Tenants, landlord point fingers over property conditions

WASILLA — Heat, running water — both hot and cold — and keeping a residence sanitary and in good repair are some of the basics of living. Whether your own your own home or rent, these are the minimum expectations of anyone living in or maintaining a property.

For the families living in the four-plex at 345 E. Victor Circle, things like water and heat are a luxury these days, they say. In Sunday’s Frontiersman, residents Laurie Luzader, Chris Giles and Arielle Hausmann described the unlivable conditions in the building. Their complaints include no heat since October 2012, no hot water, natural gas shut off for lack of payment by the landlord, no carbon monoxide detectors and non-functioning smoke detectors, filthy common hallway and laundry room, and wide swaths of black mold growing up the walls of the building.

And since informing the landlord she was withholding rent until repairs are made, Luzader and Giles, who live in one of the apartments, says their water has been turned off.

When asked about when the water would come back on, Giles said the landlord said, “You ain’t getting no water turned back on until you pay us the rent money.”

That landlord is Hans Svendson, who’s listed in state business licensing documents as manager for Svendson Properties LLC. While his tenants complain about the mold and allege he hasn’t responded to requests to make repairs, Svendson said most of the mess is of their own making. He didn’t know Luzader’s heat had been out since October 2012 and he’s made many efforts to keep the common areas clean to no avail.

“Those people are just plain bloody pigs, they created their own mess,” he said.

Whether the truth to the situation at 345 E. Victor Circle lies with Svendson’s side of the story, his tenants’, or somewhere in the middle, both have remedies under Alaska law, said Goriune Dudukgian, staff attorney for Alaska Legal Services Corp.

Alaska Legal Services is a nonprofit law firm that’s been providing free civil legal assistance to low-income people since 1967. The organization has 11 offices in Alaska, including Palmer.

Although Dudukgian said he’s not familiar with the specific facts of the situation at Victor Circle, he said the law is very clear that a landlord must provide basic services like heat, water and hot water, as well as keep the property “in a fit and habitable condition.”

Landlord-tenant disputes “are considered one of the highest priorities for our organization,” Dudukgian said. “Throughout the state, we see a lot of calls about those issues. (A landlord must) supply heat, hot water, electricity, sewer.”

Beyond that, the Alaska Landlord and Tenant Act says a landlord cannot retaliate against a tenant by denying any of those services for nonpayment of rent or other issues they may have with the tenant, Dudukgian said.

And while the act spells out specific remedies a landlord has to deal with a problem tenant — up to and including eviction and recovery of compensation for damages — there aren’t many remedies for tenants, he said. And for those few things a tenant can do, “none of them are that great,” he said.

“Those are definitely some issues that are illegal under the landlord-tenant act,” Dudukgian said of some of the complaints by residents at Victor Circle. “If the landlord is not providing safe and habitable housing, they can file counter-claims (in court).”

Other remedies outlined in the act include moving, compelling action through the court system and making repairs themselves and deducting the costs from rent owed. In some cases, Dudukgian said, a tenant can actually get damages from a landlord if they’ve been paying full rent for substandard housing.

“I had a case where it was in the wintertime when there was no heat provided and the judge decided the rent should be reduced by 50 percent (for that time),” he said.

“In some cases, when the problem is really serious, it may reduce the value of the dwelling,” according to the Alaska Landlord and Tenant Act. “If this happens, the tenant may sue, or in an action by the landlord for possession or rent, the tenant may counterclaim to recover damages against the landlord based on the diminution in the fair rental value of the dwelling.”

Withholding rent is permissible under some circumstances, Dudukgian said, “but it’s not a safe thing to do and it does expose the tenant to some risk.”

Theirs is also risk for landlords to retaliate against tenants, he said.

“It’s pretty common for landlords when they have ‘problem tenants’ for them to retaliate by evicting them,” he said. “There are other laws that say landlords can’t diminish services like turnoff the power, water, gas as punishment for withholding rent.”

Court of opinion

That most of the options both landlords and tenants have in resolving their disputes run through a courtroom would be familiar ground for Svendson and Luzader.

Since 2009, Svendson Properties LLC has been the defendant in 11 civil cases in either superior or small claims court, and five of those cases are still open, according to Alaska Court System records. Since December 2010, Svendson Properties has been hit with default judgments for $2,755.76, $4,985.94 and $184,722.94. That last judgment for an unfair trade practice claim is being contested, records show.

As for Luzader, her history as a tenant includes three actions for eviction since 2004, two of which resulted in judgments for the landlords. In 2004, she and four other defendants were hit with a judgment for more than $7,000. In 2010, a landlord was granted a judgment for more than $2,800. A 2011 action for eviction was dismissed for lack of prosecution.

Luzader admits she hasn’t been perfect and her past is her past, but also said that shouldn’t matter when it comes to providing basic services that are covered in her rent, like heat, water and basic cleanliness. She said opening up her story for examination “is our last resort.”

For his part, Svendson said he was never informed of any problem with the heat and that the water wasn’t shut of out of retaliation. He has been working on fixing the boiler in the building. He also said he finds the allegation there’s been no heat for nearly a year laughable.

“If they haven’t had heat since October, every pipe would’ve been frozen and broke last winter,” he said.

As for the mold, Svendson admits that “it has caused damage,” but he said that if he fixes it before he can get his problem tenants out of the building, it will only return.

“It will be torn out once they’re all gone,” he said. “I’m doing everything I’m supposed to do.”

He does, however, admit to one failing as a landlord — he didn’t do his due diligence in checking out Luzader before renting to her.

“I didn’t get the real scoop on them when checking out references,” he said, adding that if he did, he would’ve seen the evictions on her record and not rented to her.

But he did agree to rent to the tenants at 345 E. Victor Circle, which means that, like it or not, a landlord is obligated to provide habitation according to state law, Dudukgian said.

Avoid disputes

To help avoid a situation like what’s happening at Victor Circle, Dudokgian has some tips for tenants.

“The No. 1 thing is to document the condition,” he said. “The landlord will always claim he didn’t know about it.”

That includes, he said, a detailed written checklist of deficiencies noticed upon move-in, along with taking photographs of subsequent problems and providing timely written notice of those problems. Those written notices don’t have to be certified letters, either.

“It can be text messages, emails or letters,” he said. “Something to establish in court that they’ve been made aware of the problem.”

If that doesn’t work, tenants can contact Alaska Legal Services, Dudokgian said. If a tenant has a legitimate gripe, the legal office can send letters demanding repairs be made and take the action to court if that’s needed. In the case of tenants not having essential services like water, electricity or heat, courts tend to expedite those matters, he said.

In the end, however, most tenants wind up finding another place to live, which can be difficult for low-income families that have all their money tied up in security deposits and rent for a substandard dwelling, he said.

“At that point, they only really have two choices,” he said. “They can terminate the lease and move out and sue the landlord for damages, or they can sue the landlord to get the damages repaired.”

Contact Greg Johnson at 352-2269 or greg.johnson@frontiersman.com.