Tenants in the University Hill neighborhood are again protesting their living conditions. This time they’re refusing to pay rent.

The 10 tenants on rent strike said that the company they lease from, Syracuse Quality Living, has been unresponsive to maintenance requests. Several tenants went without heat during the winter, they said, and others have dealt with unresolved rodent infestations.

Ravi Saluja owns SQL’s 62 properties. In an interview on Tuesday, he dismissed the strike as “rent strike bullsh*t” and said the tenants are withholding rent only to get out of their leases.

“These people are just saying stuff just to have something to say,” Saluja said.

Syracuse Tenants United, a tenant association created by former SQL tenants, organized the strike. One of its organizers, Susima Weerakoon, marched with tenants to SQL’s leasing office on Friday afternoon to publicly announce the strike. It was the fifth protest by SQL tenants in recent months.

While the 10 SQL tenants collectively withheld rent for the month of May, some tenants had individually started refusing to pay rent in February or March. All of their leases end during the summer.

Outside the leasing office at 215 Cherry St., tenants said SQL’s maintenance staff was unresponsive, ill-equipped and unprofessional.

Saluja said he has addressed “every single issue” tenants have brought up, but several of the tenants on strike said otherwise.

Monique Canselo is a hospitality management major at Onondaga Community College. She moved into her first SQL apartment at 323 Lexington Ave. last October. She said there was mold in the basement, as well a leaking boiler.

As temperatures dropped during the winter, Canselo said she realized her heat wasn’t working. She repeatedly told SQL about the heating issue, but she said nothing was done. Eventually, she called code enforcement, and the inspector issued seven code violations, including one declaring “Structure Unfit for Human Occupancy,” according to code violation records.

Green and black mold grew on the walls of Monique Canselo’s basement at 323 Lexington Ave., Canselo said. Courtesy of Monique Canselo

In February, SQL agreed to put Canselo in an apartment above the leasing office, at 215 Cherry St. “I thought living above the management office would suit me better as far as problems and all that, but I was wrong,” she said.

In that apartment, she said the sink leaked, mice came through a hole in the wall, a carbon monoxide detector had no batteries and there was no heat.

Canselo and other tenants on strike said management staff and maintenance workers would come in unannounced, often when no maintenance was requested, and said workers use tenants’ property to complete repairs. A worker used Canselo’s peanut butter to set up a mouse trap, she said.

Under New York state law, landlords can only enter their tenants’ apartments with reasonable prior notice and only with the tenants’ consent, according to the New York State Attorney General’s Tenants’ Rights Guide. Unless there is an emergency, such as a fire or leak, a landlord must seek a court order to permit entry when a tenant refuses to allow them in.

“We will continue to organize and continue our rent strike until everyone has safe housing,” said Weerakoon during Friday’s protest. She is a human development and family studies master’s student at Syracuse University.

Eddy Salinas and his three roommates are also withholding rent. He said they went without heat for several weeks during the winter.

“It was probably the worst experience of my life,” said Salinas, a junior finance and marketing dual major at SU. He said it was so cold he had to sleep in his winter coat.

Salinas said instead of fixing the heat, a maintenance employee brought space heaters that would short out the electricity when plugged in. After several other issues arose with the apartment — mold growing in bathroom, a leaking sink, no hot water, low water pressure — he decided to stop paying rent, he said.

“I just don’t want to pay for poor service,” he said.

There are still open code violations at 1322 Madison St., Salinas’s apartment, including one for water pressure, records show.

Saluja said SQL is addressing “each and every” open code violation at its properties.

Emily Kraft and her roommate Lynn Smith moved out of their apartment at 137 Lexington Ave. on Friday. They said they’ve had a rodent infestation since October 2017 that SQL has failed to resolve multiple times.

Code enforcement inspected that property on March 27 and found six violations, including ones for mice infestation, failure to properly heat the apartment and failure to have working smoke detectors. Records show SQL failed two reinspections of the apartment before passing nearly two months later.

But Kraft and Smith said they still hear the animals. Both are master’s students in SU’s museum studies program. Their goal is to get their leases terminated, but they also want to stand up for tenants’ rights.

“The tenants are living with rodents and insects in the walls and in the attic,” Kraft said. “It’s not safe. It’s not healthy. It’s not habitable.”

In a February interview, SQL’s leasing manager Stephanie Brown said the company had “dropped the ball” in regards to fulfilling maintenance requests. Saluja said Brown’s statement doesn’t reflect his position and that he was not available to speak to at the time.

Published on June 2, 2018 at 3:26 pm

Contact Casey: casey@dailyorange.com | @caseydarnell_