Winter is approaching — and some northern Michigan seniors are worried they’ll spend it without heat.
At the Harbor View Apartments, a senior and disability living complex in Cadillac, residents have said they’ve complained about the broken heating system since last winter.
IPR visited the apartments and found that seniors had even more concerns.
Inside one of the apartments, Joe Evison meets with a small group of other Harbor View residents. It’s dark inside, and the hallway outside is even darker. Motion-sensitive lights that are supposed to illuminate the halls only turn on sporadically.
“They don’t fix the lights,” Evison said. “A bulb will burn out and they’ll just leave it. You come down here at night and you can hardly see.”
For most of the time Evison has lived at Harbor View, he had nothing bad to say about the building or the staff. He said the apartments are affordable and accept federal Section 8 vouchers for seniors and people with disabilities.
But about two years ago, he started reaching out to management with complaints.
“I can’t tell you how many emails I sent,” Evison said. "I have never heard anything back from them about any of my emails.”
The hallway lights are one of the smaller problems. Bigger issues include broken elevators in the six-story building and infestations with bedbugs, cockroaches and mice.
IPR obtained five complaints dating back to November 2023 to the District Health Department #10 through a Freedom of Information Act request which also asked for help concerning bed bug and mice infestations.
Evison showed a video on his phone of his dog playing in what looks like a lake. It's actually the parking lot. Residents said the pipe broke underneath the lot about five years ago, causing repeated flooding and layers of ice in the winter. That flooding was fixed just a month ago.
But the most pressing issue for residents these days is a lack of heat.
“There’s supposed to be air conditioning and a heater for the hallways,” Evison said. “It hasn’t worked in two years. So consequently, in the wintertime, it’s really cold in these hallways.”
Former maintenance worker John Strickling said parts were taken from the two heating boilers to fix the a building water heater. He said he remembers telling property manager Krystal Perry months ago that parts needed to be ordered.
“I made a comment to Krystal about getting the people that were working on the boilers if they’d gotten parts,” Strickling said. “And I mentioned that in August because I know the Michigan weather and (cold weather is) right around the corner.”
Perry, reached by phone, told IPR she couldn’t speak with media and referred questions to Millennia Housing Management, the Cleveland-based company that owns the building. Millennia did not respond to our inquiries.
"She wanted me to use one of those Cricut machines to sign the resident signature. I said, absolutely not. I’m not going to forge their signature."WANDA WATSON | former Harbor View leasing agent
The heat problems aren’t just in the hallways – former leasing agent Wanda Watson said there’s been reports of sporadic heat in apartments. One resident, Meredyth DeRidder, wrote in a letter to IPR that residents asked for heat to be turned in September, but that management said heat would only be turned on October 1st. DeRidder wrote that management told her on Oct 9th they were still waiting on parts needed to fix the heating system.
Management, she wrote, told her the next day that the heat was fixed although she said some apartments still did not have heat — a claim that Watson also confirmed.
Watson, who quit her job at Harbor View in mid-October, said maintenance delays are mainly due to poor management.
“The original owner of this place got in trouble for fraud with all of his HUD companies,” Watson said. “So that didn’t help.”
In October 2024, Harbor View’s management company ran into legal troubles when federal agents searched the home of Millenia Companies President Frank Sinito.
The company and its affiliates — which includes Millenia Housing Management — owns more than 200 federally subsidized properties. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said it found nearly $4.9 million missing from 19 of them. HUD noted that those properties were just a sample — and said similar problems likely existed elsewhere. As a result, Millenia is now barred from doing business with HUD until 2028.
But issues exist on the local level as well, said Watson. She said she began noticing issues at Harbor View almost immediately after she started work.
“She wanted me to use one of those Cricut machines to sign the resident signature,” Watson said, referring to property manager Krystal Perry. “I said, absolutely not. I’m not going to forge their signature.”
Watson says this was for documents to recertify tenant leases.
“We have a whole big packet of all the new stuff that we do for the next year for them," Watson said. "She wanted me to use that machine so you could see what the signature is and trace over [it].”
IPR reached out multiple times to Millenia’s corporate office in Cleveland but did not hear back.
Watson said she also reached out to Millennia upper management and to Perry’s supervisor, regional director Staci Couch, but was ignored.
“She immediately put her hand up and said, ‘I don’t want to hear it,’” Watson said. “She goes, ‘I already know what’s going on. And I want to give Krystal a chance.’”
Couch did not respond to calls from IPR.
Watson and several residents said that Perry often yells at people in the building, sometimes shouting and cursing loudly.
“You don’t do it to your residents,” Watson said. “She’d scream — we’d have residents scatter when she’d start getting on her screaming fits.”
Residents also said they don’t feel safe. Doors that should be locked are broken or propped open. One resident showed IPR videos of fights in the parking lot, and earlier this year, a shooting struck the front door and window — though no one was injured.
Karen Ward, another resident, said people experiencing homelessness sometimes hang out in the lobby and wander the building. She showed a photo of a syringe found in the lobby trash.
Despite their concerns, many residents say they have nowhere else to go.
“You can’t just go out and find another apartment complex for people that are on a fixed income,” Evison said. “They’re not there. I can’t afford to pay $1,200 for a one-bedroom apartment. That’s nuts.”
