Displaced Avon apartment tenants frustrated with communication from property management

Frustration is growing for tenants who were forced out after a fire at their Avon apartment complex last month. They say they’re not getting timely communication from property management.

It has been two weeks of adjustments for Elizabeth Graves and her children as they have stayed with local family and friends in the area. That’s because her apartment building has been closed and locked since a fire in April.

“It’s been a little tough. They were able to put people in hotel rooms. I didn’t take advantage of that because I have seven children. So that’s eight of us trying to go into a hotel room,” she said.

While her unit wasn’t damaged, others were and everyone in the entire building was forced out.

“They don’t want us in the building, which makes sense because they just want to keep everybody safe,” Graves said.

She says she needed some items out of her unit but coordinating with property management has been a struggle.

“We’ll get emails about being able to do one thing and things may change, but we don’t get an email that it’s changing or I’m finding out from neighbors who are on the property hearing it from maintenance workers that things changed,” Graves said.

She tells us they were given a date as to when items needed to be out so contractors could do repair work or they would be at risk of being tossed out, but that timeline has changed several times with the hours not convenient for tenants with 9-to-5 jobs.

“Just to have this back and forth of ‘we can go in, we can’t go in.’ We want to make sure we’re not holding up the process of being able to get back in permanently,” Graves said.

Other tenants of the damaged building say off-camera that they have the same frustrations about communication and just want to get their things as well.

“We could go a week and not hear anything, or we’ll get two emails jumbled together saying we can move out this day and that changes,” Graves said.

She says she understands the current situation is fluid, but simply wants timely news and responses from property management.

“As long as we’re kept in the loop, even if they don’t have any new information, as long as we know something’s in the works and then we can pay attention to what we need to get done,” she said.

NBC Connecticut did reach out to Empire Realty USA Corp., which owns much of the property. We called and emailed but did not get an answer by our deadline. 

We also checked in with the fire department about what may have caused this blaze but their investigation is ongoing.