Capitol Hill Apartments Tenants Form Union to Push Back Against Avail Property Management

Once a week, residents of the Capitol Hill Apartments building, at 701 East 14th Avenue, meet in the laundry room to discuss the actions they’d like to see from their building managers, Avail Property Management.

To help move Avail along, they've formed the Capitol Hill Apartments Tenants Association, a chapter of Denver Aurora Tenants United, which advocates for housing dignity across the metro area. The tenants say they decided to form a union chapter because Avail hasn't been responsive to their complaints about maintenance issues ranging from ovens that don’t close and front doors that don’t lock to general neglect. And on November 3, when Denver had its first measurable snowfall, the heat wasn't working.

“Everything seems to come down to a communication issue,” says Scott Blevins, a tenant who is leading the charge for his building, which includes 45 units. “The office is not reachable. Then, when they are, there's a breakdown between maintenance and the office.”

While the property includes nine buildings, the union's members all live in the building at 701 East 14th. All of the property's units are Section 8 housing, where residents pay 30 percent of their income in rent and the rest is covered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Blevins says that Avail is taking advantage of a vulnerable population by not keeping up the property. “We actually have a pretty good community,” he notes. “If it was a warmer day, there might be people sitting out front with a small barbecue and just barbecuing and hanging out.”

The closeness of the community showed on September 22, when people from 25 of the units in Blevins's building signed a letter that Denver Aurora Tenants United helped them draft, informing Avail of their new union and asking the company for prompt fixes of various problems as well as a meeting to help solve communication issues.

But Blevins says that when the tenants tried to hand-deliver their letter, Avail staffers wouldn’t let them in the office until a FedEx delivery arrived and the company had to open the door.

DATU has had success with chapters in Aurora; this is its first foray into Denver. The organization formed at the beginning of the pandemic with the goal of canceling rent during the worst months of the shutdowns and then began organizing around renters' rights.

“We're all experienced community organizers, from various sectors of that work,” says DATU's Eliza Lucero. “We've come together, really, under the premise that housing is a human right, and we believe that tenants all across these areas deserve dignified and safe housing.”

Capitol Hill Apartments residents contacted DATU through its email address for anonymous complaints, which residents of other Avail properties have used, too. Avail is part of a national company known as PK Management outside of Colorado; Avail was in the news recently for its Rockview Terrace Apartments in Thornton, which did not have required heating. The company did not respond to Westword's requests for comment.

According to Lucero, while DATU has heard complaints about other buildings in Denver, the residents of 701 East 14th had some of the most serious concerns. “The biggest demand is timely response to maintenance requests and follow-through on those maintenance requests,” Lucero says. “There are doors that don't shut; there are doors that don't lock. Those are violations of state law and HUD, so federal and state law.”

For example, Blevins's building has stairs, including one to the main entrance, and no elevators or chair lifts — so it's not in compliance with the regulations suggested by the wheelchair-accessible sticker on the sign for the building.

Residents have to hand-deliver their rent in the form of a money order every month through a slot in a door that leads to an empty office. Tenants say the company regularly loses their money orders, posting demands for late rent on their doors even when they've paid. Blevins has had to fight management over rent payment three times in seven years, he says; each time, he's been able to prove that the company lost the check or made an accounting error.

“That's very traumatic, getting a demand notice, and even more so when you are in the right and they try to say you are not,” Blevins adds.

Blevins has worked in IT, and doesn’t understand why the company won't put an online rent-payment system in place. Maintenance requests can't be submitted by email, either; they must be given to a manager — but lately, managers either haven’t been on site or have been hiding in their offices. One day, Blevins recalls, someone knocked on the door of the manager’s office for so long that another staff member made the manager come out and speak to the resident.

“We need somebody that's going to be in touch,” Blevins says.

The property was remodeled several years ago, he adds, and the job didn’t go well. For basement units, the company didn’t account for the fact that windows are built into the ground, leaving limited space for window AC units. As a result, the AC units in the lower apartments are smaller and insufficient to provide proper cooling.

Even in apartments with properly-sized air-conditioning units, the thermostats don’t always communicate with boilers, often causing heat to run unnecessarily in warm weather. Blevins's apartment reached 97 degrees one day in August. When he complained, management said that the computer Blevins uses was heating up the room as it ran.

According to Denver's Rules and Regulations Governing Residential Health, although air-conditioning is not required unless it's mentioned in a lease, heat is mandatory: Rooms must be able to be maintained at 70 degrees Fahrenheit. When the boiler wasn't working last week, Avail told tenants that there would be no hot water or heat for a few days while repairs were made. In the meantime, it moved some tenants to hotels.

The tenants say they've tried to report their problems to the Colorado Housing Finance Authority, an organization established in 1973 by the Colorado Legislature to address the shortage of affordable housing in the state; it administers the Section 8 program in the state. According to Lena Hunicke-Smith, another DATU organizer, when the residents reach out to other government organizations to get help, they seem to be continually routed back to CHFA.

CHFA says it has received eleven inquiries from residents so far in 2022, and the authority believes that all but one of those inquiries have been resolved. (It could not reach the resident in the final case.)

The Rocky Mountain Region HUD Office says it is not aware of any "extraordinary issues concerning tenant satisfaction at the property." The complex was last inspected by HUD in February and received a score of 83 out of 100. Management was last reviewed by HUD in October 2021 and was rated satisfactory at that time.

The tenants don't agree.

“It is understandably scary to take on this giant company that has branches all over the country…and also controls your housing,” Hunicke-Smith says. “But it's also been really inspiring to see people get fed up and start to fight back.”

Blevins is willing to do whatever it takes to get better conditions for all Capitol Hill Apartments tenants.

“I've gained more community through this process, and it's been fun working with my neighbors,” Blevins says.“I believe we can get it done, and I don't think we're going to stop until we have a decent, safe place to live.”