INDIANAPOLIS (MIRROR INDY) — The kitchen sink in Terrieon Murphy’s apartment wouldn’t stop flooding. The water spilled onto the floor, working its way beneath the tile until it bubbled up. Murphy couldn’t keep up with the damage and resulting mold, and she had no luck getting maintena nce to fix the problem. “It made me feel uncomfortable,” she said. Murphy, 24, reported the issues to the Marion County Public Health Department — just as so many of her neighbors at the eastside Hubbard Gardens apartment complex have done. Health and Hospital Corp., a municipal corporation that runs the health department, filed a lawsuit in June to get Hubbard Gardens to fix Murphy’s unit. One responsibility of the agency is making sure homes are habitable. But the lawsuit didn’t solve the problem. Because once the property manager moved Murphy to a different unit two months later, Health and Hospital dropped the case. The reason? No one was living there anymore, according to court documents. On one hand, Murphy wanted out of the mold-infested apartment where the floor squished beneath her feet. But the move also demonstrates what some housing advocates and city-county councilors say is a failure in the way Marion County’s health agency enforces requirements for safe housing. Advocates and councilors have called for Health and Hospital to take more action. But even within the agency, there appears to be different understandings of what’s allowed and what’s not. Meanwhile, Murphy’s old unit at Hubbard Gardens was available to be rented again once she left — a problem 11 councilors brought up to Health and Hospital CEO Paul Babcock last year. And because the health agency dropped the case, Hubbard Gardens wouldn’t have been forced to fix the problems for the next renter. Not until they complained, at least. Then they could simply be moved to another unit for the cycle to continue again. It wasn’t clear when Mirror Indy visited on a Monday morning in March if anyone was living in Murphy’s former apartment. But a walk through the apartment complex revealed multiple examples of units that were still unlivable. Hubbard Gardens, near the intersection of East 38th Street and North Keystone Avenue, is owned by Cleveland-based Millennia Housing Management. Multiple voicemails left for Hubbard Gardens staff were not returned. Who’s to blame? Attorneys, advocates and health agency officials don’t agree on why cases get dismissed when the apartment unit is vacant. Some attorneys have told Mirror Indy that the agency believes it has to dismiss those cases. And that’s what the county health department’s environmental bureau chief, Dana Reed Wise, told Mirror Indy after a board meeting in March. “That’s not us doing that,” she said. “It’s the court telling us to.” But the Marion Superior Court judge who handles enforcement cases told Mirror Indy that she doesn’t have a policy telling the health agency to dismiss those cases. After that, a spokesperson for Health and Hospital told Mirror Indy that Wise simply misspoke. Instead, the spokesperson said, Health and Hospital attorneys have limited resources and heavy caseloads, so they need to prioritize cases where a renter is actually living in the apartment. All across Hubbard Gardens, apartments are in bad shape with mold, leaks and broken windows. Some of the units have people living in them, and some are vacant. In one building, residents said a unit had flooded multiple times, and the man who lived there moved to another apartment. But the door was left unlocked and accessible to anyone, including children who live in the building. The unit smelled of raw sewage, with crusty debris and mold covering the sink. One resident, 22-year-old Ashanti Jake, said she has bullet holes in her window and a front door that’s falling apart. Jake, who has a 5-year-old daughter, said she reported her problems to the health department, although she hasn’t been moved. “It’s too much,” she said. “I’m not comfortable here.” Click here to see photos from Mirror Indy Conditions became so bad at the apartments that Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita filed a lawsuit against the complex’s owners last year. The owners argued in response that the attorney general lacks standing for many of the allegations. The case is ongoing. The lawsuit built on a long list of Health and Hospital cases at the complex. The health agency filed 89 cases in less than two years. Of those, 19 were dismissed because the units had become vacant. It isn’t always clear how, though. The residents could have moved to another apartment, as Murphy did, or left the complex entirely. They also could have been evicted. But the extent of Health and Hospital’s involvement at Hubbard Gardens helps explain why the health agency chooses to dismiss some cases. ‘Not every case is that cut and dry’ Health and Hospital has two full-time attorneys, spokesperson Joel Weyrauch told Mirror Indy. And each attorney is handling 700 or more cases at any given time. “Keeping vacant units on the docket really gums up the system,” Weyrauch said. There are times, however, when the health agency does keep cases open even after the unit is vacant. But Weyrauch said that is reserved for cases where the threat extends to the public — such as asbestos coming off the siding of a property. “But not every case is that cut and dry,” he said. Weyrauch also said Health and Hospital has unsuccessfully advocated for changes to state law that would explicitly allow cases to remain open when the unit is vacant. As it stands now, he said, attorneys need to make an argument that there’s an immediate threat to public health. Still, two Indianapolis attorneys have questioned the idea that state law prevents the health agency from following through with an enforcement case after the tenant leaves. Adam Mueller, executive director of the Indiana Justice Project, and Fran Quigley, a professor at the Indiana University McKinney School of Law, wrote in a legal analysis that closing cases leaves the community with no remedy for health hazards. Instead, they wrote, the health agency “creates a cycle of non-remedy and perpetually dangerous conditions.” And at Hubbard Gardens, where residents told Mirror Indy that cycle is plain to see as their units deteriorate, renters like Murphy will continue scrubbing the mold and keeping their kids out of abandoned apartments. Health reporter Mary Claire Molloy contributed reporting. ...read more read less