TEMPLE HILLS, Md. – When Milton Green’s apartment lost heat last winter, he placed a call to the management company that operated the apartment building where he lives. For a month, the 75-year-old said, the company did nothing—except bring him a small space heater.
Now, the owners and managers of Heather Hill Apartments are ordered to pay back an estimated $11.2 million in restitution to tenants like Green. They endured unsafe conditions for years, Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown said, while the landlords operated the building for more than two years without a rental housing license, in violation of Prince George’s County Code.
Residents of the 459-unit apartment complex experienced “mushrooms growing out of the floors, mice running throughout their kitchens, broken heating and air conditioning units, and leaking roofs,” Brown said last week. Legal filings by Brown’s office also describe bat and cockroach infestations…