Rats! Rodents In Attack Mode At Senior Apartments
A rat at a senior-citizens apartment complex attacked a resident as she was throwing garbage down a trash chute, the woman said.
And the incident, which sent Barbara Miller to the hospital Sept. 21 with deep rat scratches on her chest, isn’t the only one at Manchester Lakes Senior Apartments in the Franconia area of Virginia where at least a dozen residents say rodents have been a problem for as long as three years.
Bo Surratt saw a mouse squeeze under the door to his apartment.
“You can hear them in the walls at night,” Joyce Alexander said. “It’s hard to sleep because you wonder if they’re going to get inside your unit.”
The 250-unit complex was recently renovated, according to its website. Rent for a one-bedroom apartment starts at $961 and a two-bedroom unit goes for almost $1,400 a month.
[one_fourth]
Residents said they’ve made numerous complaints to the property owner, Los Angeles-based JRK Property Holdings, without results.
James Baumann, JRK’s associate general counsel, said he could not comment until he spoke with the company’s tenant relations department. JRK manages 55,000 units across the USA, according to its website.
Vincent Lewis has several traps around his apartment. Because he’s in a wheelchair, he said he’s unable to clean up the layer of rodent droppings between his refrigerator and cabinet.
Rodents directly transmit at least 10 diseases and are indirectly responsible for 15 more, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
When Lewis came home from a recent hospital stay, he said he found rodent droppings littering his kitchen countertops and floor. The animals also had torn through his paper towels and toilet paper.
“If I stopped paying my rent, I’d be out on the street,” he said.
Yvette Monroe opened the cabinet door under her sink to find a dead mouse in a trap she had set the night before.
“If they have parents, they wouldn’t want their parents to live like this,” she said.
