The City of South Tucson is suing the property managers of two apartment complexes for “allowing criminal activities to continue taking place” throughout last year.
The suits, filed in the Pima County Superior Court, allege AM Family Properties, LLC., and Torino Avenue LLC., have allowed criminal activities at their two properties to go unchecked despite the city’s attempts to force them to take action.
AM Family Properties, LLC., owns the 89-unit Sixth Avenue Suites, near South Sixth Avenue and Interstate 10.
Torino Avenue LLC. owns the Spanish Trail Suites, a 120-unit complex near South Fourth Avenue and Interstate 10 which caught fire in 2020. At that time, the Arizona Daily Star reported that studio units these rented for about $550 a month, including utilities.
In both suits, Brian Bowers and Margeaux Bowers are named as the owners of the LLCs. The suits were filed under a state law, that requires property owners to try to control crimes by residents and visitors on their properties.
“The City does not take this action lightly, we have attempted multiple avenues to remedy this situation through citations and law enforcement,” said Danny Denogean, South Tucson’s public safety director and police chief in a news release late last month. “However, due to the high rate of crime, public safety calls, business, and community complaints, we are forced to take this action.”
The city is suing to force the property owners to “adopt improved safety measures that will not only benefit residents, but the public at large,” according to the release, and to “collaborate with law enforcement to maintain a secure environment.”
Safety measures would include gates and security fencing, uniformed security guards, crime-free addendums to new leases and working security/CCTV cameras throughout the properties that could be made available to South Tucson police as needed, according to court filings.
Last August, the Arizona Daily Star’s Tim Steller reported South Tucson was considering taking legal action against the Bowers. Specifically, that one idea was “to pursue an injunction that would force Bowers and his wife Margeaux to deal better with the criminal problem” at the two properties.
“The other idea,” Steller wrote, was to pursue action declaring the apartments blighted properties.
South Tucson is taking up the first option, according to Jon Paladini, one of the city’s attorneys.
“What we’re asking the court to order, in both instances, to do all things on the list within 60 days,” Paladini said, referencing the safety measures requested. “At this point we’re not looking to close down the properties, we’re not looking to have them demolished, this is strictly asking a specific relief from the court... The (state) statute sort of has a graduated level of things you can do. We’re starting at the lowest level by asking for this injunction.”
Further enforcement of the statute would be a court-appointed receiver, someone who acts as the property manager while the safety measures are employed. But the “most draconian” steps, Paladini said, would be to have the apartments closed altogether.
There were 918 service calls at Sixth Avenue Suites “related to various crimes,” averaging over 2.5 service calls per day in 2023, according to court documents. About one out of every six calls there resulted in a police report, court records say.
“The nature of the police reports is alarming. In the past year alone, the South Tucson Police Department generated nine reports for theft, five for burglary, eleven for assault, five for shots fired, and eight for domestic violence — making up only 38 of the 154 police reports generated from the property in one year,” court filings say of Sixth Avenue’s police activity.
Regarding Spanish Trail Suites, 834 calls were made for police service in 2023, which still averages over two per day; 146 police reports were generated out of those 834 calls, court documents allege, or about 17%.
“From June 1, 2022, to September 30, 2023, a longer representative sample, (Spanish Trail Suites) averaged roughly 8 service calls per residential unit,” court documents say.
City staff met with Brian Bowers and his attorney in October to provide these statistics and to ask him to take steps to remediate the activity. No action has been taken, both suits allege. And according to Paladini, the meeting in October was not constructive.
“That was an attempt to get (Brian) and his LLC to begin taking steps to reduce the criminal activities going on (at) his properties... how it’s not only affecting residents at his properties, because not all of them are committing the criminal acts, but how it’s also affecting the neighboring properties and close-by neighborhoods,” Paladini said. “And nothing happened, nothing came out of that meeting... (Brian and his attorney) came off to me that they really didn’t believe it was as bad as they were being told.”
Ann Chanecka, director of Tucson’s Housing and Community Development department, said Friday that the city’s affordable housing infrastructure has seen waitlists grow and grow in recent years.
“The last few years we know it’s become more strained in terms of rental costs going up and costs of home ownership going up,” Chanecka said. “Beginning of 2023, we opened our waitlist for both our public housing (and our housing choice voucher program).”
Tucson owns about 1,500 units for public housing, Chanecka said.
“At this point, there’s about 22,000 people on the waitlists,” she said. “We know that it’s strained. We know that people need additional support.”
To alleviate this housing bottleneck, Chanecka says the department has been “working on a couple different fronts” based off past direction by Tucson’s mayor and council.
Those include building new units themselves, working with community partners to add housing units, as well as the creation of a “landlord team,” the Housing Choice Voucher program, which tries to add Tucson landlords to the subsidy program where renters would be able to curb costs by use of the housing voucher.
But if these apartments are shut down, Chanecka says the housing department would work with community partners to find ways to house these individuals.
“In this case we would be trying to work with community partners and Pima County on trying to figure out what can be done in terms of supporting the folks who could potentially be displaced,” she said. “Another piece to this is the shelter the city and our community partners operate and at least provide temporary housing to folks... It really depends in terms of how we can support the folks in trying to find shelter quickly, trying to find a place to live quickly.”
The owners are expected to make their first appearance in court Friday.
“My clients have responsibly managed these residential properties in the City of South Tucson for years, providing homes for mostly low-income residents,” Carl Sammartino, the attorney representing the property owners told the Star on Friday in an email.
“South Tucson — like Tucson, Phoenix, and many other communities across the country — is experiencing systemic and complex problems with homelessness, crime, and drug abuse,” Sammartino wrote in the email. “My clients have been doing and will continue to do their part, but they cannot solve these problems on their own. The two complaints the City of South Tucson filed in Superior Court contain allegations that tell one side of the story. My clients look forward to presenting their evidence showing their efforts as local, community-based owners to make their properties safe and secure for their residents.”
Chanecka advises those struggling with housing options to get onto the city housing department’s still-open waitlists, despite the number of people already on them, as a starting point. And for those experiencing homelessness, the department’s Housing First team is a primary resource. For families facing eviction, Chanecka suggests the Pima County Eviction Prevention program, which the HCD works alongside.
“It’s hard. We want people to live in safe and secure locations that meet safety standards,” Chanecka said. “We really hope that the situation can be resolved in a way where they’re providing the safety for residents and not displacing them.”
