KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The drama continues at a Kansas City apartment complex that’s so bad that renters once complained of worms in their carpet, no heat and collapsing ceilings.
The complex claims to be under new ownership but won’t reveal any names. That’s left a former tenant,who is owed hundreds of dollars, nowhere to turn for help.
Ashley Quinn said she hated living at Nob Hill Apartments near 94th and Cleveland, but it was all she could afford.
“I didn’t have air conditioning, it was super hot,” Quinn recalled. She moved away late last year.
She said that at the time she left, the complex was under investigation by Kansas City’s Housing Authority for multiple violations. The Housing Authority dropped the complex from its program last March, forcing 38 people to find a new (and safer) place to live.
Quinn left before that happened. What she wants is for Nob Hill Apartments to give her back her $650 cleaning deposit. She said she scrubbed the apartment from top to bottom before she handed in the key.
“It looked better when I moved out than when I moved in,” Quinn said.
She even did a walk through with a manager who she said promised her that her deposit would be refunded to her in full within a month.
That was eight months ago. She’s never seen it. Every time she’s called the complex to ask about it, she said she’s told no one can help her. The complex is no longer under the control of the company she rented from.
FOX4 Problem Solvers also paid a visit to the complex where a manager named Andre told us the apartment was “in receivership” and a bank now owned it. However, he wouldn’t tell us the name of the bank or show us any paperwork proving that.
So we searched public records. Jackson County property records still shows the same owner as when Quinn lived there – KM-TEH 7 LLC , a subsidiary of an Israeli company T.E.H. Management, which owns multiple low-income rental properties in multiple Midwestern states.
We also searched state and federal court records to see whether Nob Hill Apartments had been seized by a bank – or whether there was a bankruptcy filing. We couldn’t find any. We called T.E.H. Management’s U.S. office in Pennsylvania for answers. We never heard back. We also contacted the corporate office of the company managing the complex. Again, no answer.
Rachel Casey with the Community Assistance Council wasn’t surprised. Casey spent much of last winter dealing with unhappy renters from this complex.
“We heard from residents about water dripping through where they could not find a dry place to put the mattress,” Casey said. “We heard about carpets being constantly wet that there were worms and creatures that would come up from the carpet,” she described.
Casey said her attempts to reach Nob Hill were often futile. As you can imagine, Casey wasn’t surprised to learn about Quinn’s trouble getting her deposit back.
“Well the only surprise would be that we haven’t heard more of those frankly,” Casey said.
So how do we solve this problem? It was the Community Assistance Council to the rescue.
Casey said the Council received $15,000 last winter in donations to help the 38 people who had been displaced from Nob Hill find somewhere new to live. Some of that money is still available. In detail there’s enough money left that the Council was able to reimburse Quinn for her missing $650 security deposit.
“I think that’s amazing,” said Quinn who has been struggling to make ends meet after having her work hours slashed because of COVID-19.
Quinn’s problem was solved by the grace of a community charity – not by the company responsible.