Tenants confront property managers over living conditions

The protest included residents of Mon View Heights apartment complex in West Mifflin.

By MEGAN TROTTER
TribLive

LaTonya Smith, 57, said there are days when she gets home from work and just sits in her car to avoid the stress and problems awaiting inside her Pittsburgh apartment.

“For like two hours I am like ‘oh I do not want to go into this building. I can barely breathe,’” said Smith, who is a longtime tenant of Lynd Living’s Hill Com II Apartments.

On Thursday, members of PA Renters United Allegheny — a Pittsburgh tenant advocacy group — joined residents of apartments owned by New Jersey–based NB Affordable to protest and call for action. Their demands included completing overdue repairs, meeting with property managers, distributing utility subsidy checks, and clearing outstanding debt claims against tenants.

In 2023, NB Affordable purchased about 1,300 housing units in the region — including Pittsburgh’s Homewood and Hill District neighborhoods and in nearby West Mifflin and Rankin – but the properties, subsidized by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, are so poorly kept as to pose serious health risks, housing advocates and elected officials said in January.

Demonstrating tenants said on Thursday — almost a year later — that things have still not been fixed. Their living conditions are getting worse, they said.

Crystal White, 47, who lives at Mon View Heights apartment complex in West Mifflin, said tenants have been forced to purchase large household items such as toilets and have experienced flooding and rodents.

White, who lives there with her two children and a grandchild, who are each between the ages of 5 and 10, said that she can’t use almost half of the home due to the deplorable conditions.

“With the paint chipping I had developed some breathing problems and so have my grandbaby and one of my children,” White said.

During the protest, a crowd of 35 people gathered on Granville Street. The group marched in below freezing temperatures over to the Lynd property management office in the Hill District, where a small group of current tenants and a protest organizer entered the building.

The group remained inside the Lynd Living office for less than 20 minutes before Matt Rubin, lead organizer of PA Renters United Allegheny, came back outside and told the crowd — still chanting on the sidewalk — that the property manager had called police after tenants said they wouldn’t leave without speaking to someone higher up.

“They need to stop retaliating against tenants for speaking out,” Rubin said.

Before the group reached the Lynd Living building, the demonstration was accompanied by several police cars. The vehicles escorted the crowd and then remained parked on both sides of the street with their lights on throughout the protest.

The tenants eventually left the office, and a police officer went into the office afterward to speak with the Lynd Living employees inside. It is unclear what the property manager told police, but the protest continued as usual outside the building without disruption.

Organizers with PA Renters United Allegheny distributed printed copies of a letter residents sent in June to the receivers, lenders and property managers for NB Affordable, outlining a long list of problems at the properties.

“In recent months, many tenants have received letters claiming they owe outrageous sums in overdue rent, often with little to no documentation to justify those claims,” the tenants’ letter stated.

Rubin said that after months without a response, the group decided to deliver the letter in August and again in October.

He also shared a photocopy of a mailed response in October that appeared to be from David Lynd, CEO of Lynd Management Group.

Reporters left an unreturned voicemail with Lynd Management Group seeking comment on Thursday.

Rubin added that several NB Affordable residents still do not have heat. The crowd responded with angry shouts.

“Shame!” they yelled. “You know what they told us when we went inside the Lynd Living building?” Rubin said. “Please close the door — it’s cold outside.”