TOLEDO, Ohio — WTOL 11 visited Ashland Manor Thursday to see if there was any progress 48 hours after the city of Toledo threatened the owners with legal action.
Exterminators and trash collectors were at the property before the Friday deadline to fix public health nuisances by spraying for roaches and filling dumpsters with trash that had piled up on multiple floors of the building.
"It's just a massive amount of roaches," said Mike Bennett, a Frame's Pest Control employee who treated the building.
Toledo City Council member Vanice Williams, held a news conference outside the complex on Ashland Avenue Wednesday to demand action. She checked on the clean-up's progress on Thursday and said she was not yet satisfied.
"We've got a ways to go," Williams said.
Ashland Manor tenants contacted Call 11 for Action last week, complaining of trash piled up on all eight floors, animal feces and roaches.
Bennett told Call 11 for Action that the roaches in the trash rooms are coming from tenant apartments and that each unit will have to be examined.
"They're bringing them with them every time there's trash, so we're going to have to do a complete inspection and go from there," he said.
Tenants appreciate that the trash and roaches are being addressed, but fear the action is a surface-level solution to a larger issue without real change by the property owners.
"We need maintenance here, we need management here, we need security here, first off," said Lawrence Oloshobe, who has lived at the property for nine years and said it used to be for seniors only.
Williams said she is not concerned that the problem at Ashland Manor will be recurring and this should serve as a warning to other property owners.
"Just like with the Greenbelt, that's always going to be a follow-up, Covenant House. We still as a city are putting our foot on the necks of these affordable housing projects," she said.
Williams said Ashland Manor's onsite managers are willing to listen, but she has not heard from the property owners nor from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which subsidizes the housing.
"One thing that people kept saying is, 'Why haven't the residents complained?' What do you mean?" Williams said. "Who are they to complain to?"
Oloshobe said the apartment complex's conditions aren't suitable for the older people who live there.
"We need someone to come here and step in and take over the place like senior living should be lived. We got veterans in here from Vietnam," he said.
HUD and NB Affordable, the owners of the complex, have not yet responded to requests for comment WTOL 11 made on Thursday.