“Dear PoPville,
At the beginning of April, I started smelling something foul in my apartment, or more accurately, my nice Cleveland Park condominium. I have lived in this unit for 17 years, and amazingly have never smelled anything from any other unit, no fish, no trash, no smoke, no nothing. Paradise. I keep my home very clean for a lot of reasons but there is never any standing trash, pizza boxes or anything else. Vacuum 1 or 2 times a week. Run a tight ship. No animals. No smoking.
This smell in my apartment was bad, and it continued for at least 15 days the first time. I reported to management and I quickly deduced this has to be coming from the unit underneath me (we have the exact same layout, so I’m 100% above that unit), which has been abandoned for months as I had discussed with the manager before. I went down to T1 level, I’m on 1st floor, and as soon as I got into the hallway I was overwhelmed with a powerful smell of chemicals, but underneath that, the same nasty stale, almost smoke-like smell that was in my apartment. I put my nose next to the crack in the door and took a big whiff. Almost got sick of the powerful nasty smell that smelled just like it did in my unit. I almost got sick breathing in the foul air in that hallway, it was that bad. This is not a hard connection to make. My unit smells bad for the first time in 17 years, underneath me is an abandoned unit, and it smells bad in the hallway in front of that unit and there is this chemical smell seemingly to mask that nasty smell.
I should also mention, within a day, my throat started to be very sore, my eyes were sore. Within 3 days
I developed a bad runny nose and a cough. The smell was constant, and even with an air purifier running, windows open all day I could not get it to go away. The connection between this nasty smell and my sickness was direct. I don’t have allergies, never have. I know pollen was high, but this was not that. My neighbor in the unit next to me also had the same symptoms as me. I have deployed 3 powerful air filters running 24 hours a day, rated for 3000 sq ft. My place is 700 sq ft.
The building manager said “there is nothing I can do, it will resolve itself in maybe 3 months.” I was not going to last 3 more days like this. I used to be on the condo board so I know there are things management and the building can do, but the manager flat out saying “nothing we can do” left me with not a lot of options. I re-read the bylaws, they had power to enter and remediate this problem. The hallways smelled, the air was surely spreading elsewhere in the building.
With this response, I took matters into my own hands. I called 311, they said, you need to talk to 911. I talked to them, said I was sick, I think there is something toxic in the unit below me, maybe a dead animal, or something dead (thinking about The Wire). 5 minutes later, an entire fire battalion showed up! Not even kidding. I live in Cleveland Park in the newest building (2003), with 155 units, and there is a fire house 2 blocks away. When we call they come fast.
Next thing you know, I’m being called on the phone. It’s the fire dept in my lobby. I came to meet them, and we had some tough conversations. It’s me against 10 firemen who I swear are all 7′ tall wearing all their gear and carrying door smashing metal objects. I explained the situation to the fire chief. I’m from center city Philadelphia, sold a lot of Cutco knives, and can be very convincing. Long story short, they come into my unit, they smell that the air is bad, and then they go to the front desk to get the keys. The firemen enter the unit, and guess what, they find a pigsty trash ridden apartment that smells awful. Smells exactly like what it smells in my apartment upstairs, but just much more potent. The fire battalion chief says “management should clean this up” and “yes it smells very bad in here.” This was April 6, 2024.
Now, I thought this would wake the board and management up and get them to get this unit cleaned out. Our condo bylaws empower the board and management to enter the unit if it’s unsafe, or if it’s not clean. There is a provision that says it must be kept clean, not hard to find. They have the power, they have the keys and yes they have the money to deal with this. April 8, 2024 the manager tells me “we are getting quotes to get it cleaned out.” I was still very sick, now on the 8th day, but this made me optimistic.
A month later, they had not cleaned out the unit, not communicated with me and were just stonewalling me. I had emailed the board, no response. Management would not respond. Would not tell me what was going on. I was getting very agitated.
I was sick for 14 days. My apartment smelled awful for at least 20 days. I got very sick again, measured 200 to 300 PM2.5 particles in my unit, which is considered “dangerous” for humans, and was sick again for 14 days straight. I have been sick for 30+ days out of the last 60 days. All of this shared with management and board.
I went to a board meeting to complain, and was silenced. I was told by the president of the board “We don’t here individual unit owner complaints in the Open Forum” which I challenged. No reason was given other than “we have never done that.” I then tried to post to our building Bulletin Board via BuildLink, both my messages were censored and blocked. One was to ask if anyone else was unusually sick. Nobody from management reached out to anyone in the building to ask if they had been sick.
So they silenced me in the board meeting, they silended me on the building bulletin board that I help pay for, leaving me little other options.
I started knocking on doors. The 2nd door I knocked on the person’s eyes lit up “yes, i have been sick for like 30 days and it’s not been normal.” I measured her air and it showed higher than normal PM2.5. I knocked on 6 doors before giving up that night.
The next day I got an email from the association’s attorney, which now said “we are going to get the air tested in the unit below you.” This was about 30 days after they said they were getting quotes to clean the unit out, and stonewalling me for 25 days with no information.
The attorney also said “we ask that you stop knocking on doors, we have gotten several complaints.” Hard to believe. First I challenged that, several means more than 3, and I know that 3 people did not complain. Also, I called out that they are using association attorney to intimidate me when i did nothing wrong, no law says I cannot knock on doors, and building bylaws do not state that either. So instead of using the considerable power and legal resources to resolve the problem, they were using it to intimidate me.
15 or so days after they said they were getting quotes to get the unit tested they came back and said “we will only test if you pay $2700 to have your unit tested the same day.” Not the exact words, but this is what they were saying. I said no you should test the known problem, they did not. They said it’s just you. I said no, this is a community issue and another resident has been sick. The other resident reported, they still did nothing.
So long story I know, and there is more, but I will leave the details there.
The other problem I have is, the board president has the power, and this person has been the president for 12+ years. 12 years. Condo bylaws say board terms are 3 years. I served on the board for 3 years as Vice President, as did the president at the time. That concerns me, but the lack of action and stonewalling and leaving me in the cold, sick for 2 months is the bigger issue. Suppressing raising issues in the open forum…
Also, and this is important, the board president used the association’s manager to promote her personal business for 4+ years. Every week an email would go out, specific to just her business to the whole community. It bothered me for a long time, and after 4 years I raised issue and it abruptly stopped, but the fact that the president, who is a lawyer, did not see it was a conflict of interest, and highly inappropriate, and didn’t stop it after week one caused me to question her ethics. I have been brought to board, and will continue to do that, that it is time for new leadership, and this president should step down.
Thanks for reading my rant. Please let me know if you have any ideas on how to compel them. I have refrained from hiring an attorney as I have already spent $1200 on air filters, charcoal bags, and air quality testers.”