The Trenton Times published the following article on June 6, 2013. To read the full article, click here.

Six Trenton families face homelessness after power to apartment building is shut off due to nonpayment

By Jenna Pizzi/The Times of Trenton 
on June 06, 2013 at 7:10 AM, updated June 06, 2013 at 10:39 AM

TRENTON — Six families face homelessness after the city threatened to condemn their apartment building on the 600 block of Greenwood Avenue yesterday because the power has been shut off for nonpayment of bills.

The residents refused to accept offers to stay in a shelter for the night or temporary housing from the city’s social services department. They said they would stay in the building until they were forced to leave.

Idelia Hollis, who moved into the building in March, said the landlord should have been paying the electric bill and owes Public Service Electric and Gas about $8,000.

“What are we going to do?” asked Hollis, who lives in the one-bedroom apartment with her fiance and four children ages 8, 4, 2 and less than a year.

Hollis said the man she thought was the building’s landlord, Nelson Powell, stopped answering her phone calls soon after she moved into the building in early March and paid him $1,680 for rent and a security deposit.

She soon learned that Powell, whose name is on her lease as the landlord, did not own the building, which was once a large house and is now chopped up into six apartments.

The building owner, she learned was “Sam” or Satendra Narayan, whom she said she only met once, when he told her he was going to increase her rent from $560 per month to $800.

“I told him I wasn’t paying more,” Hollis said.

Hollis’ neighbors Randy Adams and Ashley Lee, who live in a two bedroom apartment with their 2-year-old son, said when they first moved in Powell was painting the hallways and the apartment and had installed new carpet, but once he collected their rent and security deposit he stopped responding to their calls that things were breaking.

“The stove wasn’t working and he just up and went missing,” Lee said.

Adams and Lee said their shower stopped working months ago, leaving them to take showers elsewhere. A sink sits in the building’s lobby and a missing window in the stairwell leading up to the top floor was partially covered over with a rolled up rug.

“He was nice till he got our money,” Adams said.

When the power went off unexpectedly yesterday, Hollis, Lee, Adams and other tenants in the building, went down to City Hall to file a complaint. They wanted to know why they were paying their rent, which was supposed to include all utilities, but the power was still going off.

“This is the second time,” Hollis said.

But instead of an answer, Hollis and her neighbors, many of whom live in the building with small children, were told if there is no power to the building for more than 24 hours the city would force them to leave.

“They can’t sleep there,” said Yolanda Vazquez, Trenton’s senior housing inspector. The city has a policy to condemn homes that do not have power.

Vazquez said she spoke to Narayan, who lives in Howell, and warned him that the city was going to board up the house immediately unless he came to Trenton and did it himself.
Narayan, who also owns city properties at 47 Colonial Ave. and on the 300 block of South Olden, did not respond to several messages left for him yesterday.

Other than the power shutoff, the house has a number of outstanding code violations, Vazquez said. At a recent inspection, requested by one of the tenants, a city inspector noted 26 violations in the one apartment and exterior alone, she said. The violations included everything from a fallen tree in the back yard to missing paint and evidence of mold in the apartment. The city issued a summons to Narayan for failing to fix those violations, Vazquez said.

“It is dangerous for kids,” Vazquez said.

Powell, who worked as the building manager for just over a month this year, said it is no longer his problem to deal with the complaints of the residents. He said after he brought in several new tenants to the building, he decided he no longer wanted to oversee the operations of the building and told his friend and the owner Narayan that he wouldn’t do it anymore.

“I just didn’t want anything else to do with the property,” said Powell, who was reached by phone yesterday.

Powell said he had an agreement with Narayan that if he managed the property for him for three to five years, he could take over ownership and profits from the building.

“I thought it would be a good investment and I was interested in being an owner,” he said. Powell said Narayan wanted the tenants to think that Powell owned the building and that is why his name is on the lease agreements for several tenants.

“I’m concerned that my name is on the lease and I’m getting the backlash for that,” Powell said. “It was my mistake because I definitely picked the wrong tenants.”

He said he was just trying to help out people, like Hollis, who had to move in quickly because they were evicted and didn’t have many choices of places to move. But Powell said once they got in the door, some tenants started looking for excuses not to pay rent in full.

“I just asked if they could pay their rent. That’s all I went by, to give them a chance, and as soon as they get in they switch it,” he said.

Hollis and the other tenants said they have always paid their rent in full.

With nowhere else to go, Hollis and her children hung out on the building’s front porch yesterday evening eating ice pops that would otherwise turn to water in the family’s powerless freezer. They waited to be told they have to leave.

“We have nowhere else to go,” Hollis said.

Vazquez said the city pointed the tenants toward city shelters and social service programs that could have gotten them temporary housing, at least for one night. She said there is no money left in the city budget to relocate them.

Contact Jenna Pizzi at jpizzi@njtimes.com or (609) 989-5717.