‘Worst mistake of my life’

Patrice Rooks and her four children moved into a West Baltimore rowhouse in the 4200 block of Flowerton Road in October. She had just earned a degree that would enable her to work as a licensed practical nurse.

She was thrilled: New career. New home. New life.

As it turned out, she said, the house “was the worst mistake of my life.”

She paid $1,200 a month for a house that immediately began to fall apart around her. Holes in the roof, ceilings and walls. Water damage. Mold. Lead paint. And, worst of all, rats.

“The rats ate away at the rubber on my baby’s bottles,” she testified before Scurti.

She called 311, and a city inspector found 20 code violations — 13 of them threats to life, health or safety. She filed a complaint against Waz in January.

Waz, meanwhile, had filed a failure-topay-rent action against her for a $4,500 water bill. Rooks said the bill was the landlord’s responsibility.

The cases were consolidated. At the Valentine’s Day hearing, no love was lost in Scurti’s courtroom.

Scurti grilled Waz’s representative, Nathaniel Arnson, about why problems reported in September were being addressed just prior to a court hearing months later.

“That’s outrageous,” said Scurti. He said he had “never” seen so many violations at one property in his three years on the bench.

The judge was also suspicious of the lead paint certificate number listed in the company’s failure-to-pay-rent complaint: 111111.

“I’ve never seen a lead certificate with six ones,” Scurti said.

Arnson had no records and no answers. He borrowed a pen and paper from a court clerk to take notes on Scurti’s demands: Complete all repairs in 10 days, take no action to evict Rooks and produce the lead certificate with “111111.”

“You have 24 hours,” Scurti said. “This woman has been living in a nightmare.”

He scheduled a follow-up hearing for the next day. He knew he would be in the courtroom. “I’m keeping this case,” he said. Scurti then gave Arnson a chance to speak.

“She moved out because of the rat issue — which I get ...” he began. Scurti interrupted. “There are 20 violations, 13 are threats to life, health and safety,” he said. “Don’t stand there and tell me she moved out because of the rats. She’s been very kind, very patient.”

Arnson returned the next day with a lead certificate. It did not contain the 111111 number that the judge had questioned.

The state has levied a $22,000 fine against Waz for failing to properly certify lead abatement at the address.

A day after the hearing, Rooks said, she went home from her job with her four children to find the doors padlocked. Because the windows do not lock, she was able to climb in and hoist her children in one by one.

Rooks appeared at the next hearing dressed in blue medical scrubs. She had left her new job at Greater Baltimore Medical Center on her first day to get to court.

She was the only party to appear. Instead of terminating the lease, Scurti decided to schedule another hearing. That would give Rooks time to save money to move, and prevent Waz from evicting her.

He then issued an order that is the first step toward holding Waz in contempt of his repair orders.

“Thank you, Judge,” Rooks said. “I just want this nightmare to end.” County, her family was evicted once, their belongings dumped outside of the house where they rented the bottom floor. What she remembers most of the day is the rain — and the humiliation.

“My stuff is getting wet, and the adults were discussing things, and we had no place to go,” Hampton-El said. “We went to a shelter, and I’m in school, and it’s embarrassing.”

What she took from the experience — other than, “come heck or high water,” she would never get behind in her own rent — was how fraught housing disputes are. By the time a case lands in court, emotions are running high and it can be hard to get a resolution.

“No one’s talking to each other,” Hampton-El said. “Maybe the landlord has waited until the last day to make a repair, and then the work is shoddy. Or the tenant is so frustrated with the workers, so they stop allowing access to the house.”

Jesse Buckner’s case against Lanvale Towers apartments last year grew increasingly bitter as it went on.

Buckner, 66, receives Section 8 housing assistance and disability payments. Rent at the apartment at 1300 E. Lanvale St. came to $246 per month.

Buckner said he began complaining about bedbugs, rodents and other problems early in the year.

Owen Jarvis, an attorney with St. Ambrose Housing Aid Center, wrote a letter about the problems to Lanvale’s management in March. He filed a complaint for Buckner the next month.

A housing inspector told the court that she had found bedbugs in the apartment, but because maintenance workers refused to enter it to move the refrigerator, she couldn’t confirm Buckner’s complaint of a rodent hole behind the refrigerator.

Judge Kent J. Boles Jr. waived the rent for April and opened an escrow account.

Court documents show that an exterminator treated the apartment for bedbugs from June to September. A housing inspector told the court in July that all violations had been repaired, but Buckner said the apartment was still infested.

A representative for the landlord said Buckner was told he had to get rid of his mattress and other belongings but hadn’t.

Then Buckner missed several inspections. In August, Lanvale filed a breach of lease case to evict him. The company, which has not returned calls for comment, told the court Buckner had failed to recertify his Section 8 subsidy, as is required annually.

Buckner agreed to move out, but asked to stay until Nov. 7.

In September, the itching from the bedbugs had gotten so bad, Buckner said, he went to the emergency room at Mercy Medical Center. He asked to see a psychiatrist, he said, because he wanted to kill himself.

Discharge papers show the doctor prescribed hydrocortisone for the bedbug bites.

The following month, Judge Nicole Pastore Klein dismissed his case, and asked both sides to go into the hallway to see if they could agree on how to divide the $1,476 Buckner had paid into the court account over the past six months.

An attorney for Lanvale said there would be no agreement, given that Buckner kept missing inspection dates. Both sides made their pitch for why they should get the entire amount.

Jarvis said the bedbug problems began early in the year, and Buckner had to live with the insects for months.

Lanvale’s attorney said Buckner hadn’t cooperated by discarding his mattress or showing up for the inspections.

Because an inspector said all violations were abated in July, Klein decided to award the landlord the last three months of rent — $738. She gave May’s rent to Buckner, saying there were no treatment records entered for that month. She then split June and July’s rent, one month to each side.

Buckner received $492. Lanvale received $984.

And so, on Nov. 7, a scene that’s familiar in some parts of the city played out on Lanvale Street.

“Is he being put out?” a bystander asked in a whisper.

Buckner hired several men to help him move out. But he made the mistake, he would later grumble, of paying them in advance. They didn’t show up.

He paid another man $10 to help him haul stereo speakers, bags of clothes, a giant jug of detergent and other belongings into his old Chevy Blazer. They crammed the stuff inside, or stacked it on the roof.

Then, like an urban Joad, he drove slowly several blocks to his new place.

It is a rooming house on Wolfe Street, where the next four rowhouses to the south are boarded-up vacants. Across the street, you can see straight through the shell of a building.

Now he’s paying $450 for a single room — almost twice his rent at Lanvale Towers.