There is no other way to say it: Ridgeview Apartments is a disaster zone.
With trash pick-up canceled months ago, piles of fetid, stinking garbage cover one parking lot, right next to several abandoned cars.
Meanwhile, the back courtyard is a wilderness of knee-high grass, discarded drug paraphernalia and shattered glass.
And without anyone actively managing the site, tenants say most of the units are occupied by squatters, who have turned the site at 9640 Diamond Drive into a marketplace for drugs. Gunshots and fentanyl overdoses are now a daily part of life, according to tenants interviewed.
“It’s a mess,” tenant Tammy Kuhn says. “There’s only seven people who legitimately live here.”
Kuhn says she can’t wait to leave Ridgeview, which is located in the small hamlet of Riverview Village, just west of the nearby Mississippi River and north of the St. Louis city line.
But that won’t happen until the Housing Authority of St. Louis County, which oversees her Section 8 checks, helps her find a new place to live — a quest that’s taken on a special urgency since August 16.
That was when village police began taping notices on each of Ridgeview’s 84 unit doors informing occupants the apartment complex had been declared “unsafe for human occupancy” and that tenants had 30 days to relocate, or else “be removed immediately” at the end of that period.
For Latice Valient, the news she might soon have to leave Ridgeview comes as a shock. Less than two years ago she and her young son were evicted by nearby Spanish Cove Townhomes when it began a large-scale renovation.
Valiant says she has no idea where to go.
“I ain’t got hotel money,” she says.
Ridgeview’s slide into oblivion happened in the same way Hemingway once described a character’s descent into bankruptcy — gradually, then all at once.
The quality of life began deteriorating three years ago. A series of owners and management companies came and went, each promising to make life better, but never following through.
Things hit rock bottom in January, when Evernest St. Louis — whose parent company’s corporate offices are in Atlanta — ended its active management of the site, according to tenant Michael McKinney and others interviewed.
McKinney heaps blame on Evernest St. Louis, as well as two previous property managers; each promised to make needed repairs but never followed through.
“They never do anything to the place for the last three or four years,” he says. “And they just push us, push us, push us.”
Evernest St. Louis did not return calls seeking comment Friday.
St. Louis County real estate records show that the current owner of Ridgeview is a firm called Le Chateau Citadel LLC. No phone number is publicly listed.
But that ownership information is not accurate, according to attorney Elad Gross, outreach coordinator for the St. Louis Mediation Project, which works with landlords to help tenants avoid eviction.
The current owner of Ridgeview is a firm called Hughes Capital Management, of Reno, Nevada, says Gross, who was on hand for a village council meeting Thursday night to help tenants deal with the village-led condemnations.
Hughes Capital’s phone number is disconnected.
After speaking to village leaders about evictions, Gross says, “They agree they’re not legal. They won’t be going through with that. So I’m just here to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Gross says only a couple families at Ridgeview receive housing vouchers through the housing authority, and — with the help of their case managers — could probably use those subsidies at apartment houses that accept them.
“There are a good number of landlords who are accepting it,” Gross says. “I would think it’s sooner rather than later, but it’s really kind of hard to gauge. That’s why it’s important for anyone who’s looking to get on that as soon as possible.”
McKinney blames village leaders for willfully ignoring the apartment complex’s obvious decline.
“They could’ve shut it down years ago,” McKinney says. “How come we’re living in a condemned building?”
During the council meeting, Mayor Mike Cornell told tenants jammed into the tiny council chambers that he and other city officials weren’t aware of Ridgeview’s deteriorating conditions until recently.
“We didn’t do this,” Cornell told tenant Esha White during the public comment section. “We didn’t put it in this condition. Hell, we didn’t know what was going on.”
Later in the meeting, Action St. Louis representative Kayla Reed told tenants in the packed room that her group will be making resources available to Ridgeview tenants seeking a new home.
Reed, the group’s executive director, also asked Cornell to confirm if evictions will occur next month, as originally advertised.
“So September 16 is not a date people need to be concerned about?” Reed asked.
“Correct,” Cornell replied. “However, we will be boarding vacant apartments. We will be going through everything.”
In the meantime, the village will seek to locate Ridgeview’s current owners.
“We’re at the bottom right now,” Cornell said. “I want to hold somebody accountable for leaving it like this.”
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