For several months, the working poor who lived at the Grove Apartments in College Park breathed in toxic mold and trudged through raw sewage that flooded the walkways outside their front doors.
They couldn’t afford to move but they also couldn’t afford the health risks if they stayed.
“It’s about as egregious as we’ve seen,” said Tony Phillips, assistant director of Fulton County’s code enforcement office.
Fulton County Magistrate Sterling Eaves ordered the two companies listed as owners and the owner of those companies, Steve Berkman, to pay 55 tenants $2,200 for the costs of getting a new apartment, cleaning their belongings and moving. She also ordered them to reimburse Fulton County the $20,000 it spent to temporarily relocate the families in hotels.
The criminal case was resolved with a plea on Wednesday, but on Thursday Berkman and his companies refused to pay some of the tenants. Eaves had them back in court on Friday.
“He spent three years getting rich by forcing people to live in [human waste],” said attorney Dan Grossman, who spoke for the tenants in the criminal case. “This guy deserves a place in hell. They’re arguing over 1,000 bucks.”
Berkman declined to comment.
Phillips said the conditions at this complex were shocking. Some children and sick senior citizens living there developed skin infections or respiratory problems from the conditions.
Once the apartments began to deteriorate about two years ago and some residents moved out, vandals moved in, ripping out plumbing in empty first-floor apartments. When toilets on the upper floors were flushed, human waste spilled into the units below and into the breezeways.
“When you see it, it looks like brown water,” said Jeffrey McDonald, who had lived in the Grove Apartments for three years. “I would never imagine raw sewage.
“My first reaction was how has this affected my body,” said McDonald, who manages a fast foot restaurant at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. “I just felt violated that someone would keep taking rent knowing they had sewage backed up. It’s hard to put into words that you’ve been living in a sewage dump.”
Phillips said inspectors found sewage backups in nine of 12 buildings in the complex. Toxic mold had contaminated a 10th building. He said the “environmental hazard” had to be cleaned up or demolished.
Phillips said Berkman and his company also owned 18 other low-end properties in metro Atlanta but they are in other jurisdictions.
“There is no reason to believe these owners would be doing a better of a job at any of the [other] complexes in the area,” said Tamara Serwer Caldas, another tenant advocate.
The tenants were told to move on Aug. 9 with virtually no notice, leaving their belongings behind. On Friday, most had to check out of the hotels the county secured for them even though they had not yet found new homes.
The county extended motel stays for four families because Berkman declined to give some the promised funds on Thursday, claiming the families were not covered by the agreement.
“It was an honest mistake,” said attorney Heather Miller, who represented Harbor Management, one of Berkman’s companies. “It’s clearly a clerical error.”
One victim of that "error" was Courtney Moody, who moved into a three-bedroom Grove apartment with four teenagers four months ago. The mold was covered by paint so she didn’t find the source of an odor until after she and her children had settled in.
On Thursday, Moody found an apartment in Palmetto and was going to pay the $275 deposit and the $608 for the first month’s rent out of the $2,200 check from Berkman.When the money was not forthcoming, she lost the apartment, Moody said.
“I think those folks thought we were playing with them so they gave the apartment to somebody else,” said Moody, who works as a bartender.
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