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Powell, who has lived at the complex for five years, said the apartment he shared with a daughter, 12, and son, 16, didn’t have heat nor hot water for the last eight months. Then a few weeks ago he was sitting in his truck and watched part of an exterior wall come down nearby.
“There’s no way the wind should be blowing concrete, bricks and mortar off there,” he said.
Dayton housing officials sent the owner of Western Manor Apartments an emergency repair order last week citing 20 violations.
Shauna Hill, Dayton’s housing inspection manager, said conditions varied between the buildings, but were “consistently deplorable.”
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Dayton police and firefighters responded June 9 to the complex on North James H. McGee Boulevard on a welfare check after neighbors said they hadn’t seen an occupant in a while and reported a bad smell coming from an apartment.
A Montgomery County grand jury indicted Wanisha Smith, 33, last week for involuntary manslaughter and child endangering for allegedly leaving her 1-year-old son Darius Hall Jr. to die in the apartment. Smith is due back in court Tuesday morning in front of Montgomery County Common Pleas Court Judge Mary Montgomery, according to court records.
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The city ordered an emergency repair order last week to the owner, PF Western Manor LLC. Violations included damaged, defective and deteriorating foundations, ceilings, floors and doors. The owner was also cited for accumulated trash, broken glass, dirty appliances, inoperable locks, plumbing problems and rodent infestation.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development terminated its Section 8 agreement with PF Western Manor LLC in December. About 90 percent of the units were Section-8 certified and HUD is relocating households that received federal assistance to extended stay hotels, according to HUD.
At least six other households are receiving relocation assistance through Montgomery County Emergency Management, Miami Valley Community Action Partnership and Greater Dayton Premier Management, the region’s housing authority, Hill said.
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Michael Smith said Western Manor had been his home for 17 years.
He lived in the same building, but around the corner from where firefighters found the year-old-boy’s body.
Michael Smith said he had noticed an odor but assumed it was coming from a nearby dumpster. He’s not related to Wanisha Smith, but said he knew her.
“I thought she was a nice girl. I wouldn’t think she would do something like that,” he said.
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Travis Lanier Williams and his mother Katherine Williams were loading their belongings into the bed of a pickup Monday. Lanier Williams said they are moving to a house in Dayton that he just fortuitously inherited from another relative.
Lanier Williams said he’s researching how to hold the owner responsible through the courts.
“You have all these laws and they are not being utilized,” he said.
Hill said none of the residents will be permitted to live there after today (Tuesday). Residents can move back once the New Jersey-based owner makes the required repairs, but the amount of work is likely to take some time without a large construction team starting right away, she said.
“It’s not going to be a quick turnaround,” she said.
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