Pueblo landlords cited with 108 violations, tenants forced to relocate

An apartment complex overrun with roaches, bed bugs and a sewage leak is condemned, and those living in the infested units are scrambling to find a place to live.

The city condemned two of the three buildings at 1108 W. 14th St., owned by Darla Ewing and her son, Gregory Ewing, on Monday morning. The tenants in the five condemned units have until 5 p.m. Wednesday to move out.

Alesa Willis-Gallentine invited KRDO NewsChannel 13 inside her unit, where dead roaches permeate the kitchen and a trap covered in flies sits above the living room.

“We can’t even take a shower,” said Willis-Gallentine, who has multiple sclerosis.

“Roaches crawl all over you all the time,” she said. “All day. All night.”

The conditions aren’t any better in the other units.

“We have no heat. Water bubbles out of the bathtub,” said Michael Trumann. “It’s like black murky stuff. There’s like raw sewage smell.”

Trumann is living in a roach-covered unit with his wife, who’s four months pregnant.

Trumann and his wife no longer sleep on the mattress in their bedroom because it has bedbugs.

“We’ve slept on this floor for the last week because of bedbugs,” he said, referring to the floor in the living room.

City code enforcement manager Karen Willson called the conditions inhumane.

“We found many of the units had no heat. Two of the buildings have sewage leaks, pretty severe sewage leaks,” Willson said. “We found some of the toilets not functioning. We found a lot of the plumbing underneath sinks missing, a lot of the sinks had no faucets.”

When KRDO NewsChannel 13 asked Ewing if she considered herself a slumlord, she replied, “I do not.”

Ewing said she’s going to fix the units and then rent them out again.

When asked why people should continue renting apartments from her when she lets violations pile up, Ewing replied, “Because a lot of them have nowhere to go.”

Tenants said Ewing should never be allowed to be a landlord again.

“I would rather be in jail than live in this,” Trumann said.

Willson said the city has received 18 complaints about the property since 2007.

Darla Ewing and Gregory Ewing will face a judge and could face one year in jail and/or $1,000 fine for every violation, of which there are 108.

As for those living in the complex, the executive director of Posada said she’s working to help relocate them.