In the weeks since the residents of a dangerously derelict Akron apartment building were forced out with only what they could carry, displaced renters say they have received little support from the county that deemed their building unsafe or the city that forced them to leave until structural problems are fixed. The landlord, who they say has not returned rent money, has also not started repairing the building.
“It has been a really expensive ordeal for us,” said tenant Raina Ward, 54, who donated plasma on Friday to get a $5 Burger King gift card and enough money to pay for another night of shelter. “Many of us paid our rent, and I had just literally gone to the grocery store. All that food has gone to waste and I’ve had to live in a hotel.”
None of the residents of the 51-unit building at 1431 S. Main St. have been told when, or if, they will be able to move back in after portions of the building’s brick veneer on the third floor detached and collapsed onto the front sidewalk last month.
Ward 7 Council Member Donnie Kammer said 13 evacuated tenants showed up to a recent ward meeting and some told him the apartment owner was still hounding them for money.
“The landlord was basically calling them and saying, ‘Hey, even if you’re not living there, I still need your rent money,’” Kammer said. “They’ve been paying the landlord rent, and I think that’s bullshit.… I’m pretty pissed off about that.”
For a two-hour window on Monday, residents will be legally allowed back inside for the first time in more than three weeks to pack up and take out anything they can take with them.
Difficult for displaced residents to move elsewhere
Many renters living at 1431 S. Main St. do not have the means to find stable housing elsewhere. Tenants rent small rooms — bathrooms and kitchens are communal — on weekly terms and pay the landlord in cash unless other arrangements are negotiated. The landlord’s attorney said some tenants do not have bank accounts.
According to eviction filings and interviews, rent is typically around $165 to $200 per week.
“I have a couple of leads on a couple of places, but I don’t have the money,” said Ward, a student at Stark State College. She said she paid for a week at a west side budget hotel through an emergency fund for students. She lived in the Main Street building for two years and, prior to the veneer collapse, she paid rent through the end of March, she said.
The landlord, whom she said is “a man of his word,” hasn’t given that money back even though she can’t live there. “The money’s just not there.”
Tenant Christopher Lasley has been staying with Ward and her dogs in the hotel while awaiting word on when he can return home. He’s unsure of how to keep a roof over their heads while he awaits the start of a new job.
“I paid rent there, but I’ve got to pay for somewhere else — ain’t nobody going to reimburse this money,” he said. “… I was saving money, now I ain’t saved any more.”
Criminal convictions for some tenants make housing hard to come by
Many tenants also have serious criminal convictions that hinder their ability to move. The business, originally known in the 1980s as the Parkside Male Residential Hotel, has long catered to convicted sex offenders and others recently released from prison.
Its current owner and landlord, Robert L. Johnson, took over the business just months after serving more than three decades for a murder conviction when he was 15, and he’s now awaiting trial on felony kidnapping and assault charges after he was arrested at the building in November.
Before bricks from the Parkside began tumbling onto the Main Street sidewalk last month, at least 20 registered sex offenders lived in the 51-unit building.
A spokesperson for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation & Correction said that there were at least nine tenants “under supervision” by the state and that the Adult Parole Authority “worked quickly with local law enforcement and other community partners to develop a plan” to ensure they were “accounted for or placed in another residence or warming shelter.” The Exit Program, which works with people who are formerly incarcerated, helped some of them, she said.
For tenants who are on the sex offender registry but are no longer on parole, it is even more complicated.
Lisa Dolan, who works for the Summit County Department of Public Safety, helps people who served prison sentences when they return to the community. She was volunteering at the city’s emergency warming center on Voris Street that some tenants were bused to on Feb. 13 and was called in to try to help the next day.
“Housing in and of itself is really, really tough in my world of re-entry” and especially tough for sex offenders, Dolan said. “The only way I was really able to help was to provide them with a list of some landlords willing to work with people that have sex offenses, because places have to meet certain criteria — not within a certain distance from schools. Really the role that I was playing was sending out a list of places.”
But even if landlords are willing to rent to people with their conviction histories, she said, some of the tenants won’t be able to prove that they paid rent in the past or that they will be able to pay rent to a potential landlord going forward.
“My understanding is some of them were doing some work around that building, doing things to work off some of that rent,” Dolan said. “That is definitely problematic because in my world, working with returning citizens, you’ve got to be able to afford rent. We deal a lot with boarding houses because they are less costly than renting your own place. Some of the people in 1431 weren’t in the position to really pay rent, so that was problematic.”
