Huntsville Seniors demand files on ‘exhausting nightmare’ after the flood flood

Barbara Young’s health deteriorated after her apartment complex in the center of Huntsville was flooded in August, according to a lawsuit that residents presented last week against the developer, the management company and the plumbing contractor.

The tenants of Gateway Apartments Sherry Webb and Gene Riggs joined Young to file a lawsuit against developer Huntsville Senior Housing LP, the Lee Company plumbing contractor and the Comprehensive Management Company Group, LLC. Demand seeks to become a class action to represent all residents.

“We are aware of the demand that has been presented and does not comment on active litigation,” Richard White, senior vice president of Integral Corporate Communications, wrote in an email to Al.com. Both Huntsville senior and Lee did not immediately respond to comments requests for this story.

According to the demand, Young once lived independently in Gateway and paid $ 939 per month for rent, but is now paying several times more in an assisted life house.

“As the months passed, Young’s health began to decrease markedly due to stress and instability of the situation,” the demand said. “His condition deteriorated so significantly that his family … He had to transfer it to an assisted life installation, where he now pays $ 4,300 per month, more than four times what he had previously paid in Gateway.”

Gateway, an apartment complex of 86 units subsidized by the United States Housing and Urban Development Department, offers affordable options for eligible elderly people of 62 years or more, many of whom are disabled. He is affiliated with Huntsville’s housing authority.

The lawsuit accused Lee Company of failing “to completely tighten an aluminum worm gear hose hose” that led to the ruification of the pipe.

After flooding, management put residents in extended stay motels, which increased their cost of living and created additional difficulties, according to the report.

To keep their apartments, Gateway’s management required that residents continue to pay the rent while they were not on the property, the demand added.

“They were asked to continue paying the rent for the apartment, and they were told that if they did not continue paying the rent, they would lose their place, that they would rent the apartment under them when it was restored or repaired,” Eric Arthrip, one of the lawyers That he filed the lawsuit, said Al.com.

“Many of these people are involved in a lease situation in which they cannot leave without incurring sanctions and we are asking that these leases are reformed to allow them to leave without penalties if they choose to do it.” Arthrip added. “Obviously, many of these people have continued having to pay the rent even in an apartment where they have not been for six months and we do not believe it is appropriate.”

In addition to the loss of irreplaceable belongings such as family images and pieces of the relic, which there was no tenant insurance requirement means that many residents have no means to replace other properties that flood destroyed, said arthrip.

“So it is really offensive to us who have never received an offer of reward for the monetary loss they have suffered,” he added.

“These people, many of whom are old and disabled, lived in front of a grocery store, very close to the hospital and near other amenities, such as hair rooms, dry cleaner, post office, things like that,” added arthrip. “Many of those services were at a short distance, and then, after the flood, they were placed in some quite moody apartments in a place where none of the services they had trusted were available for them without hiring a taxi or an uber or an uber or Trust in friends or family to take them. “

Residents request a complete return of the rent they paid while living outside the Apartament Complex, an experience that the demand described as “a long and exhausting nightmare.”

“The displaced residents, all of whom were elderly, and many of whom are disabled, and without family support, fought to find stable adaptations and were forced to move repeatedly between temporary housing arrangements,” said the demand. “Those with medical needs were particularly affected, since the lack of stability interrupted their access to the necessary care, the medicines and the essential elements of daily life.”

The plaintiffs are also asking for compensation for damaged property, emotional anguish and difficulties, and an accounting of money allegedly collected by management.