JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Jacksonville City Councilwoman Ju’Coby Pittman on Wednesday morning sent a letter to the property management company that oversees Hilltop Village Apartments requesting that all tenants living in buildings infested with rodents be moved and given hotel vouchers while Cambridge Management works to rid the 14 apartment buildings of rodents and correct other code violations.
Pittman also notes in the letter several urgent maintenance problems that need to be addressed, including replacing window screens, building exterior lighting, kitchen cabinets and drawers, loose hinges on bathroom doors, deteriorating bathroom lavatory cabinets, faucet stove handles, microwave, and refrigeration and seals on the door, as well as fixing plumbing issues, mold and interior apartment painting.
Earlier this month, Pittman called the News4Jax I-TEAM after our first story aired exposing a mice infestation in several of the apartment buildings on the property and asked what she could do to help tenants who told us they are living with mice, night and day, inside their apartments. She was also there when the city ordered a sweep of all the apartments in response to our story. She told us then: “No one, no one should live like that.”
In the letter she sent Wednesday to Cambridge Management, she wrote she went back out with inspectors Monday and found “the issues reported to your management company from the residents still exist with a customize bandage approach.”
Pittman said that in order to expedite the rodent removal and completion of the maintenance problems, the residents need to be moved.
“In order to do it all at one time, you need to move everyone out of there,” she told the “I-TEAM. “I would like for them (Cambridge Management) to provide hotel vouchers to those families that are there. You know, there’s a lot of mental anguish with families, you know, they want out. They are afraid.”
Other requests that Pittman is making include: demand to stop rent payments until building violations are corrected, provide an air quality control test in all apartments, and request a structural engineer to inspect and assess the integrity of the 14 buildings on site.
We have reached out to Cambridge Management for its response to the councilwoman’s letter and are waiting for a response. Last week, a spokesperson sent the I-TEAM this in response to our request for more information about the rodent removal work:
Our management office team members are still onboard and working to assist our residents. We have plans to bring on an additional team member to strengthen the team.
We are working with the community, the ownership, the city inspectors, HUD, and professional vendors to ensure the concerns are resolved as soon as possible. All buildings and apartment homes have been contracted for interior and exterior rodent exclusion and that work is well underway. The pest control vendors are continuing with the regular treatment rotations as they work on the exclusions.
The exclusion plan is designed to target the areas of greatest concern first and we may modify the schedule if new information comes in. We ask that any residents who have specific concerns contact our team by phone, email , or the resident portal so we can address their service requests or retarget the exclusion work as needed. We look forward to having the work completed as quickly as possible.
Thank you,
Katelynn DeSart Perez
Marketing & Public Relations Specialist
Cambridge Management, Inc.
Code enforcement found 286 violations during its sweep earlier this month.