They Don't Have Hot Water at the Felix, But They Do Have Mice

Maryam Husseini’s son is scared of mice.

But every time he goes into their home at the Felix, a 400-unit apartment complex at 11100 East Dartmouth Avenue, he risks seeing one. Their unit is infested, and building management’s solution was to put a single glue trap in the kitchen.

The Husseini family isn’t alone in its complaints about the Felix. With the help of the Denver Metro Tenants Union, over 100 residents there have formed a union to protest conditions at the complex, which range from mouse problems to intermittent heat and hot water. Rents at the Felix go up to $1,600 per month for a two-bedroom unit.

At a rally on February 2, tenants described heating water on their stoves, then bathing in buckets because their hot water was out for so long. They talked about piles of trash left around the property, vagrants who camp on the roofs of the buildings and enter the supposedly secure mailroom.

“There was a moment back in the fall where I was sitting in front of my fireplace crying, using it for heat because I had no heat,” says Mary Kester, who helped start the union last December. “I was absolutely freezing. I was sick. I called the Denver Department of Public Health & Environment bawling, saying, ‘I need help. We need someone out here.’ And they weren't of much help, either.”

That’s when Kester knew that she and her neighbors should join together in a union. In the process of getting everyone to sign on, she says, she’s met single mothers who turned on their ovens and opened the doors to heat their apartments and discovered that those tenants who don’t speak English haven't gotten any rent concessions while others have.

“The suffering we endure goes beyond mere inconvenience. It's an attack on our physical, emotional and financial well-being,” Kester said at the rally. “Management has barely provided substitutions for the lack of heat, except for old space heaters that have consistently caused power surges.”

Tenants shared documents from management that warned the hot water might be out for two days in October. Since then, most of them haven’t had reliable hot water and have often lacked heat, including during the cold snap over Martin Luther King Jr. weekend.

“We could literally see our breath in the morning,” tenant Jerhami Baird said at the rally. ”We have repeatedly put in service orders which have been ignored, and eventually that were removed recently. The Felix apartments have been negligent in their promises that were given in our leases. We want everything fixed now. … We want our money back for the months of not getting what we paid for.”

Capping off the rally, tenants delivered their official demands to management. The apartments are managed by Trion Living, a national apartment management company with properties in six states and four other buildings that it manages in metro Denver.

The tenants are asking that any residents impacted by lack of hot water either be allowed to move out with no penalty and receive both their security deposit and a stipend to hire movers, or be relocated to a unit without hot water issues and be paid for those moving expenses.

They’re also demanding rent abatement for everyone impacted until hot water is restored permanently — to be demonstrated by a two-week period in which the hot water never goes out. Finally, they ask that they be refunded 70 percent of the rent they have paid since June, when hot water problems started for many.

“We as tenants have faithfully fulfilled our legal and contractual obligations by timely paying rent on a monthly basis,” the demand letter reads. “In exchange, Trion Living is obligated to provide us with habitable units and amenities in good repair, as promised in Trion's marketing and lease agreements.”

Trion Living declined to comment. But Denver City Councilmember Diana Romero Campbell, who represents the area, wasn’t afraid to share what she thinks of the situation.

“I don't think that it is unreasonable to ask for heat or to ask to be able to have hot water,” she told the residents at the rally. “I am with you.”

Many tenants described paying an extra $25 per month for security alarms that do not work. And they say heightened security is needed, because the lack of outdoor lighting and the piles of trash attract vagrants searching for abandoned buildings. According to Husseini, vagrants once pounded on her door so vigorously in the night that she hid in her bedroom with her son and planned to use the sliding door there as an escape if intruders came into her apartment.
Westword spoke with five refugees who live at the Felix, some of whom asked to remain anonymous because they are undocumented and fear retaliation. All five agreed that they are afraid of complaining to management because they know they won’t have another place to go if they lose their homes. They estimate there are at least ten families from Afghanistan at the Felix, placed there by refugee resettlement agencies.

“We've been through so much already to come to the United States,” Husseini said at the rally, speaking through a translator. “To go through this makes me really upset, because I thought this was my endpoint of all my sufferings. But I soon see that's not the case.”

Having tenants unionize and speak up together has made Husseini less afraid to stand up for herself, she said.

Zabih Ullah Danesh also signed the demand letter. He has lived at the Felix since July and isn’t able to work while he waits for his asylum application to process; his rent is paid by a co-signer.

Unlike other refugees living at the Felix, he speaks English — but he says that hasn’t necessarily led to better treatment. He had to wait two and a half months for his dishwasher to be repaired, despite asking management to fix it multiple times. “It was very hard,” he says.

And those who don’t speak English have even more trouble dealing with the management company. Colorado law stipulates that building management notices must be in writing, and tenants must give written permission in order for the landlord to enter the unit. But refugees were in the dark about those provisions until the union stepped in.

While Husseini heard about the unionizing efforts early, she didn't really understand. DMTU brought a translator in last month; she got on board then. If not for their fears of retaliation, she thinks more of the Afghan families would join, too.

In the meantime, they’re trying to solve problems on their own. Husseini has plugged holes in her wall with rocks to prevent mice from coming in the apartment. Her dishwasher has been broken for the five months she's lived at the Felix. She believes management knows the refugees are vulnerable, and uses that to avoid fixing problems.

“They know we haven't learned the language,” she says. “They know we don't know the rules, the laws and everything yet. They don't care because of that. I feel like they find power behind us not knowing anything.”