APARTMENT RESIDENTS VOICE THEIR CONCERNS ABOUT LIVING CONDITIONS

Residents of the Indian Trail Apartments, located on 221 E. 121st St. in West Pullman, recently held a press conference in front of the building to speak about their concerns and alleged declining living conditions in the building. Photo Credit: Katherine Newman
Residents of the Indian Trail Apartments, located on 221 E. 121st St. in West Pullman, recently held a press conference in front of the building to speak about their concerns and alleged declining living conditions in the building. Photo Credit: Katherine Newman

Apartment Residents Voice Their Concerns About Living Conditions

BY KATHERINE NEWMAN

Residents of the Indian Trail Apartments, located on 221 E. 121st St. in West Pullman, recently held a press conference in front of the building to speak about their concerns and alleged declining living conditions in the building.

The Indian Trail Apartments are currently managed by the Habitat Company, a full-service real estate company with a wide variety of property types including affordable housing, condominiums, and luxury high-rise towers.

During the press conference, current tenants of the Indian Trail Apartments alleged that mold, rodents, bugs, structural concerns such as ceilings caving in and issues with elevators are a problem.

“These apartments need to be shut down. I’ve called numerous times to get work orders in and nobody came out. My ceiling is about to fall in my bathroom. There are roaches everywhere, all in the hallway, wherever you turn there is roaches. It just needs to be shut down,” said Christina Butler, current resident of Indian Trail Apartments.

Residents also alleged that several maintenance requests have been filed and the work has either not been completed in a timely manner, not been completed to the tenants’ satisfaction or not completed at all.

“It takes too long to get work orders done for whatever reason, I don’t know, maybe they are understaffed. We have about 180 apartments and two maintenance men, so it is taking 90 days to get a work order done,” said Tanisha Jones, current resident of Indian Trail Apartments.

One resident also alleged that the building is not handicap accessible despite the number of seniors that live there. Senior tenant, Rosetta Richmond, has lived in the building for 27 years and uses a motorized wheelchair to get around. Richmond said she would like to have bars added to her bathroom to help her, but claimed she doesn’t have any.

“We have elderly tenants and they don’t have bars in their bathrooms, the building is not handicap equipped. They can’t get in and out of the building by themselves, there are no electronic buttons or sensors and the elevators are almost all out of order,” said Jones.

The Indian Trail Apartment tenants are hoping that they will be able to leverage their voices to get the attention of the property managers and have a conversation about improving their quality of life at the apartment building.

Calls to the Habitat Company for a response went unreturned by the Citizen’s deadline.

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