The residents at Regina Rose were evacuated on June 25. In the meantime, four-year tenant Lisa Cyrus has been staying at the Holiday Inn Express in Fort Washington with her daughter.
“There hasn’t been a year at Regina Rose where I didn’t have something major happen in my apartment — and he has always dragged his feet,” Cyrus said of Waisbord.
Prior to being displaced from her third-floor apartment, Cyrus said, she had numerous issues with the building’s quality. When it rained outside, it usually rained in the apartment, she said. Last summer, her daughter’s room received a professional paint job three weeks before a rainy day, Cyrus said. “It rains and it caved into her room, and you can see the structure of the building, the roof.”
Instead of fixing the roof, Cyrus alleged, Waisbord simply patched it up even though there had been problems previously. “My renter’s insurance — quite honestly, I think they thought I was starting to make up expenses. That’s how often I would have to put in claims with them,” she said.
Nearly three weeks after tenants had to leave their apartments, Cyrus said, Waisbord has not returned any of her phone calls. Meanwhile, she has racked up a $4,300 hotel bill.
Ian Noyes has been living at the Regina Rose Apartments with his father since 2017. Even though he hasn’t seen many issues with the building firsthand, he described one recurring problem: “a leak in the ceiling that never got fixed. And basically plaster and drywall falling down on me, because of one of the rainstorms,” Noyes said.
Though Waisbord has both his phone number and his father’s, Noyes said, the landlord has not reached out to them about what’s going on with the building now.
The tenants are talking lawsuit
Cyrus said a group of residents is scoping out potential lawyers who can take on their case.
Noyes said he isn’t privy to all the details, but he does know the main priorities: “The idea that’s swirling around is … we want our money back for all the money that we spent on hotels.”
Cyrus said that she partially blames the township for “letting this go on,” and that she would want a lawsuit to go a step further.
“I mean, every and any one who can get sued will get sued,” she said.
Michael Kelley works as the managing attorney for the Norristown office of Legal Aid of Southeastern Pennsylvania. Partnering organizations in Montgomery County, such as the housing crisis agency Your Way Home, reached out to Kelley’s group shortly after the Regina Rose residents were displaced. Though he said in an interview Wednesday that he could not discuss the content or the specific callers, Kelley said his phone has definitely been ringing.
The tenants may have some legal options at their disposal, he said.
“There’s this principle in Pennsylvania called the implied warranty of habitability, which can also be used as a defense in lawsuits, and there’s a variety of recourses you could have that you would want to talk to an attorney about. But most applicable to this issue is, if you don’t have a habitable residence, you can use that in certain circumstances to formally break your lease. And there’s a process for doing so,” Kelley said.
Legal Aid of Southeastern Pennsylvania can be reached via its hotline, 877-429-5994, between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. Monday through Friday.
However, the organization does not usually handle cases from the perspective of a plaintiff.
“So if they’re having questions regarding defenses to any potential lawsuits, that’s something we handle. But to the extent that some people are also concerned about potentially going after Regina Rose for any losses that they have, that’s something that we would be referring out,” Kelley said. “Most often, we’d refer people to the Montgomery Bar Association, they have a lawyer referral service that we send them to.”
The Montgomery Bar Association’s lawyer referral service form can be found here.
If the tenants sue their landlord, it won’t be Waisbord’s first trip to the courtroom on matters concerning Regina Rose Apartments, as Lynch noted. It won’t even be the landlord’s most notable case.