‘We want to fight for each other’: Unionized Shelbyville tenants describe bugs, mold in housing.

SHELBYVILLE, Ky. — On a rainy October afternoon, Janatta Evans sat in a chair next to other tenants and described the tumultuous several months she’s had with her Shelbyville apartment. 

When she first tried to move into her subsidized rental in March, there was a strong smell of urine inside. She said management at Centrebrook Apartments told her they put an ozone machine inside to address the issue, only for Evans to still find the smell inside. 

Then came the mice, a pest she’s extremely afraid of. Over the summer, she said she found mice scurrying in her apartment along with what appeared to be droppings on her stove and in her bedroom. She said management eventually told her that the mice issue was also addressed, only for her granddaughter to find “black stuff,” or droppings, on her stove and in her bed. 

“We went inside finally, and the mice were just running,” Evans said, her voice choking. “The next morning, I called an Uber and I went to stay with my daughter.” 

She eventually stopped paying rent and is staying in a hotel, unable to access her apartment recently because she said they’ve changed the locks while electrical work is being done inside. 

The apartment complex sought to evict her over not paying rent, only for the court case to be dismissed after an attorney for Evans filed a response detailing the alleged, unresolved mice infestation. She’s also been separated from her dog Diamond during the ordeal, something that’s been hard on her emotionally. 

It’s the personal stories of delayed or unresolved maintenance issues — mice, cockroaches, mold and water damage — along with other issues that have pushed Evans and other tenants at seven different Shelbyville properties to form and launch a tenant union last month. 

Their goal: a collectively bargained lease with the Lexington-based property management company Winterwood Inc. that owns or manages the seven properties including Centrebrook Apartments. The idea of a tenant union was an unknown concept to these tenants before organizers with the group Kentucky Tenant Union started knocking on their doors earlier this year; the members of the union didn’t know each other before they started organizing. 

Kentucky Tenant Union, formerly the Louisville Tenants Union, has helped organize tenant unions at apartment complexes in Louisville and Meade County previously, winning a collectively bargained lease earlier this year for some union members with a Texas-based property management company. The group said it was the first such collectively-bargained lease in the U.S. South. 

A tenant union, not unlike a labor union in a workplace, is when a group of tenants work to collectively advocate for their rights and build negotiating power with a landlord or property manager. While the right to form a tenant union is recognized in federal and state laws, tenant unions generally have fewer legal rights and recognition compared to labor unions. 

Allegations of years-long problems

Some of the claimed issues detailed by tenants at Winterwood properties have stretched over the course of several years. 

Jim Toole, a tenant union member, told the Kentucky Lantern he had been retaliated against by management at his apartment complex in past years after he requested a closer parking spot and an apartment unit to better accommodate his mobility and pain issues caused by pinched nerves. 

“Before the union. I’ve been kind of on my own battle with them for the last five years,” Toole said, sitting in a chair with a cane. “When I saw the union forming, I wanted to share some of my experience and learn some things myself, and kind of have a mutually beneficial thing there to get Winterwood to start acting right.”

Toole said in one instance, he had to get an attorney with the Kentucky Fair Housing Council involved after management denied a better parking spot despite a medical request from him. 

Art Crosby, the executive director of the Kentucky Fair Housing Council, told the Lantern he couldn’t speak on specific cases without permission from the tenant involved. Crosby said Winterwood manages a number of properties across the state and that Winterwood is “relatively receptive” to complaints.

Akira Jordan-Carson, another member of the tenant union in Shelbyville and a part of the bargaining team, told the Lantern she’s had to move to different apartments several times because of “awful” cockroach infestations. In one instance, she said was recording a video for TikTok when a cockroach fell on her stove.  

She said hearing stories of hazardous or chronic maintenance problems from other tenants at Winterwood properties in Shelbyville — ranging from sewage backing up into an apartment to broken windows to “living with black mold” — is what is motivating them. 

“We want to fight for each other,” Jordan-Carson said. “They’re elderly, and they’re disabled, and they’re low income, and don’t have the funds to fix things themselves, and they’re not being heard. It’s not right.” 

The Shelbyville tenants told the Lantern their union is meeting with Winterwood on Oct. 13 to start the bargaining process. But they also said the meeting was originally supposed to be with just the tenant union, only for the company to open the meeting to all tenants. 

In a Tuesday afternoon email, Winterwood CEO Mike Hynes said the company’s goal is to “meet with and hear from our residents.” 

Hynes also shared an email he said that he sent Tuesday to a representative of the Kentucky Tenant Union. In that email, he wrote the reasoning to have the Oct. 13 meeting open to all tenants “was simply to give an additional opportunity to hear directly from residents regarding issues affecting their communities.

“It will give everyone an opportunity to meet with my team and Winterwood leadership, if they so choose,” Hynes said in that email. “We have no issue with the tenant union and clearly you and the union are being recognized; my correspondence with you acknowledges that.”

Hynes also asked for the tenant union’s “governing documents” and documentation of the union’s representatives and officers to ensure the company is “communicating with individuals who have been duly authorized by residents to act on their behalf.”

Hynes previously told the Lantern the company takes residents’ concerns seriously, does not retaliate against tenants and is “committed to providing safe, decent and well-maintained housing.” 

The Kentucky Tenant Union and the tenants in Shelbyville have also taken issue with tax-exempt bonds given by government agencies to subsidize the construction and rehabilitation of affordable housing by Winterwood, which manages more than 14,000 apartments across eight states. 

The Kentucky Housing Corporation, a quasi-governmental agency that provides the bonds, conducts inspections of properties receiving government support “to ensure they meet federal and state requirements as well as criteria specified in funding agreements and contracts,”according to the agency’s website. 

In a statement provided to the Lantern last month through Deputy Executive Director Wendy Smith, Kentucky Housing Corporation said it has provided tax-exempt bonds to Winterwood properties totaling approximately $2,220,000 in bonds for two properties in Shelbyville,.

The corporation had not received “any outstanding complaints regarding Winterwood-owned properties in Shelbyville” but were “looking into it,” according to the statement last month. Smith said in a Tuesday email, two Winterwood properties in Shelbyville that had received bonds, Shelby Place and Shelby House, received high marks on inspections conducted in October 2024. She said the corporation isn’t scheduled to do inspections again at the properties until “later this year or the next.” 

Tenants including Jordan-Carson said there has been more maintenance and upgrades done at the properties since the union started to organize, but they want regular maintenance upgrades in a written lease to ensure it continues to happen. Evans, the tenant who faced an eviction court case, also said the apartment management didn’t start to “play ball” on addressing issues including after her attorney had filed a rebuttal in court. 

Jordan-Carson said their advocacy also extends beyond the Shelbyville properties to other tenants at Winterwood properties across the state. Ashlee Nessel, one of the tenant union members, said tenants at other Winterwood properties have reached out to them.  

“We’re ready to have this set in stone that we’re gonna continue to have our maintenance fixed, not just fixed right now because the government’s coming for inspection sometimes,” Jordan-Carson said. “They’re all living in these conditions.”