Residents’ complaint: Flooded Minneapolis apartment repairs unfinished 6 months later

MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) - People living in a Minneapolis apartment complex say they or their neighbors have lived with water damage and stranger intrusions for months. And their complaints haven’t helped.

It’s been almost six months since a flooding problem in a third-floor apartment here damaged several apartments, all the way down the ground floor.

But repairs still aren’t finished.

Winter got off to a bad start in this part of the East Village Apartments.

"Water flooding happened," said an East Village Apartments resident through a Somali interpreter. "Came from third floor."

She lived on the first floor and she watched the flooding come down from her ceiling.

With her arm in a cast, she couldn’t do much about it as the water engulfed her belongings.

"Basically everything," she said. "My bed. My carpets, everything I had in here."

She was scared to give her name, fearing the landlords might try to take away the roof she still has over her head.

But she says she spent seven days living in the wet apartment before the management moved her to the other side of the building.

Water damaged at least nine apartments, including Abdullahi Hassan’s on the third floor.

He says the whole unit was wet for months, but he had to live in it.

And he says the flooding wasn’t the first time his family had trouble at East Village, especially when it comes to his 90-year-old father.

Hassan once had to call paramedics to take his father to an important doctor’s appointment because the elevator didn’t work.

Hassan doesn’t think the management company, Aeon, decided to help until after he contacted the news.

Aeon reps told us they were disappointed with the vendor’s slow work fixing the elevator.

They acknowledged the slow flood repairs were frustrating, partly because they had to wait for approval from their insurance company.

They say repairs started in mid-March.

As of Tuesday, they’re still not done.

Residents also complained about unauthorized people coming into the building because doors are constantly pried open.

"There is no security," said Abdullahi Hassan, an East Village resident. "There is no good management."

Aeon told us they increased patrol hours with their security company and took other steps to make residents feel safer.

But on Tuesday, at least a couple of doors were pried open.

People who live in East Village say they want a safe place to call home, but they’d rather not leave a place where they feel comfortable with their fellow Somali neighbors.

"Every time we talk about the issues over here, the only thing they say ‘Well, you can move out if you want’," the woman resident told us. "But we’re here for the community."

Residents tell us they believe Aeon recently replaced their on-site manager and another person involved with this complex, so they’re hopeful things might turn around soon.