Resident complains of giant roof rats in her rental condo, management company unresponsive
By Deborah Goonan, Independent American Communities
In Las Vegas, as in many cities in the U.S., it’s common for condominium owners to lease their units.
From a tenant’s perspective, a condo rental unit looks and lives like traditional apartment home. But in a condo association, a tenant must deal with the added hassle of condo association bureaucracy.
Typically, a tenant’s lease is an agreement with condo unit’s owner, subject to the rules and restrictions of the condo association.
Each condo owner is part of the condo association (HOA). The manager of the association is paid from monthly assessments, which are normally collected from owners, not tenants. (Although, from the landlord’s perspective, the cost of condo fees are usually rolled into the monthly rent.)
Who ya gonna call?
Whenever a tenant encounters a problem with a rented condo, the first call is to the landlord-owner. For example, if the refrigerator or the air conditioning unit supplied by a landlord stops working, then the landlord must repair or replace them.
On the other hand, if the tenant’s neighbors are blasting loud music in the wee hours of the morning, the tenant would call the condo association manager.
But some problems, such as pest control, are the joint responsibility of the landlord (unit owner) and the condo association.
For example, unit owners may be responsible for pest control in each of their units, while the condo association is responsible for keeping pests from getting inside each condominium building or infesting the common areas.
Since condo associations often have multiple landlords, plus an association manager, disagreements are common.
Unit owners and condo association boards and managers blame each other for the pest problem, and argue about who should pay for extermination.
Tenant in the middle
What’s a tenant to do when her landlord and the condo association don’t work together to exterminate unwanted pests?
Imagine living with an infestation of giant rats in your home for six months.
KTNV recently interviewed condo resident Anna De Chirico, who is currently living that nightmare. The tenant has carefully documented the rodents’ destruction of her home and personal property.
Rat feces and urine in her oven. Photos of dead rats caught in traps on the kitchen counter. A flooded kitchen floor caused by rodents chewing holes in the dishwasher hoses. The box spring of her bed destroyed by the pests.
De Chirico says that her landlord did arrange for pest control service for her condo. But the rats keep coming back. She says the pest control expert traced the source of the rodents to the roof of the condo building.
Condo association responsibility
Of course, the condo association is responsible for maintenance of the roof and wall cavities, not her landlord.
But the tenant says that repeated calls to the condo manager, an employee of First Service Residential, have gone unanswered.
The KTNV reporter didn’t get a response from the FSR manager either.
Under these circumstances, De Chirico is planning to cancel her lease. So her landlord, the unit’s owner, probably won’t be collecting rent.
That, of course, is bound to generate even more complaints to FSR and the condo association’s board of directors.
Makes you wonder what’s the story behind this story…
Warning: today’s featured news video may give you the creepy crawlies and turn your stomach.
Homeowner reports rat infestation in her west Las Vegas home
Cinthia Maldonado
7:02 AM, Nov 15, 2018
7:09 AM, Nov 15, 2018LAS VEGAS (KTNV) – A valley woman is dealing with a giant rat problem and she claims her emails to First Service Residential (HOA) have gone unanswered for too long.
Creepy crawlers have been playing house in Anna De Chirico’s home for at least six months.
“I woke up to a complete flooding in the kitchen area,” said De Chirico.
The Clark County resident claims rats have been chewing everything inside her one-bedroom home near Warm Springs Road and Fort Apache Road.
“They (pest control) pulled the dishwasher and it seemed like rodents inside the wall were coming from outside through the rooftop, inside the wall, ate all tubing causing a major flood in the kitchen and dining room,” said De Chirico.
…
Anna showed 13 Action News a copy of her lease which states that the landlord is responsible for taking care of the issue. Even though pest control has shown up numerous times the rats don’t go away.“This is not an inside problem,” said De Chirico.
In hopes to get De Chirico some answers, 13 Action News showed up to the HOA office on West Sahara only to be told by one of the community managers to call the same manager De Chirico has been reaching out to.
After calling that manager numerous times and leaving a voicemail, 13 Action News was unable to get a comment from First Service Residential.
Read more (Video):https://www.ktnv.com/news/homeowner-reports-rat-infestation-in-her-west-las-vegas-home
To learn more about roof rats, check out this KTNV video. According to Trent English of Truly Nolen, rodent infestations are a “communal problem,” that almost always affects more than one home.
All the more reason that a condo or homeowners association must be aggressive with extermination and prevention of giant roof rat infestations.
Reports of rats on the rise in Las Vegas as temperatures fall
Carla Wade
10:40 PM, Sep 12, 2018
6:11 AM, Sep 13, 2018Source:
https://www.ktnv.com/news/reports-of-rats-on-the-rise-in-las-vegas-as-temperatures-fall
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