Davon Jones doesn’t have to look far to see the irony in President Donald Trump’s tweets that Baltimore is a “rat and rodent infested mess.” His apartment owned by the president’s son-in-law has been invaded by mice since he moved in a year ago.
“I don’t know how they come in,” Jones says. “Every time I catch them, they come right back.”
Jared Kushner’s family real estate firm owns thousands of apartments and townhomes in the Baltimore area, and some have been criticized for the same kind of disrepair and neglect that the president has accused local leaders of failing to address. Residents have complained about mold, bedbugs, leaks and, yes, mice — plenty of mice. And they say management appears in no hurry to fix the problems.
“They don’t care,” says Dezmond James, who says he has spotted as many as three mice a week since he moved in to the Commons at White Marsh in suburban Middle River four years ago.
James says he sees a massive contradiction in Trump’s much-publicized tweets laying the blame for Baltimore’s poverty, crime and rodent problems on frequent antagonist Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings. Trump, he said, should look more at what he — and specifically Kushner — could do about it.
“His son-in-law owns all of this — then he can fix it. I’m pretty sure he has a lot of money,” says James, who is studying to be a medical assistant. “That’s kind of weird that you want to talk trash. … If you want to make improvements, you can make improvements.”
Conditions got so bad two years ago that the Baltimore County government issued a release showing the Kushner Cos. had violated housing codes more than 200 times in just 10 months and only moved to fix the problems after being threatened with fines.
“I had black mold in my cabinets. I called them, I called them, I called them. And they never did anything,” says Simone Ryer who moved out Whispering Woods in Middle River two years ago. “That was more than enough for me to leave.”
In a statement, the Kushner Cos. said it was proud of its Baltimore-area apartments and has worked to maintain a “high quality residential experience for our tenants” by investing “substantial amounts” in upkeep.
A website for the Commons at White Marsh boasts of “amenities that amaze,” but many of the 181 comments posted by residents at the review site apartmentratings.com complain of rats, mold, bedbugs, roaches and leaks. The reviews say management is generally unresponsive.
A 2017 report by the New York Times and ProPublica about residents at Kushner-owned developments echoed many of those online complaints, with one woman saying she found a mouse on her 12-year-old child’s bed. The Kushner Cos. told the Times at the time that it is had spent $10 million on its properties, but their age means issues can still arise.
A Baltimore Sun story the same year found the Kushner Cos. used the courts to arrest tenants late on rent more than any other landlord in the state.
And a lawsuit seeking class-action status for residents alleges Westminster Management, the Kushner subsidiary that oversees rental properties in Maryland and other states, often charges tenants illegal and excessive fees that keeps them in constant fear of eviction and guessing what they owe. Westminster has said it has broken no laws and denies the charges.
Jared Kushner took in $3.1 million from Westminster in the past two years, according to financial disclosure reports he filed with the federal government. He stepped down as CEO of parent company Kushner Cos. when he and his wife, Ivanka Trump, joined the White House as senior advisers to the president, but he still retains a financial interest and draws money from many of its operations.
At the Kushners’ Dutch Village community in Baltimore, Ronald Newson says his 86-year-old mother, Carrie, has been asking maintenance staff for nearly a year to patch a hole in her ceiling from a leak on the second floor, and that someone has to come to kill all the mice she’s been living with.
As a stopgap measure, she jammed the leg of a chair against a hole in the corner of her living room, but they kept coming out anyway. They also come from behind her stove.
“It takes them a long time to get repairs done,” the son said. He suggested that Trump, instead of blaming Cummings for the city’s problems, should look to landlords like Kushner, too.
“He talks about everyone but his son-in-law.”
(AP)
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7 Responses
Excellent – it’s time someone called them out. Mr. Kushner presents himself as Shomer Torah U’Mitzvos, but he doesn’t seem to be doing too well on actual practice.
My recommendation: a few years ago (30?) a “frum” landlord had the same “problems” keeping up his properties. This being New York, however, his non-Jewish tenants knew what to do. They took him to Beis Din. (Probably after hiring a good to’en.”) Guess what? They won, and the landlord was directed by the Beis Din to make the repairs, the rent proceeds meanwhile going into an escrow account until the repairs were completed.
This sounds like an excellent solution for Mr. Kushner’s difficulty. Allowing him to continue his neglect is actually a form of lifneh Iver, since his yetzer harah seems to be in charge during his business dealings, so his tenants should get together and consult the Baltimore beis din, which has a sterling reputation.
It might also go a ways towards ending what is really a huge chillul HaShem. This stuff gets reported in the general press, and believe me, they aren’t pulling any punches, especially after the President’s comments on Baltimore.
Get an exterminator and stop blaming others for your problem, or move. That’s the breaks sometimes!
I don’t get it. Kushner didn’t run his mouth off about kids at the border!
Kushners housing offenses are well know, just as Fred Trumps are. Heck at least Fred was jailed because his Maryland housing code violations were so egregious. And of course the rats and rodent feces in the Trump restaurants at the NYC Trump Tower, NJ golf course restaurant, and Mar a Largo are well documented and current.
time4change, it’s the landlord’s responsibility to provide habitable accommodations. That includes hiring exterminators when there’s a problem with vermin. The article talks about structural problems like leaks and mold. Do you think tenants are responsible for that too?
“since he moved in a year ago.”
Kushner was forced “out” from any active role in the apartments (thanks, among other things, to media onslaught complaining about some imagined conflict of interest with his voluntary government role or such babble) , so they are complaining about what happened afterwards – or is going on now – long after he was forced out from even being allowed to do anything?
time4 change: Keeping the apartment house rat free is the responsibility of the landlord. Exterminating your own apartment won’t work if there are mice, rats or roaches in the other apartments in the building. They’ll just move into the empty space and you’ll have them back. You have obviously never lived in an apartment building.
If Mr. Kushner can’t afford to keep his buildings up, he should get out of the landlord business. If he can and doesn’t, he should get hit with civil fines high enough to persuade him. And if any babies get bitten by rats in his buildings (a common occurrence in rodent-infested apartment buildings) maybe criminal negligence with some jail time might be in order.
There is honest profit-making and there is simple greed. Mr. Kushner’s yetzer hara seems to have gotten the better of him on this issue. Time for him to make teshuva and start keeping his properties in legally and morally respectable condition. (And thus not initiating the anti-Semitism which always seems to crop up when one Jew does something and everybody blames us all.)