living there, they moved into it. I had them running extension cords from one apartment to another to another because they couldn’t do the electricity. The electric company could shut the power off,” he said, “but I couldn’t throw them out.

“Now all the neighbors say, ‘you make too much noise up here and this and that.’ Sorry, I’m doing the best that I can,” he said.

Lazaro, who’s owned the property for about 30 years, said he’s “trying to put it back together now.”

Of his 20 units, 10 are currently rented. He is currently not looking to rent the others, “because I figure the more people up in here, the more likely it’s going to be more noise, and more commotion, and more problems, and I’ve got a pretty good crew here right now.”

At the July 23 meeting, Henry County Sheriff Wayne Davis said there were 778 calls for service either at the apartment complex or from neighbors calling about issues relating to the apartments. In a three-year period, Davis noted there were 379 calls for service there.

“I ran those numbers for the past 12 months from the date, and 12 months ago 202 calls for service. What’s interesting about that is half of those were self-initiating proactive policing calls where we initiate it ourselves,” Davis said at the board meeting.

The apartment complex hasn’t had any drug issues for the past 6 to 8 months, Lazaro said, and wondered if the numbers Davis provided included multiple calls for the same incident.

“There are many tenants here and neighbors. I mean, somebody could call because they heard loud noises, or they heard dogs barking. It could be three people calling for the same thing,” Lazaro said, adding that he thinks neighbors may be forcing the issue by making more phone calls,

“Probably more than they need to just so that Wayne Davis is getting a headache out of it,” Lazaro said, adding that he wants others in the neighborhood to know that he’s trying his best to repair the apartment complex.

“If they want me to snap my fingers, it’s just not going to happen. You can’t let something go down for years and then turn it around in a month,” he said.

County Administrator Dale Wagoner said the county is exploring every legal option to remedy the situation. It’s “a very bad situation in our community.”

While the county has had discussions with Lazaro, Wagoner said it has not set a firm date to meet with him yet.

Neighbors like Joan Cline cited several issues. Cline has lived across from the apartments for more than 30 years, and her issues with the complex started about six years after her family moved to the area.

It “constantly kept getting worse and worse and worse,” Cline said.

For instance, she said her electricity has been turned off because her address is sometimes used as the mailing address for the complex.

“I’m constantly getting mail from up there. I had my power cut off and it was an act of congress to get my power cut back on, and that’s been” within the last year, she said.

Years ago, Cline said chaos involving fighting and guns at the apartments made her sleep in her back room on the floor with her children. Cline estimated she’s called the police about 50 times since she moved to the neighborhood.

“We’ve had two stabbings, shootings. A gang fight – they woke me up in the middle of the night banging on the door needing the police and they beat him up before the police got here, took him off,” she said. “There was one night they were out there fighting, and the car jumped out of gear, or they didn’t put it in gear, and it rolled downhill and almost hit my house.

“I had called the police, and I was scared that they would shoot their weapons out or something in the house. So, I slept on the floor for a week with the children,” she said, adding that a dead body had been found inside one of the apartments, about two weeks after death.

Cline said she isn’t scared living across from the apartment complex “anymore because I’m used to it, and I have security cameras, and I also have guns.”

Aside from those safety concerns, Cline said there also is a trash issue, with debris blowing out of the dumpster. Loud music, and people driving out of the complex so fast she doesn’t believe they even check to see if anyone’s already coming down the road also are issues, she said, and noted the county’s animal control officer has been by because of multiple dogs running around. Cline suspects a puppy mill was on site at one point.

The condition of some of the apartments also concerns her.

“I just don’t think they’re fit for anyone to live in, not at all. I mean, you can see the installation right there,” Cline said of an end apartment, “and when it rains hard, it’s got to be getting wet. It’s just horrible, things I have seen in 32 years, and I don’t see them getting any better at all, not unless it’s torn down.”

She’s all but lost hope of the situation improving.

“Whenever we go and talk to the board of supervisors, he starts doing a little work here and there to try and show that he’s trying to do something, and as soon as it calms down, he quits. It’s time something’s done,” she said, adding the apartments “are beyond repair. Much money needs to be put into those apartments to get them back to where they look nice.”

Cline said the apartments need to be torn down instead of being vacated, otherwise, there is a potential for squatting.

“They can’t be left sitting” empty, she said. “I think that would be more trouble that we’ve got.”

Cline said she and other neighbors met with Lazaro and county officials about 24 years ago.

“He was acting like we were just being nick picky, and we just didn’t want people over there. It wasn’t that at all,” she said.

Rick Anderson, who lives about 1,000 feet from the apartment complex, retired from law enforcement in 2018. “Over the years, I’ve had seven DUIs from this place in my front yard.”

There have been shootings, stabbings, Anderson said, adding that he believes if he didn’t have a law enforcement background, he might be fearful of his life living close to the complex.

“It scares my wife to death,” he said.

Anderson said a shotgun was pulled on one neighbor. Another’s property was broken into, and another had a car roll down the driveway into a tree. A realtor who sold the property next door to the complex demanded a privacy fence be put up before selling the house.

Andreson said there’s never been a rat or roach problem that didn’t stem from the complex.

“I actually killed 25 rats in a year” outside the house, Anderson said, and added that he’d love to see the complex torn down.

“It’d probably cost an easy $100,000” to make the needed repairs, he said, and noted that is a hefty investment.

Don Gilbert, who’s lived across the street from the apartments since 2002, recalled that once when he and his wife were in the basement of their house, they could hear water running but didn’t know where it was coming from.

When he went outside, he said people with 20-gallon buckets were getting water from his spicket in his front yard, he said.

“I said, ‘what are you doing?’ They said, ‘oh, we ain’t got no water over there,’” and had been told “that you said it was okay for us to come over here and get water from you.’ I said, ‘no, I didn’t give’” permission, Gilbert said, and estimated that he has called law enforcement at least a dozen times because of issues related to the complex.

Gilbert said the complex was in good condition years ago. “If he would go and honestly fix those things up the way they should be” it could be better. “I’d love to see the place fixed up,” he said.

While he understands that everyone needs a place to live, Anderson said the complex would not be his choice in its current state.

Usually, when neighbors complain to the county, efforts to repair the complex begin in earnest, but those efforts are short-lived.

If the apartments aren’t repaired, Gilbert said he’s among those who would like to see them torn down.

“Those people over there deserve better than to live in that mess,” he said.