People living in a St. Pete community are fed up. They say their living conditions have gotten so bad and they want something done.

  • Jordan Park Apartments residents complain at meeting
  • Rats, high grass, broken appliances among complaints
  • Residents say problems have gone on for months

Residents from the Jordan Park Apartments say they have problems with rats, uncut grass and broken appliances. About a dozen of them went to an emergency meeting Monday to try and figure out what they can do to get the problems fixed.

Their list of complaints are about as long as the overgrown grass outside their homes.

At the meeting, one woman said, “You’ve got a lot of residents complaining about rats, snakes, and the grass is taller than the children.”

Charles Cohens was at the meeting and his concerns are so alarming, it makes your skin crawl.

“It’s basically a whole bunch of rats out here and they run all over everything. Some of them got the nerve enough to come out in the open and run across the floor,” he said.

Cohens says he put down traps and alerted the front office about the problem months ago. Then, Cohens says his wife was cooking and she had just put on some rice. And as soon as she turned on the burner, up pops a rat, running across the stove in the back. He said that was the couple's breaking point.

Rodents aren’t the only problem residents complained about.

One woman listed all of their problems at the meeting. “The, stove, the refrigerator, dishwashers, air conditioner. They never check the air conditioner. They never service it,” she said.

Officials from the Housing Authority in St. Pete said they only own the land the properties sit on. Wynn Management company is actually responsible for its upkeep. The property manager for the company said they plan to fix the problems residents have been complaining about within the next two weeks.

Sylvia Norris says they’ll wait and see. In the meantime, she says she’s like most of the people who live in the low income apartments, who can’t afford to just move out.

“Why? Because I can’t afford to move. But just because I can’t afford to move doesn’t mean I should be mistreated,” she said. “They would not want to live in these conditions, so why should I have to live in this condition?”

It’s a question these residents say they’ll continue to ask until something is done.

Local Housing Authority officials say they plan to purchase the Jordan Park Apartments and renovate them but that isn’t expected to happen until next year.