Posted on Fri, Nov. 21, 2008

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Legally blind woman got more than she bargained for from substandard rental property

When Mozelle Jackson first saw the rent house in east Fort Worth, she thought it looked spectacular. She didn’t see that there was a large hole in the kitchen floor through which you could see the ground. She didn’t see that there was no water heater, thus no hot water. No, she saw none of that.

Easy enough to understand: Mozelle Jackson is legally blind.

"All she saw from a distance were pretty double doors and a new coat of paint," said area handyman Richard Davis.

At first Jackson, 58, was thrilled that she had a place to live. She agreed on the spot to $550 a month in rent. Without signing a lease, she moved in.

Eventually, when she began to notice things — like no hot water and no electricity — the property owner, Terrance Montgomery, said he would make repairs.

He never did, she says.

For the two months she has lived there, there has been a standoff. She doesn’t want to pay the rent because she doesn’t believe the owner will make the repairs. The owner said he couldn’t make the repairs without her rent money.

So Jackson hired Davis to help her fix up the place. He cut the lawn, worked on the sewer line and trimmed branches. As he worked, Davis noticed other problems inside and out. Exposed wires. A leaky roof. Windows held in place with duct tape.

When the owner wouldn’t help out, Davis says he called Fort Worth code compliance to complain.

"It was ridiculous for her to be paying me when it served no purpose," Davis said.

Every day, people live in substandard conditions because landlords and owners won’t or can’t bring properties up to code. With more homes going into foreclosure and families moving to less expensive surroundings, the problem may get worse.

In Jackson’s case, since the house didn’t have electricity or hot water, it didn’t meet the basic requirements of a dwelling in Fort Worth’s housing code. It took weeks to get electrical power at the house, in the 2200 block of Carverly Drive. Whenever a crew came out, they’d take a look at the poor wiring and refuse to complete the hookup, she said. Finally, about to be rejected for the third time, Jackson recalls, "I got hysterical. It was getting cold." She got her hookup, but danger lurks. A ground wire alongside the house is exposed.

The Carver Heights house offers a menace at every turn. Near the front door, a concrete block on the stairs to the door is missing, not a good thing for a legally blind resident.

The back door is covered with a cotton sheet to keep out the cold. The kitchen has no ventilation because both windows are boarded up. In the bathroom, the shower wall is pockmarked with peeling paint. The tub’s edging is packed with toilet paper instead of grout. Caulk covers the tissue cushion.

When the toilet and the bath are used at the same time, the sewer backs up. The water heater has the wrong connections, the owner has been told. There are hardly any doorknobs in the house. Insulation around the air conditioner? Duct tape. Outside a sewer pipe sticks out of the ground.

There’s a spider infestation, too. Jackson has medical records showing she was treated for spider bites. And let’s not overlook the junk 1997 Oldsmobile Cutlass resting in the back yard. "Jesus, I want to make no problems," she says. "But I want to be able to live."

City gets involved

To hear the owner tell it, any problems with the house are readily solved. "There are things wrong, but it’s livable," Montgomery says. "If you go to that house, it’s just real minor stuff, like the windows need caulking around them. Just little minor stuff."

The city doesn’t think so. As The Watchdog researched the property and contacted the city code compliance office, city inspectors this week visited the house five times. The city report shows 41 violations.

They include problems with exterior and interior walls, the roof, foundation, windows, doors, tub and shower, toilet, water heater, kitchen, electrical service, mechanical systems and floors.

A violation notice was mailed, and the owner has 30 days to show the city he is beginning repairs.

But the city is lenient about the 30-day notice, says John Hancock, acting director of code compliance field operations. "They contact us, and we work with them. But we usually don’t hold them to that if they’re really trying."

And because the building is listed as a Category 2 in city records, it is not considered dangerous to live in. Owners of Category 2 properties could be given months, even years, to complete the work, he said.

"We’re supersensitive to the economy, and we’ll work with people for years, literally, on substandard housing and making repairs," Hancock said.

Montgomery, who is listed on tax rolls as owning four Fort Worth properties, says he cannot afford to make the repairs. But his financial backer, longtime Fort Worth real estate player Jerry G. Berkowitz, told The Watchdog that he will lend Montgomery the money for the work.

Berkowitz says he lent Montgomery the money to make some renovations to the house before Jackson moved in. He called Jackson this week to talk about making repairs. In an e-mail interview, he told me his plan to lend Montgomery the money to correct the violations. "She did not pay the rent, and he does not have the money," he said.

He added, "He is the owner. I cannot make decisions for him. All I can do is try to help."

Jackson wants to leave, but she doesn’t have the money. "I try not to complain," she says. "I keep on going. The only thing I want is a place when I can be at peace."

If she could move, though, she’d put the owner in a bind. It’s easier to get violations corrected in an unoccupied home because nobody else could move in, a city official said.

An orange poster gets posted on the front door of a vacant house with outstanding code violations. It states, "Do not use or occupy."

News researcher Cathy Belcher contributed to this report.