Oakview Apartment residents told to pay up or get out | Breaking News
MILLVILLE — Oakview Apartment operators are threatening to evict residents in at least 50 units unless their past-due heating bills are paid by the end of the month, the president of the newly formed tenants association says.
Nate Sanders said some of the people living in the low-income housing development on East Broad Street near Wade Boulevard owe thousands of dollars for heating bills — but residents believe those numbers are inaccurate.
Apartment operators have not given the tenants access to meters so they can check whether their heating bills are accurate, said Sanders, who said he owes more than $2,000.
Sanders, 53, who said he has been unable to work for years because of injuries suffered in a series of automobile accidents, said he might be able to pay his bill if he gets some financial help from friends. Other tenants may not be so fortunate, he said.
“It’s the other people I’m worried about,” said Sanders, who was elected president of the tenants association Saturday.
Officials with Oakview deferred questions to the facility’s leasing agency, the Pleasantville-based Community Realty Management. Monique Strickland, Community Realty Management’s executive property manager for Oakview, said the eviction warnings went to residents who were given several warnings about back payments, and “ample” time to pay off their balances.
“They failed to do so,” Strickland said. “At this point, we have to enforce the lease because they are in violation. We have been more than generous in the time we’ve given them.”
Strickland said complex operators “have to cut their losses.”
She declined to provide specifics — including how many people face eviction — regarding the situation.
The 210-unit complex was formerly known as Wade East Apartments. The facility was renamed Oakview Apartments in 2001, with Community Realty Management officials saying the complex got improvements that included landscaping, upgraded laundry facilities and painting. Plans also included the installation of security cameras, the officials said, although no information was available on whether that work was done.
However, Sanders and resident Michael Worthy said Oakview Apartments tenants are living in poor conditions that include a lack of property maintenance and insect infestations.
Worthy said the eviction threats were stuck in doors by property maintenance workers Aug. 1. He said the letters were delivered after apartment operators had left their office for the day.
“This is about money,” said Worthy, who acknowledged owing about $1,700 in back payments.
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