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Article Courtesy of Channel
13 News
By John
W. Davis,
Published
January 1, 2013
KISSIMMEE
-- A condo at the Essex Park Villas in
Kissimmee smells like raw sewage and industrial chemicals.
With
every step on the carpet, sewage can be seen seeping out. There is
standing water with feces in the bathtub. The floor is filled with feces
and water.
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James
Finney says he and his wife are on a fixed income of $710
a month in social security disability benefits, and they
can't afford to move. And he says he can't get anyone to
help him.
“To sleep in this is
a hazard but we have no other place to go, we don’t have
any family here, so we just deal with it,” said Toria
Ali, Finney's wife.
The
couple says the smell gives them headaches, and they have
to leave the doors and windows open just to be able to
breathe.
But
the couple can't get anyone to deal with it.
“The
association of the complex is blaming the landlord, the
landlord is blaming the association |
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but
nobody is fixing the problem," Finner said. "I think it’s both.
I think it’s the landlord more than anything, especially with me losing
all my furniture."
We spokes to a man named Arkie by phone,
who says he's a board member for the Essex Park Villas homeowners
Association. He said the sewage problem is a landlord issue, but said a
plumber would check out the problem on Monday or Tuesday.
Then we reached out to Hisco Inc, the
landlord company. A woman named Josephine told me she's knows the sewage is
a problem, and that it has to be cleaned but Mr. Finney should be staying at
a hotel and deducting it from his rent until the problem is fixed.
Neighbors say this problem has been going
on for years.
“They try to fix it but it just comes
again," said neighbor Stephanie Gonzalez. "I had a friend here who
used to live here for a lot of years. She had to move out because of
the same problem.”
Finney says he was served an eviction
notice for not paying his rent. But he says he didn’t pay the December
rent because no one is fixing the sewage problem.
The landlord said the problem should be
fixed as soon as possible.
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