‘Deplorable’ apartments condemned by MS Coast city have problematic history, mayor says

Residents of a moldy and crumbling apartment complex must soon move out because the property — which local leaders have long seen as blighted — is not safe to live in, the city of Waveland said this week.

“They’re deplorable,” mayor Jay Trapani said of the Gulf Grove Apartments on Waveland Avenue. “They’re an eyesore. They’ve been like that for years.”

Termite damage, rats and mold are rampant at the Mississippi Coast apartment complex, Trapani said. Some apartments are missing roofs.

That has left building inspectors and city leaders with no choice.

“I don’t like having to kick people out,” Trapani said. “It’s just not healthy and safe for them to stay there.”

Roughly 30 residents living in the 13 apartment buildings the city condemned must must leave by May 15, Trapani said. The city will hold a hearing May 7 to determine the building a menace. That determination would grant Waveland authority to seize or demolish the apartment complex, according to state law.

The Hancock County Chancery Clerk’s land records office said the apartments are owned by Gulf Shores Properties, LLC. Records show Gulf Shores Properties is owned by Michael Brown of New Orleans. Efforts to reach Brown this week were unsuccessful.

But Brown and the city have clashed for years, according to Trapani and court records.

Brown and his companies sued Waveland in 2016 over a water bill dispute in which he claimed the city was overcharging him, court records show. In a counterclaim filed the same year, Waveland argued Brown had misrepresented the number of tenants in order to get billing reductions and had “not paid any bills in months.”

A federal judge dismissed the case in 2018, but problems persisted. Authorities said in 2018 that a man staying at the Gulf Grove and neighboring Oak Park apartments was wanted in five killings, including an execution-style murder in Louisiana. In 2019, WXXV reported Waveland Police responded to the complex after a stabbing left one man dead.

And in several meetings in 2021 and 2022, the Waveland Board of Aldermen brought up Gulf Shores Properties, Gulf Grove and Oak Park apartments in private “to discuss strategy sessions for prospective litigation,” according to the Board’s minutes from August 2021 and February 2022.

“I wanted to condemn them from the first day I was in office,” Trapani said this week. He said the city held out because Brown had tried to sell the property. But after several buyers dropped out, the city decided to condemn.

Apartments like Gulf Grove can fall into disrepair when tenants — fearful of losing their homes — do not raise concerns because they do not want to see a property condemned, said Ashley Richardson, the interim director of housing law at the Mississippi Center for Justice.

But tenants now have several options, lawyers and housing advocates say.

Richardson said residents could demand adjusted April rent, should not be forced to pay May rent and can ask for their security deposits back.

The Hancock Resource Center, a nonprofit that works to improve housing conditions in the area, may offer help to eligible Gulf Grove tenants, the center’s president, Rhonda Rhodes, said. She said she hopes to meet with the mayor next week.

“They’re living in a building that has been deemed uninhabitable,” Rhodes said. “That makes them basically homeless.”

Sun Herald photojournalist Hannah Ruhoff contributed reporting.