Building poses ‘imminent danger’ to those living inside
County building inspectors responding to the brick veneer collapse on Feb. 10 and Feb. 13 found additional, unaddressed major structural issues and warned of imminent danger for those living inside the 110-year-old building.
The back wooden stairwell of the three-floor building was deemed dangerous — residents told Signal Akron a car backed into a main support beam more than a year ago. It is now being held up by two pieces of wood. A notice tacked to the back door also said a fire panel was inoperable, and one of the building’s exits was “defective and inoperable” despite an order from the city to fix it in 2023.
The Akron Fire Department posted conspicuous warning signs on the building and declared that nobody can move back in until the landlord hires contractors to get the building back up to code and pass a county inspection.
AFD Deputy Chief Scott Pascu also told Signal Akron that since the AFD last inspected the building in 2020, the building added 10 additional units with “no permit to do so.”
The costly repair and building code compliance process hasn’t started yet, and records and interviews indicate it is one several issues the landlord is currently facing. Filings in Johnson’s ongoing divorce case, civil litigation from tenants, and the felony kidnapping and assault charges from a November incident at the apartment, along with police reports alleging the theft of more than $50,000 of his cash from his first-floor office, detail the landlord is already facing financial issues.
After Johnson’s November arrest, his attorney, Stephen Hanudel, successfully argued Dec. 30 for his client to be released from jail on house arrest so he can serve three-day eviction notices on “unruly tenants to make room for hopefully better ones.” That way, he stated, Johnson can make enough money to pay for legal representation in his divorce, civil litigation and felony criminal cases.
Hanudel told Signal Akron the landlord served “about 25 eviction notices” to tenants of the building shortly before everybody was evacuated: “This whole process was ongoing, then suddenly boom, the whole facade collapse happened,” Hanudel said.
The attorney said the only thing they can do now is wait for the insurance company to decide to cover the repair, which he said should happen because he said the damage is weather related. In a Feb. 13 letter, Summit County Chief Building Official Christopher Randles wrote to Fire Chief Leon Henderson that the building should be evacuated as soon as possible because even more bricks are likely to fall as the “freeze thaw cycle” further damages its walls.
“It does not look like a happy ending for this building,” said Kammer, who is the City Council member representing Ward 7, where the building is located. “I want these folks to go somewhere, I want these folks to find a place to live… We as a city can’t continue to allow landlords and property owners to operate like this — next thing you know, people are out on the streets.”
Guardianship of former owner challenged in court
Court records indicate that the building, called the Mayer Building when it was built in 1915, has been in disrepair for decades.
Joel Brown purchased the building — which had once been a hotel catering to Firestone workers from nearby plants and housed many other businesses on its first floor — in 1983 to run a gay bar prior to converting it into what he called a “residential hotel,” catering to sex offenders and others struggling to find housing. Brown said in a deposition that when it would rain on the three-story building, water would leak into the first floor.
Johnson, 53, had no business experience prior to taking control of the complex in 2018, just two months after he was released on parole from prison. Alongside his brother, Johnson was convicted of the murder of a Cleveland woman, Christine Kozak, in 1986.
In a 2014 deposition while Johnson was still incarcerated, Brown indicated that Johnson – 28 years his junior – was his “partner.” He believed Johnson was innocent and funded a years-long but ultimately unsuccessful campaign to exonerate him.
Johnson’s ascent from incarcerated murderer to business owner and landlord raised concerns after Brown’s associates learned he had signed over power of attorney to Johnson, who was still in prison. This occurred as Brown was apparently descending into dementia amid other health issues, court documents state.
“Mr. Brown has significant financial assets, owns an apartment building, and there is concern that he is vulnerable to exploitation,” one Cleveland Clinic psychologist wrote in May 2018 during a probate court battle over Brown’s guardianship.
“… There is concern that within the last 6 months, since Mr. Brown’s cognition has been declining, [Robert Johnson’s] criminal defense attorney Stephen Hanudel reportedly has drawn up paperwork to designate Robert as [power of attorney], as well as giving him a financial stake in the business,” the probate documents state.
After Johnson was released from prison, Brown was discharged from a nursing facility so that Johnson could take care of him. Brown died two months later at the apartment complex — Johnson told police he found him unresponsive when he arrived that morning.
Brown’s will, drafted by Hanudel after Johnson gained power of attorney, gave all of his property to Johnson.