Water pitfalls plague condos

City evicts units’ residents

Some residents of the Garden Walk Condominiums have chosen to stay come hell or high water. But, for the withering Raleigh condo community, hell and high water may be inextricably linked.

There are several iterations of the story of Garden Walk’s imminent demise, but a few points are beyond dispute: The 162-unit complex sits on a vast network of leaky pipes and, thanks to $30,000 in unpaid MLGW bills, not one of those units has had water since January.

Those who remain despite medieval conditions will have to clear out by April 11 by order of Shelby County. When they do, their Garden Walk condos will be the latest drop in a bucket full of vacant, blighted properties in Memphis.

Shakeena Campbell, whose father, Avan Campbell, owns a three-bedroom condo at Garden Walk, is one of many people demanding answers from the courts, the city, the county and the homeowners association about why her dad is going to have to take a $35,000 loss.

“My dad is 72 years old, on a fixed income and disabled,” Campbell said. “He’s going to have to reside with his brother, but he can’t just start over. Not on a fixed income, not at this point.”

Mary Jones, who is acting president of the homeowners association at Gar-

den Walk, said the answer is anything but simple.

The underground water ruptures began in 2000, Jones said, but with several other repairs needed around the complex the pipes never made the cut. Then a few years later, when MLGW started calculating water usage differently, their collective bill doubled.

Residents pay their own gas and electric bills, but Jones is responsible for paying the water bill out of the association dues, which are about $100 per month per condo.

But according to Jones, of the 88 occupied units in October 2012, only about 25 had been regularly paying their dues.

She paid the $ 5,600 MLGW bill in October, she said, but by November they were out of money and by January the water was gone.

“When the water got turned off, everybody shows up and complains and threatens to sue me for mismanaging money,” Jones said. “There’s no money. What money have we mismanaged?”

Shekeena Campbell isn’t convinced, though. She said her father has paid every dime of his dues, and regardless of whether the money was mismanaged, she said her father shouldn’t be evicted from his property because others haven’t paid their dues.

City Councilman Myron Lowery agrees, but said he’s not sure what the city can do about it.

“Ten people shouldn’t have to suffer for what 150 didn’t do,” Lowery said.

MLGW has offered to let residents pay to have individual water meters put in, but at $3,500, few have expressed interest in them.

Avan Campbell finally moved out in March, and his daughter said it’s too dangerous for him to stay there anyway. Vandals broke into his empty unit, stole every available scrap of copper and knocked a hole in the wall to get into the neighboring units.

“I don’t see us coming back from this,” Jones said.

The story of Garden Walk is a story all-too-familiar to people like David Jordan, director of Agape Child and Family Services, whose Powerlines program helps provide resources to underserved communities.

For a complex like Garden Walk to go from being an eyesore to becoming a magnet for crime “is very typical,” he said, “and it can happen very fast.”

Sometimes you can turn it around, Jordan said, but “it takes a very cooperative, collaborative effort when it gets to that state if you want to stop short of boarding it up or tearing it down.”

But with fewer than 20 occupied units left at Garden Walk, that doesn’t seem likely.

Even if the people come back, the water wouldn’t. And even if the water came back, the leaks would be waiting. And so would the $30,000 bill.