Anaheim : 200 Tenants Rally; Some Withholding Rent
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About 200 tenants of an Anaheim complex met Thursday night to protest conditions at their apartments.
Residents of the Royal Gardens Apartments, 1700 N. Temple St., complained of cockroaches, dirty pools and plumbing problems, among other things.
The Anaheim Code Enforcement Department received six complaints this year from the 350-apartment complex, said Richard LaRochelle, a senior code enforcement officer. Last year, he said, the city received three complaints.
“If we only get that number of complaints for a large complex like that, that’s not bad,” LaRochelle said.
Resident Kathleen Roquemore said there are “ceilings that are falling in . . . balconies that are falling down, railings that are falling down on balconies.”
Roquemore said that she and another 15 or so residents this month stopped paying their rent. Roquemore lives in a $575-a-month, two-bedroom apartment. She said she expects that about 200 more tenants will join the rent strike this month.
“I spent three weeks with a plugged toilet. At that stage, I decided I wasn’t paying my rent. Nobody has to live with that,” Roquemore said.
Neither the landlord, Sam Menlo, nor managers of the northeast Anaheim complex returned a reporter’s phone calls Thursday.
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