OAKLAND PARK, Fla. – Residents of an Oakland Park apartment building are having a rough holiday due to the bottom units being flooded for the past several days.
When the tenants contacted the landlord, they apparently received an unsettling response.
Resident Jeff Dawson shared video taken on his cell phone with Local 10 News, showing what has been seeping into his apartment several times a day, every day, since last week.
“Sewage, from everybody’s bath water to the toilet,” he said.
Every time one of his upstairs neighbors takes a shower or flushes a toilet, it ends up in his first floor unit at the Parkcrest Apartments, located at 150 Northeast 38th Street.
“In the mornings it’s usually bath water, so it’s warm and soapy,” he said. “It’s up to the ankles and then in the afternoons, it starts for becoming dirty water with floaties.”
To put it bluntly, he’s referring to human poop.
Dawson is doing his best to keep up with the mess with a wet vac and lighting candles to mask the smell.
He says a handful of apartments are experiencing the same.
“We’ve got neighbors with disabilities, children (with) autism, and they had to take a hotel and pay $400 a night. The neighbor, they’re all afraid to talk because people get threatened. I’m not afraid of anybody this point, I’m tired,” said Dawson.
Another tenant who asked to remain anonymous said the smell has been horrible. He showed Local 10 News what came into his apartment that morning, and what lingered.
What’s worse is that these residents said the property manager wants them to foot the bill.
“They want to bill us and separate the bill between other units and I feel it’s unfair when it’s not our doing,” said Dawson. “The police says we’re not to pay that bill because it is not my responsibility, and for us to go down to the City Hall.”
The tenant who did not want to reveal his identity said the front office won’t answer.
The office was closed on Monday for the holiday, and calls to the property management group Weber Real Estate went unanswered.