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Unhabitable habitats
Tenants living in squalor

By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

GULFPORT - Cockroaches and rats scurry through the apartments at night. Mold grows on the walls. Rainwater seeps through broken windows and leaky roofs.

Outside, the walls are covered with graffiti and the grass is littered with empty beer bottles and rotting garbage.

Welcome to the Edgewood Manor apartment complex, where frustrated tenants have endured stomach-churning living conditions since Hurricane Katrina battered the property more than seven months ago.

As recently as last week, 10 families were still living here, even though the property's managing partner, Southland Management Corp. of Jackson, has asked the city to condemn it.

"It's ridiculously disgusting," said Cynthia Augustine, who shares one of the 120 units with her three children while they wait for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide them a trailer.

Bill Mays, Southland's vice president, said the company tried to "exert some gentle pressure" on tenants to vacate Edgewood Manor, but stopped short of initiating eviction proceedings.

"The place is not fit for human habitation," he said.

Housing is a problem all along the Mississippi Coast. The winds and powerful storm surge of the Aug. 29 hurricane plowed over thousands of homes and businesses as it moved inland. Some cities, like Waveland, were practically wiped away while others had severe damage to structures miles inland.

Priced out of the post-Katrina housing market, many low-income residents are living in shabby, virtually abandoned properties. They say they have nowhere else to go.

The first round of federal grant money in Mississippi is being used to help homeowners rebuild or repair their houses. Gov. Haley Barbour says plans will be made later to help renters, but no timetable has been set.

Notices to vacate premises

Caroline Henry, 57, has been living at Cypress Lane Apartments in Gulfport since Katrina, even though the property's owners and managers have sent her at least four notices to vacate the premises. Several other holdout tenants also are living there in units that weren't significantly damaged by Katrina.

Henry, an unemployed personal care assistant, insists she would gladly move out of her apartment, but said she can't find another place she can afford. And she's still waiting in line for a FEMA trailer.

"We don't want to live here for free. And we don't want to be considered squatters," she said, but added, "There is no place affordable to go unless you move out of town."

In some cases, including Henry's, landlords are trying to evict tenants from properties before leases expire so they can start repairing damage.

Gary Tippens of Pensacola, who owns Cypress Lane and other properties, said it is costing him $20,000 a month to maintain the housing. He said that until January he had been getting less than $2,000 total from the five families still living there, at reduced rental rates, after Katrina.

'I'm called a rat'

Tippens says the tenants haven't paid rent since January. They say the apartment's managers refused to accept their money.

"The people over there are living in virtually damage-free apartments at discounted rents, all because I did them a favor," he said. "The thanks I get for it is I'm called a rat."

Lawyers from the Mississippi Center for Justice, a nonprofit legal advocacy group, are helping Henry and dozens of other tenants fight their eviction cases.

"You can't just terminate a lease because you want it to be over," said John Jopling, one of the center's attorneys.

Harrison County Justice Court Judge Albert Fountain, who hears eviction cases in Biloxi, said most landlords aren't intentionally neglecting storm-damaged properties.

"It's hard to find labor to do the work," he said.

Before Katrina, the coastal office of the Mississippi Regional Housing Authority had 1,592 units of affordable housing. The hurricane damaged roughly 80 percent of those units, displacing 800 families, according to office spokesman Jessie Billups.

The authority must wait for insurance claims to be settled before it can start repairing the estimated $36.5 million in damage to its properties.

"We're still just waiting, like everybody else," Billups said.

Southland also is awaiting a settlement with insurance companies before it starts repairing Edgewood Manor.

"There's no future for them there except to live in primitive, hazardous conditions," Mays said. "What's the answer? I don't have the answer. We don't have the income or the means to do anything different."

Kelly Jakubik, spokeswoman for the city of Gulfport, said the property probably will be condemned once all the residents have moved into FEMA trailers or other housing. In the meantime, conditions at Edgewood Manor are growing worse by the week.

"The Oprah Winfrey Show" recently aired a Katrina segment that featured interviews with the complex's residents, including an elderly woman who was reduced to using a bucket as a toilet because her plumbing was broken. That woman has since moved into a FEMA trailer.

FEMA offered Lillie White's family a trailer in neighboring Biloxi, but they elected to stay at Edgewood Manor.

"I turned it down because I don't have transportation," said White, 57, who shares an apartment with her husband and 19-year-old son, Emanuel.

"It just feels so filthy," she added. "It ain't going to get no better."