Roach infestations, chronically broken elevators, frequent heat and water shutoffs — unfortunately, these are common complaints for renters across Detroit.
At Alden Towers, located at 8100 E. Jefferson Ave., some tenants are fed up with their deplorable living conditions and have begun withholding rent and refusing to leave until the issues get resolved.
Sophiyah Elizabeth, a musician and artist who has called Alden Towers home since 2016, was told her lease was being terminated after raising several complaints with the building’s management company Friedman Communities. She remains in the building after meeting with City Council President Mary Sheffield and Detroit Action, who advised her to stay and fight.
Alden Towers was a peaceful community with a serene view of the Detroit River when Elizabeth first moved there in 2016. She and fellow residents would host events with live music in the front lot off the Detroit Riverfront, the waft of food and allure of smooth sounds bringing neighbors together for afternoons of connection.
She noticed the building began to gradually decline in 2023. From August to December of that year, Elizabeth’s C Tower apartment was infested with roaches. After the infestation remained unresolved despite pest control treating the apartment several times, Elizabeth requested a new apartment in early December. She says she was told to pay a full month of December rent for the roach-infested apartment plus a prorated fee for the new one to avoid eviction.
So she paid her rent on December 14, but a day later was served a notice to vacate the premises by January 15. She says a Friedman representative also told her over the phone to turn in her keys.
“They called me and said, ‘We want you to turn your keys in because it seems like everything we did, you’re not satisfied with,’” she says. “That’s not true.”
The reason given on the notice is for “refusal to permit commercial pest control contractor to spray commercial pesticides” and “[refusing] entry for treatment without being present, thus prohibiting treatment for roaches.” She had requested for exterminators to use an alternative to spraying pesticides in her apartment due to a previous meningitis diagnosis.
She feels the attempted eviction was retaliatory since she began contacting the company’s upper management, media outlets, and Detroit City Council with stories from her fellow tenants.
“I started to ask people questions,” she says. “I would come back and it be [roaches] in the hallway… it’s never been like that… was I really supposed to stay and wait on [a] ‘this too shall pass’ situation? They really expected us to do that. But guess what, people did because they don’t have nowhere else to go.”
The Detroit Riverfront complex with four eight-story brick towers and nearly 400 units was built in 1923 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985. It was abandoned for some time until Triton Properties purchased it in 2012, pumping $5 million into renovations in 2013.
Elizabeth refused to turn in her keys and decided to wait for the management company to take her to court. She has also organized meetings with Detroit People’s Platform to help form a tenant’s association and share resources on how to handle an eviction. Since the initial threat of eviction, the management company has given her a three-month lease to stay in the building until June.
Another resident, Kristine Christlieb, has been withholding her rent in an escrow account in protest for at least four months.
The 70-year-old woman lives on the sixth floor of the complex’s D Tower. She recalls the elevator would not go to the sixth floor for six months in 2023, so she had to go to either the fifth or seventh floor and take a flight of stairs. There have also been several instances where there was no heat, no elevator, or hot water.
“Until they negotiate compensation for all the inconveniences, I’m not going to pay,” she tells Metro Times. “When the elevator goes out, you have no idea… I’m 70 years old. When I am forced onto six flights of stairs just to get to my car, or with my arms full of groceries, the chances of me falling are considerable… I can’t understand why they would incur the possibility of that liability.”
Christlieb rattles off her notes, where she’s kept track of every time there was no elevator, hot water, or heat in 2023. “April 4-6: elevators were out. April 11: no heat or hot water. May 1: no heat, elevator came back on. August 23: elevator is out for five days. I asked for a space heater and I was told I could go buy one. October 30: no heat, no hot water for weeks. Nov. 6: no heat, no hot water. Nov. 13: still no elevator.”
She remembers there was no heat for the entire month of April or October, and she developed shingles in November when there was no heat or hot water.
“The management rarely says a word. They don’t say, ‘We know the heat is out, we’re working on it,’” Christlieb says. “You call down there and ask what is the ETA on the heat and it’s always, ‘Well we’ve sent for a part and we don’t know when it’s gonna come in.’ There’s no sense of urgency or real empathy offered. It’s chronic, so clearly there is something wrong.”
In January, Elizabeth and Christlieb picketed outside the building when the heat was out for five days.
Christlieb held a sign that read, “Friedman, no heat, day five.”
Rene Black, who lives across the hall from Elizabeth with his husband, also experienced the roach infestation, and issues with heat and water. He and his partner pay $2,200 a month for a three-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment.
“I feel that we pay a lot of money to live here and everything to just deal with so much,” Black says. “No hot water. The dishwasher, the day we moved in, was filled with water. You can open that dishwasher, it’s still sitting with that same water. I told them that numerous times. [They said] ‘Oh, we’ll get you the new dishwasher.’ We have not received a new dishwasher, and that’s been since July.”
Black was one of several tenants who were displaced when a fire caused by another tenant ripped through the B Tower in May of 2023. Several tenants reported fire alarms did not go off or that the alarm was so quiet they could barely hear it.
“It was a very faint sound like I thought it was a car alarm,” Black says.
Elizabeth remembers, “I had a friend over at the time, and we looked out there, we were like, why is everybody outside? It was a bunch of people outside looking over to the left. We go outside [and] we see it’s a whole ass fire. What alarm was going off in here? What notification did we get to leave or evacuate? Nothing.”
Black says after the fire, he and his husband were moved into a new apartment that had mold on the floor from a water leak, so they had to move again.
“A lot of our peace was stolen after the fire,” he says. “I see a fire and I’m freaking the fuck out. It was traumatizing.”
Elizabeth sees the issues with Alden Towers as a symptom of gentrification, as companies “invest” in the city while putting their profits above the people who live there.
“Detroit’s history is just being whitewashed or washed away. There’s no one preserving it or taking care of it,” she says. “We need stewardship from [the] community in places that have been in Detroit longer than the people who are coming in. You’re not managing anything. You’re making money.”
She adds, “When you’re paying for rent, you’re paying for something you don’t own. It’s the same thing as sharecropping... This is making me not want to rent anywhere else.”
Despite the repeated grievances, none of the tenants we spoke with want to leave Alden Towers. They don’t want to lose the community they’ve built over the years or the unbeatable view of the Detroit River. Many cannot afford to move and they’d rather see the historic building cared for properly.
“We love living here. We’ve met some great people,” Black says. “To go somewhere else and to have to have first month’s rent, last month’s rent, deposit, that’s a lot.”
A representative from Friedman did not respond to a request for comment from Metro Times.
