UPDATE: Osprey Pointe Apartments

Today, we completed our canvas of the Osprey Pointe Apartments here in St. Pete, knocking on the doors of some 500 units in total. We made numerous face-to-face contacts with residents, many of whom described the same sort of issues: slow and/or unfulfilled maintenance requests, leaks and water damage, rent and utility hikes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

 
“You can request maintenance but they won’t come out”

“Every time it rains the water comes right through the windows and floods everything”

“They want our money but they ain’t coming out to fix what needs to be fixed”

During today’s canvas, we made contact with one resident who had been given a notice to vacate and provided him information on how to apply for the Pinellas rental assistance program as well the Pinellas Eviction Diversion Program. “I’m not going to be able to pay this next month, and I’m already a month behind”. On another door we saw a fresh eviction notice, taped up and waiting for the resident after work.

From the outside, many of the buildings are dirty with paint chipping off of doors, missing and unsteady guard rails and signs of pest infestations.

One resident we met brought us inside and showed us a big hole in his bathroom ceiling. Every time his upstairs neighbors shower, water comes pouring in so he keeps a bucket down below. He said it has been like this for a year and nobody will fix it.

The Osprey Pointe Apartments are run by BH Management, a corporation who operates in 24 states plus D.C., and generates around a billion dollars in gross annual revenue. Between their 4 Pinellas county properties they’ve filed nearly 60 evictions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Executives at BH and their chairman, Iowa lawyer Harry Bookey, price apartments at Osprey Pointe at around $1,000/mo, while cutting corners by chronically maintaining the facility in order to keep their profits, and their salaries, sky high. They get RICH off the hard earned cash of Osprey Pointe residents, who pay a premium to live in substandard conditions. Mr. Bookey and the other BH executives sleep safe and comfortably in their mansions while they continue to kick people to the curb during a deadly, once-in-a-lifetime pandemic.

 
We look forward to reaching out to residents again in the coming weeks to begin the next step of the organizing process. The residents of Osprey Pointe deserve so much better, and united together we can take the power back from these greedy crook landlords!

All Power to the Tenants!

All Power to the Working Class!

All Power to the People!