LANSING, Mich. (WLNS) – Autumn Ridge in Lansing has been visited by 6 News multiple times over the last few years
New information from the city shows the complex has been operating without a valid renter’s certificate since 2017.
City officials say the apartment complex has more than 600 units and each one is being rented out without the proper legal documents.
The city says the apartment complex is not up to code and some of the units have been marked as unlivable.
Currently, 26 units are red-tagged as unlivable and some of them have been non-compliant since 2019.
In efforts to bring the apartment up to code and to get a valid certificate, the city is currently in a legal battle that has been going on for four years. But as that drags on, the ones who suffer are the people who live there.
“My heat has been on for like three days straight and it’s still ain’t reaching 90 degrees. You see my kids they covered up and everything and we have been wanting five, six months to come out and fix that,” said resident Thomas Sanders.
Sanders has lived at Autumn Ridge for the last four years. He says that ever since he and his family moved in, the place it has only gotten worse.
“It’s a lot of stuff that’s broken, sometimes they don’t even cut the grass sometimes. We got a playset outside sometimes they can’t come out and play because the grass is so high. It’s steadily going down slowly but surely,” said Sanders.
6 News told Sanders that even before he moved into the complex, the owners didn’t have the correct legal documents to rent out the apartments. That was news to him.
“I’m very surprised because they want their rent money every month and they send eviction notices out. If I would have known that I probably wouldn’t be paying,” said Sanders.
Other residents say they have had no issues with their apartments and say they’ve noticed better response times to maintenance requests.
Sanders on the other hand, is stuck with nowhere to go and is pleading with the company for help
“Please get it together so we can get our household together cause we just going through the phases of struggling.”
Autumn Ridge says it is “Currently in compliance with the city’s rental certification process” and that they “disagree with any narrative that [they] are operating without a valid renters certificate since 2017.”
