Lauren Justice
Karen Madlock, a resident of Brentwood Village on the north side, is one of several people being forced out of apartments owned by landlord Bill Levy. Matlock says the upkeep of her and others apartments was not timely by the landlord and is fighting to save her home.
When Karen Madlock signed the lease for an apartment in Brentwood Village, she thought she was moving “somewhere special.”
The neighborhood overlooks Warner Park — a beautiful green space on the northeastern shore of Lake Mendota. The community is diverse. The people are friendly.
“We wanted to live here in this nice neighborhood,” Madlock says. “It turned out terrible.”
She noticed a few problems when she toured the apartment initially but was assured everything would be fixed. But when she and her partner moved in, the apartment was “not even livable,” Madlock says. There were holes in the walls and ceiling. The bathroom pipes leaked and flooded the living room. The refrigerator was broken. She found dead cockroaches. The basement was full of mold.
“There’s just so much that’s been happening in our apartment,” she says. “It takes [the landlord] a month, three weeks in order to fix one thing.”
Fed up, Madlock contacted the city’s building inspection department to put pressure on the landlord, Bill Levy.
Despite the troubles, Madlock, who is disabled and receives housing assistance from Madison’s Community Development Authority, opted to stay in her apartment for two years. But a few weeks before her Aug. 16 lease was set to renew, she received notice from Levy that she was not welcome to continue her tenancy.
Later, at a meeting of a newly formed Brentwood neighborhood committee, Madlock learned she wasn’t alone. Numerous residents of buildings owned or managed by Levy came forward with the same story, with many claiming the notice of nonrenewal was in retaliation for complaints to the city inspector.
Felicia Davis, a community program director in the neighborhood, says at the initial meeting she identified as many as 53 residents who were affected by the nonrenewal but later documented 15 to 20 people who were being forced out.
“Most of them are minorities,” Davis says. “The new residents are Caucasian.”
Levy, who manages 76 units in Brentwood Village, denies that his actions were racially motivated and says the actual number was 10 — six because of habitually late rent, three because of neighborhood police complaints and one because of a hoarding situation.
“This is our normal process of business,” Levy says of the nonrenewals. “It’s really a lot to do about nothing.”
Madlock insists that she’s never been late on rent and that the “police contact” Levy cites as the reason for her nonrenewal wasn’t the result of any wrongdoing on her part. She called in a noise complaint on her upstairs neighbor — after Levy recommended that she do so.
Tammy Downing, another resident who received a nonrenewal notice, says Levy never gave her a reason for declining her tenancy. And when she told him she was getting an attorney, he changed his mind and allowed her to renew her lease and stay — after asking her to pay a $145 eviction filing fee, she says.
“He’s kinder to his white tenants than he is to the black,” says Downing, who is white.
An Isthmus request for three years of city building and inspection records of Levy’s properties shows hundreds of issues stemming from tenant complaints and requests from the city attorney’s office.
Many of the violations were minor, like issues with exterior lighting or failure to remove snow from sidewalks. But many others were more serious — dozens of instances of mold, mildew, leaky pipes, sagging ceilings, cockroaches and general disrepair.
In numerous cases, several of Levy’s Brentwood Village properties had well over 100 orders to correct stemming from a single inspection. Some issues were addressed within a matter of weeks, but more often several months passed between the initial inspection and compliance. In one case, it took nine months, five reinspections and a city attorney referral before all the problems were fixed.
Overall, Levy’s properties received nearly 70 citations and 18 referrals to the city attorney’s office since August 2013.
Levy and his properties are well-known at city hall, says Kyle Bunnow, a housing inspection supervisor in Madison’s Building and Inspection Division.
“We have spent a considerable amount of time and resources at his properties,” Bunnow says. “This situation is not the norm.”
Bunnow says his department can impose fines to encourage problem landlords to maintain their buildings, but the city’s main tool for compelling compliance is the city attorney’s office.
Assistant city attorney Jennifer Zilavy says at one point her office declared one of Levy’s properties a chronic nuisance and recently requested a mass inspection of his properties in connection with numerous complaints from residents. But this is normal in the property management business, she says.
“This is the pattern with [Levy] — we bring the hammer down, and then he takes care of business,” she says. “He has periods, sometimes years, when we don’t have any significant issues.”
Levy says he’s been working with police and building inspectors to improve his properties and that he’s “sunk literally hundreds of thousands of dollars” into his Brentwood units, which he rents for between $840 and $975 per month.
“I know I’ve been written up for a few things, but you’re going to get normal wear and tear,” he says. “Are these properties in disrepair? No.”
He also says he’s worked with several of the tenants with whom he declined to renew tenancy to help them find new housing. He adds that he’s played a role in cleaning up the neighborhood and that his property management efforts have helped reduce gang and drug activity in the neighborhood.
Zilavy agrees that conditions in the neighborhood have “definitely improved” in recent years. But she also voiced concern about tenants in lower-income properties who “tend to sometimes be afraid to make complaints about their living conditions.”
“They just accept where they are thinking they have no recourse,” she says. “I wish there was a more global way to work with them and let them know that just because you don’t have money doesn’t mean you’re not entitled to live in decent, safe and sanitary housing.”
Madlock plans to take legal action against Levy, but most of the tenants who received nonrenewals are long gone. Neighborhood committee member Kathlean Wolf says most of the affected residents simply fled their apartments before they were able to find a new place, fearing extra charges of staying past their tenancy deadline. Many left furniture and electronics behind.
“These people were run out,” Wolf says.
Madlock says she knows several people from the neighborhood who are now staying in shelters; others are sleeping in their cars. And when it’s time for her to vacate her apartment this week, she fears she’ll be out on the street too.
“It’s bogus. It’s wrong,” she says. “And we don’t have anywhere else to go.”