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Tenants stuck in squalor; landlord still out of contact

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By MARK DOUGLAS

mdouglas@wfla.com

Published: July 4, 2009

CLEARWATER - This has been a week of mixed blessings for more than a dozen apartment tenants who had been living in sweltering heat and squalor without power or water for days.

On Tuesday, Pinellas County code inspectors condemned the apartments at 15652 Westminister Ave., near Clearwater, as "unfit for human habitation," though many of the residents had found other places to live by then.

Code inspectors documented a litany of violations, such as illegally rigged power; fetid, bright-orange drinking water; festering heaps of garbage swarming with flies; broken windows; and illegally cramped living conditions amid the eight tiny units inside four buildings owned by Lawrence Ayers, county code enforcement director Todd Myers said.

Ayers, 42, has not been around since Progress Energy Florida cut the power off June 25, and tenants say he won't return their phone calls. Attempts to track him down at his Safety Harbor home and properties he owns in Pasco County have been unsuccessful.

By Friday afternoon, even Ayers' wife said she couldn't locate him. "He didn't come home last night," Kathryn Ayers said. "The sheriffs were over here talking to me yesterday, and they want him as well."

Despite the difficult living conditions, residents were heartened by the generosity of those who offered help.

'They have nothing'

Social service agencies, alerted to problems at the apartments by a News Channel 8 reporter Monday, stepped in with water, ice and hotel vouchers for the tenants, many of whom are disabled and too broke to pay security deposits elsewhere.

Neighbor Eddie Gentile donated a generator, water, ice and food. He found and put down a small deposit on a storage unit so Marsha Bessler, 59, and her mentally impaired son, Chris, could store their belongings somewhere while they looked for a new place to live. He spent the balance of the week making sure they were settled in.

"I am shocked that he even stopped, he even cared, because people nowadays don't do things like that," said Bessler, who had found a new place to live by Wednesday.

Gentile's 7-year-old son, Joshua, urged him to help after seeing one of the tenant's dogs trying to eat something in the dirt. After returning with food and water for the dog, Gentile couldn't turn away from the human suffering.

"I don't have a lot. He Joshua doesn't have a lot. But, it's just that they have nothing," Gentile said.

He said one of the tenants he spent the week shuttling around in his sport utility vehicle stole his wallet with more than $300 cash inside. "It doesn't change my mind about helping them," Gentile said. "There are 15 people here, and one person took it."

The temperature inside the tiny room John Gravelle, 55, rented for $500 a month reached 88 degrees Monday morning, and he had no water to keep him cool. There was no electricity for the ramshackle shallow-well water pump Ayers rigged as a drinking supply for most of the units.

"I live on disability, had a couple of strokes and I have a lung condition," Gravelle said.

Tenants say Ayers, who authorities say is responsible for the mess, didn't do anything to improve their living situations or make things right after authorities condemned the apartments this week.

Marcus Chaconas has a receipt showing he paid Ayers $500 in cash June 20 for the tiny room he shares with his son. That was just before Progress Energy cut the power.

Chaconas asked Ayers for a refund but got nowhere. "He said, 'I can't do anything about it,' and that was the end of the conversation," Chaconas said.

Power off at Ayers home

In a tearful telephone interview Friday, Ayers' wife said Progress Energy had also turned off the power at her family home in Safety Harbor, which, like the properties on Westminister Avenue, is facing foreclosure. "I'm not in a good place either," Kathryn Ayers said.

Ayers said she knew little of her husband's business practices until now and feels terrible about the hardship of the tenants, especially Bessler and her son. "In my heart, I would never ever let that happen," Ayers said. "I have two special needs kids of my own."

Lawrence Ayers will have to respond to numerous code violations at a July 13 hearing, code enforcement director Myers said. The county could levy fines as high as $5,000 a day unless the violations are corrected.

Pinellas County condemned another apartment Ayers owns, in Oldsmar, on June 20. In that case, tenants had to move out immediately without the benefit of hotel vouchers or other emergency social services, an indignity that infuriated neighbor Mars Allen. "The landlord took advantage. If I'd had a stick, I would have beat him like he stole something," Allen said.

Allen said some of the tenants used her backyard to store their belongings while they scrambled to find other places to live. This week, one of them was still sleeping in a tent behind her house next door to the condemned buildings.

The Pinellas County Sheriff's Office has referred charges for utility theft in the Oldsmar case to the state attorney's office for possible criminal prosecution. Deputies are still investigating similar allegations at the complex on Westminister.

Among other things, Progress Energy says someone wired Bessler's apartment so that she was paying for another unit's electricity in addition to her own. The October power bill for her tiny apartment amounted to $318.98, something she could hardly afford to pay on her disability income, along with the $720 rent she gave Ayers every month.

Progress Energy agreed to let Bessler open an account at her new address without first paying her final bill for Westminister, which was about $390. Company spokeswoman Suzanne Grant said Bessler might be entitled to a refund for the stolen electricity.

Bessler was homeless before moving into the Westminister apartment. When she started preparing to move this week, Bessler didn't have so much as a box or a suitcase to pack her belongings in, and Badcock Furniture was reclaiming the air-conditioning window unit she no longer had any electricity to run. "I keep praying to God and saying, 'God, you've given me too much,'" she said.

News Channel 8 reporter Mark Douglas can be reached at (727) 709-2753.

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