This is a letter that was written and hand-delivered by a third party to Indiana State Senator Scott Alexander during a meeting with a statewide advocacy group in January of 2024. Personally identifying information has been redacted.
January 23, 2024
The Honorable Scott Alexander
Indiana General Assembly
200 W Washington Street
Indianapolis, IN, 46204
Dear Senator Alexander,
My name is […]. I live in a building in Muncie that is owned and managed by MiddleTown Property Group. My mother is the elderly widow of a disabled Vietnam veteran who suffers from debilitating breathing & heart conditions. I am her only child, so I choose to live here with her to serve as her in-home caretaker. Before I share some of my experience with MiddleTown Property Group, it’s important that you know how we ended up in this building.
Prior to October of 2021, my mother lived in a building that was owned by an out-of-state corporation and managed by Hayes Gibson Property Services. She had lived there for 26 years and never intended to move. In late-September of 2021, she opened her door to find a letter taped to it stating that she was being forcibly evicted and would have to vacate by the end of October. The building was being condemned. Had there been laws and enforcement mechanisms in place to prevent property owners from allowing their properties to fall into such a state of disrepair that the city is forced to condemn them and displace the residents, my mother never would have been forced out of the home she’d lived in for 26 years to begin with. Hayes Gibson also managed this property and she had no choice but to relocate here, to the only unit they had available. MiddleTown Property Group later took over as the property manager and subsequently purchased this building.
The boiler that provides heat to the apartments and common areas in this building did not work throughout the winter of 2021. It did not work throughout the winter of 2022. The radiators in our apartment began to generate heat for the very first time just a few short weeks ago. Had I not decided I will not live in a building with no heat for a third straight winter – choosing to escalate the matter to state & local agencies and submitting multiple complaints to the Indiana Attorney General’s office – this building still would not have a working boiler and we would not only be paying utility fees that allegedly include heat, in addition to the base rent, we’d also still be spending a small fortune heating this apartment with nothing but space heaters.
Can you imagine the psychological toll it takes, living in a building that was built in the 1960s, knowing everyone who lives here has to run space heaters 24/7 just so they don’t freeze to death? You spend half the year on guard for the faint sound of a smoke detector in any one of 50+ apartments spread across 3 floors, which will be the first indication that a space heater has finally started an electrical fire somewhere in the building, and we need to be prepared to escape at any moment.
As a direct result of MiddleTown Property Group’s willful, ongoing failure to repair the boiler, this building suffered a catastrophic water infiltration on Christmas Day 2022. If you’d like to know more about the aftermath, including how MiddleTown failed to make any effort to mitigate the water damage for days (then flooded the building for a second time, by inexplicably turning the water on prior to repairing the broken pipes), forced residents to vacate under false pretenses, sent us to a hotel they told us would be paid for (we were forced to pay for it & they still refuse to reimburse us), refused to answer or return calls for a week (while we sat in a hotel room they refused to pay for), materially altered our lock so I couldn’t get in to retrieve my mother’s critical medications, etc., you will find a painfully detailed contemporaneous account here: […]. We even received email reminders to be sure to pay the rent on time, while we were still in the hotel we were being forced to pay for, or late fees would be assessed. The rent was paid on time, from that hotel room, as it always has been.
Your constituents need your help. We are being preyed on by malicious, avarice-driven property owners. SB 277 is an important step toward holding those predators accountable and protecting vulnerable people in your district. Without the enforcement authority SB 277 provides, your constituents will continue being forced to pay rent – month after month, year after year, like we did – while predatory property owners refuse to provide basic, essential services, like heat, and will continue violating habitability laws without facing a single substantive consequence for knowingly endangering the lives of their tenants.
I presume you became an Indiana state senator to help improve your neighbors’ lives and make District 26 a better place to live. You have the opportunity to do exactly that by voting in favor of SB 277. I hope you’re willing to take advantage of that opportunity, because people in your community are suffering and we need your help. Thank you for your time.
Respectfully,
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