Residents Point to Problems Growing in Apartments

"If you look up at this vent...you see the mold," Rosemary Uwabor said, pointing to the vent in her bathroom.

If the sights inside her Little Rock apartment don't hit you, the pungent, wet smell of something growing might.

"Bleach, they tell us to use bleach to treat it. But once we treat it, it comes back," she said.

Uwabor's three grandchildren aren't dealing well with the black and green growth, and Uwabor said their doctor doesn't like the look of it either.

"My granddaughter never had bronchitis in her life, but she got it from here," Uwabor pointed to the diagnosis sheet dated February 23rd. "The doctor said mold could cause that, even kill you. And that's scary, when the children's health could be in danger."

"This is probably the worst place I've ever lived," fellow tenant Ron Koblinski said.

Koblinski is moving his family out of Towne Oaks Village as soon as possible, with moving boxes set out on his front porch already.

"There's mold in the showers," he said. "It's in the vents, it's everywhere. They tell us to clean it with bleach, but it only takes a few hours to grow back."

Koblinski said his kids were healthy six months ago before they moved in but are now suffering from nosebleeds and bronchitis. He also claimed, like Uwabor, that managers and maintenance won't respond to his complaints.

"There's no one here. There's a temp I think who has no answers," he said.

"We do need answers. But there's no management, no maintenance, no one to ask those questions to," Uwabor said.

We tried to speak with the office staff on site, but we were met with a locked door and a "Closed" sign in mid-day.

"We need answers," Uwabor said. "We want to know what's going on, why this isn't being taken care of. "

We reached out to the property management company listed for Towne Oaks Village, but we were unable to touch base with them today for a response.

When we asked a number of complaining tenants if they had reported the apartment complex to Code Enforcement, they said they hadn't because they were afraid the complex would be condemned and they would lose their homes without having the money to move.