BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) – From the outside, 1149 Rodin Avenue looks pretty bad. But take a step inside and you’ll see how it can get worse.
“Either I submerge it or, other than that, when we moved in, it looked like this,” said Ashley Harris.
As a single mother with three children and another on the way, Harris says she has reached her limit. She says her landlord refuses to make much-needed repairs to her apartment.
“This is the cabinet you promised to fix, get another one from Home Depot, you never got one,” Ashley said as she led us through her bathroom.
A family of four and not even a working bathroom. Harris says his landlord, Jesse Glasper, promised to fix everything as soon as possible, but hasn’t followed through. She thinks the mold is all over her house and says it’s gotten so bad; her 12-year-old daughter had to go to the hospital.
“My oxygen levels weren’t good… I was throwing up a lot… Headaches,” explained 12-year-old Braniya Harris.
“When we got there, his oxygen levels were high, and then within a minute, they were low. They put her on an oxygen machine, gave her fluids, we stayed there from Saturday to Sunday morning around 8:30 or 9:00,” added Braniya’s mother.
With no luck getting her landlord to call, we headed over to her house to see if we had any better luck. He said that he would look into it before closing the door.
“It’s been very difficult, but… my mom still managed… to get through it all…” Braniya said.
“I really am more afraid of losing my children to the state. And it’s not my fault because I go to work 7 to 7 every morning, I’m doing my part by paying the rent, keeping the lights on, keeping the water on and everything in between,” Ashley Harris continued.
If you have similar problems, you can find out who your housing authority is to file a report. In the worst case, you can take legal action through the Attorney General’s office.
Click here to report a typo.
Copyright 2022 WAFB. All rights reserved.