Following the death of Deshundra Tate, 31, and her 5-year-old daughter Kendra after a gas leak at Sunset Village, displaced apartment residents have been warned Of ‘unsafe, unlivable’ conditions.
The Mississippi Free Press got the details;
On Aug. 30, 2022, Deshundra Tate, 31, and her daughter Kendra, 5, died following a gas leak at Sunset Village. What happened next was a mass evacuation, the residents shunted to nearby motels while emergency repairs commenced at the apartment complex. A strange pattern emerged as residents tried to adapt to life in one-room motels. They were expected to continue to pay rent and utilities for their units at Sunset Village even though they’d been forcibly removed from their apartments, while the apartment management firm paid for their motel rooms.
Now, lawyers from the University of Mississippi’s Low-Income Housing Clinic have alleged a litany of egregious violations of housing law against complex owner Sunset Moore MS TC, LP, and manager The Millennia Companies, which is based in Ohio. In a legal filing today against both entities, Housing Clinic Director Desiree Hensley alleges that management knew of the gas leak and failed to repair it prior to the death of both Tate and her daughter.
At the same time, countless residents reached out to the Mississippi Free Press on Saturday, Oct. 15, to warn that they are being forced back into their apartments despite potentially dangerous conditions. Hensley’s complaint asserts the same, alleging that Sunset Village’s apartments violate numerous federal housing regulations.
“I’m just so sad,” Head told this reporter. “I really want to cry. I feel like, if that’s my home, I should be able to live there. I shouldn’t have to live like I’m living now.”
Head’s world was split in two. Her home, she said, was an unlivable wreck, her fridge full of rot, and she feared for her family’s safety if they were forced to return. Five children waited for her back at the motel, where they have lived for over a month, sharing two beds. She is six months pregnant, and there was iron in her voice when she refused to return.
The notice on Vonetta McCoy’s door on Sept. 14, 2022, gave her 10 days to clear out of her apartment. “Should you not vacate the premises on the date set forth above,” it read, “legal action shall be taken against you to force an eviction.” This left McCoy with a difficult task ahead of her. She was not currently living in the premises listed on the letter, a small apartment in the Sunset Village complex just outside Cleveland in the Mississippi Delta.
By then, McCoy and her son had been living at the Super 6 in the city proper since Aug. 30, along with many other families from Sunset Village, sharing one bedroom, a cramped bathroom and a desk by the TV. Earlier, on the night of Aug. 30, she had come home from work to find the police swarming the complex, intercepting residents and directing them to the church down the road.
There, the Red Cross had set up a temporary shelter to receive them. She had heard that a family had died at Sunset Village, a mother and her child. An inspection of the property followed, and soon a full evacuation of Sunset Village’s 136 units.
Some residents found friends or family to stay with. Countless others ended up in rooms at motels nearby—a Quality Inn, a Super 6 or the C-Town Inn and Suites across the road, arrangements which Sunset Village management paid for. It’s where they were two weeks later on Sept. 14 when McCoy received the notice for an apartment she had not lived in for half a month. It was posted on her motel room door.
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