My fiance and I are college students. We decided to move off campus, so we looked in the classified ads of the newspaper. That is how we came in contact with Wright Properties. When Wanda Wright showed us the apartment, she told us that we could move in, but in the next two weeks she was going to have someone come by because a large amount of the tiles from the bathroom wall were gone, in addition to various other things.
She never sent anyone. We didn't really think too much bad about it, because it was our first apartment, and we didn't know too much about it. We discovered when we tried to use the bathroom that the toilet seat wasn't bolted down into the floor. We called and told her about, and she said she would send someone over. She never did.
Then, after the first rain, we discovered that the roof leaked in the kitchen. Again, lies followed. One weekend my fiance and I decided to go visit his parents in St. Louis. When we came back, our downstairs neighbors told us that our water had been cut off. When we got to our apartment, the tenant from the apartment below ours had left a note that said that water was leaking from our apartment into hers and since we weren't home, she just had it cut off.
When we called the water department to cut it back on, he tried to determine where the leak was coming from. It was coming from under the toilet because it wasn't bolted down, and the movement of use siting on the toilet had caused a whole to form in the piping.
We called her, and she didn't send anyone over. My brother happens to work for a plumber so he said that he would fix it. As soon as we called our landlord and told her that we would have someone else to fix it and bill it to her, she hurried up and sent someone over.
On to the tenants. The downstairs neighbors who had told us our water was off were very heavy drinkers, and they argued and fought all of the time. For two nights in a row the police got called because they were arguing and fighting in the front yard. Well, because of this, Mrs. Wright put an eviction notice on their door.
Not even a week later, my fiance and I were in our apartment doing homework. We heard a loud popping noise, and then the smoke detectors in the building went crazy. My fiance opened the front door and saw smoke, so we ran out the back door outsite. We ran around to the side of the building. The downstairs neighbors apartment was on fire. I was glad I had my cell phone hooked on my pants because we had to call the fire department.
We found out how the fire was caused. The downstairs neighbors had been living without electricity for about a month and were using candles for light and heat. One of them left the apartment with the candle still on, and it tipped over and caused the fire.
When the fire department came, they had us call our landlord. When we told her the building was on fire, she thought we were joking. When she finally did get there, the firemen had stopped the fire, but our apartment was totally smoke and water damaged, and it was unlivible. Mrs. Wright pulled me away from the crowd and told me that since me and my fiance were college students we were her first priority to place somewhere else. She told us that she had just had an apartment open up, and to call her in the morning. She promised us this apartment. We went to my hometown to stay the night with my parents.
When we called her the next day, she said that she had a busy morning schedule, and to call her after one. When we called her after one, she told us that she had given the apartment to the lady who lived below us, because she had lived there longer.
So here we are, a week before our finals, homeless. Then she said she had another apartment, but it wouldn't be open until two weeks later. When we talked to her, the thing that upset her the most was her lost income! What makes it so bad is that she didn't even know the tenants that she evicted we still there. She thought they were gone already.
This next part, I take responsibility for it. We did NOT have renter's insurance. Honestly, I didn't even know it existed. What's bad is that when she have us the apartment, she never even mentioned it. As a matter of fact, we never even signed a real lease. She just used our application as a lease agreement. We never even got our deposit back. We basically lost everything. And this resulted in my having lost wages, because at my job I have to wear dress clothes, and all of mine were destroyed, so I couldn't even go to work. I couldn't even afford to buy anymore until almost two weeks later.
So we decided to go elsewhere, and we ended up finding another place. What I am hoping to do is to warn against Wright Properties. Even community members don't understand how she and her husband are still able to rent properties. This lady is a slum lord and should not be allowed to do what she does.
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