After touring an apartment complex on DeLand’s northwest side, city officials are pursuing code-enforcement action against the owners for plumbing problems, disconnected fire alarms and more.

The DeLand Fire Department was aware of some problems at the apartments, but a group of residents reporting problems to the DeLand City Commission spurred action.

“What is this, a prison?” DeLandite John McManus asked at the Sept. 6 City Commission meeting. He was one of six residents who live in the apartments on Hunters Creek Drive who came to the meeting to complain about poor upkeep.

“I’ve never seen anything so unkempt in my life,” Dorothy Percy told The Beacon.

Percy has lived in the same apartment since 2007, she said, but when ownership of the apartments on Hunters Creek Drive changed from one corporate owner to another, things went downhill fast, she said.

Hunters Creek Apartments, on DeLand’s north side near the intersection of Plymouth and Spring Garden avenues, consists of more than 250 apartments. The Volusia County Property Appraiser’s Office lists SAS Lexington Club at Spring Arbor Managers LLC as the owner, with the Georgia-based national housing conglomerate Hallmark Corp. listed as the mailing address. Hallmark is also listed as an “authorized person” for the LLC in the State of Florida’s business records.

Percy and other residents described derelict conditions — gas leaks, bugs, no carbon-monoxide detectors, and air conditioning systems that were broken for weeks on end.

Like many of her neighbors, Percy can’t afford to uproot her life and move, but she believes she and the other apartment-dwellers deserve better than appliances leaking gas.

“Our voices have to be heard,” she said. “Look at the building in Miami that collapsed; it was because of neglect. All it would have took would have been one spark, and we would have blown up in this building.”

The residents’ complaints kicked off a City of DeLand investigation, and city officials performed a walkthrough of the apartments Sept. 12. Of the more than 250 apartments at the complex, many were inaccessible when city officials came around — either because residents weren’t home, the unit was vacant or the tenant simply didn’t answer the door. Nevertheless, city representatives were able to speak to 104 tenants.

Of those tenants, their feelings were split exactly down the middle, city officials said. Fifty-two tenants reported no concerns about their unit, while another 52 reported problems ranging from outof-date fire extinguishers and high grass outside to persistent gas smells and appliances that don’t work and weren’t getting fixed.

One tenant who spoke to The Beacon said a used stove installed by the regional manager representing the company that owns Hunters Creek later leaked carbon monoxide and landed them in the hospital.

“I fell asleep that night dreaming I was choking,” the resident, who asked not to be identified by name for fear of reprisal, said. “I got up out of my sleep, and I couldn’t breathe. It was like someone stabbing my head; I knew I had gas poisoning.”

By the time they were discharged from the hospital and returned home, the gas company had put a warning on the door about the leaking carbon monoxide.

“I almost died,” they said.

The Hunters Creek apartments weren’t always this way, the anonymous resident said. And while things were going downhill under the previous owner, Concord Rents, they only got worse under the new regime.

From no lawn care to discolored toilet water that stings their eyes and nose, the resident said just about everything that could be wrong about a living space was wrong with at least one person’s apartment at Hunters Creek.

The neighboring Lexington apartment complex, the resident said, had problems of its own, too, including negligent management and more.

A local manager at the Hunters Creek apartments told The Beacon they could not offer any comment on the apartments’ problems, and that The Beacon would have to speak to the Hallmark Corp. corporate office. The Beacon, however, was unable to reach anyone at Hallmark’s corporate office for comment.

Following the city’s walkthrough, a notice of violations was delivered by city staff Sept. 14. The next step is for the property owner to come before the city’s code enforcement magistrate Oct. 26. Following that, if conditions are not improved, fines will be levied against the property owner until the problems are remedied.

Until the code-enforcement meeting is held, the manager of the apartments on Hunters Creek Drive is providing City of DeLand Code Enforcement Manager Richard Lovett with a list of the corrected violations so Lovett’s department can inspect the work the following day.

“This process is fluid,” Community Development Director Rick Werbiskis told The Beacon, “as our goal is to achieve compliance resulting in a safe place for the residents to live, not to be punitive towards the property owner.”