David Gaut and his wife, Tracy, have been living at Remington Ranch for more than a year. They have lacked heat and hot water, experienced rodent infestations and had constant communication problems with the property managers. The Gauts are not the only residents in Remington Ranch to experien ce those problems. Public outcry reached the Stillwater City Council in February, prompting the city to declare the property a public nuisance and sue the landlord, Vesta Realty. David Gaut said he hoped that would bring about change and repairs to the complex. That legal action is now at a standstill after competing bankruptcy proceedings between Vesta Realty and YSA Investments 1 complicated the ongoing problems at Vesta’s complexes. Vesta Realty representatives did not respond to requests for comment for this story. The complex legal matters have limited the city’s ability to seek meaningful remedies for the tenants still at the property, who live in conditions the city has already deemed uninhabitable. And when solutions such as declaring the property a public nuisance cannot swiftly deliver safe conditions, tenant advocates argue that state law needs to change to add more protections. Creative Solutions Tenant advocates initially praised Stillwater’s actions. They called it a creative solution and urged other cities to take similar action regarding Vesta properties. That was several months ago, and since then, new problems have arisen further complicating the solutions. Katie Dilks, Oklahoma Access to Justice Foundation’s executive director, said one solution that would help prevent habitability problems from reaching the level of the city is the ability for a tenant or an entity to seek injunctive relief. Injunctive relief would allow the tenant to seek a court order requiring the landlord to fix property problems that harm the tenant. It would do what Stillwater sought to do with the public nuisance strategy, but would require less dramatic action at the city level.  “Injunctive relief is a very common mechanism in tenant law across the country,” Dilks said. “It is absolutely common practice in many states, including many very Republican states that look fundamentally similar to Oklahoma.” Eric Hallett, an attorney with Legal Aid Services Oklahoma, said the problem with state law is that tenants have almost no right to force the landlord to comply with habitability rules. Tenants only have the right to move or make repairs themselves. The ability to seek injunctive relief in this situation still would not be enough for tenants, as the bankruptcy proceedings would stop tenants’ legal action. “Generally, a bankruptcy prevents other lawsuits from moving forward,” Hallett said. “So anything filed by the tenants would be immediately stopped by the bankruptcy rules.” Remington Ranch Tenants As the legal battles continue to complicate Stillwater’s efforts to secure remedies for tenants of Remington Ranch, the city filed a motion to lift the bankruptcy stay to enforce habitability standards. Beth Anne Childs, an attorney working with Stillwater on the case, said in the meantime, tenants should work with legal aid or other resources that can assist in their individual cases. David Gaut went to Legal Aid Services with problems that ranged from the lack of hot water, which was bad for Gaut after back surgery left him with muscle spasms in the cold water, to property managers telling him he couldn’t break his lease, despite his multiple attempts to provide notice and move, one of the few actions tenants legally can take. Despite the problems, Gaut said he kept paying his rent out of fear of retaliation and eviction. In Oklahoma, tenants cannot withhold rent. Gaut said that he has chronic kidney disease and that if he were to become homeless, he wouldn’t survive. “It’s ridiculous that they’re taking advantage of us like this,” he said. “I cannot afford to be homeless.” Throughout the apartment complex, which comprises 12 buildings and 292 units, doors are left open, and water is leaking from vacant dwellings. Gaut said several of his neighbors in the building have left, and his unit was one of the few still occupied on that part of the complex. The lack of occupants was potentially dangerous to Gaut, who witnessed the apartment adjacent to his being broken into. Gaut said he had a house full of police and showed them the footage of a man entering the adjacent unit. Gaut’s situation and the problems at Remington Ranch stem from a greater systemic problem that has persisted across several Vesta properties and continues to harm tenants. Dilks, with the Access to Justice Foundation, said it is another example of why Oklahoma needs to revisit the state’s Residential Landlord-Tenant Act. “The more high-profile disasters we have with active and willful non-compliance with these public nuisance strategies, or with code enforcement complaints, or with repeated tenant complaints, the clearer it becomes for our policymakers that the tools we have available to us are insufficient in the face of an actor like this.” Gaut and his wife were ultimately able to leave the complex and move into a new apartment. It’s a comparable size and price, but Gaut said it feels much more like a home. “It’s unbelievably better,” he said. “It’s so much better. So, so much better. The Lord worked for us.” Jake Ramsey covers evictions, housing and homelessness. Contact him at (405) 370-3798 or [email protected]. The post Stillwater Sued to Fix Remington Ranch; Competing Bankruptcies Froze the Case appeared first on Oklahoma Watch. ...read more read less