Oklahoma City man says landlord failing to fix damaged apartment

OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) — A man says management at his apartment complex in Northwest Oklahoma City is refusing to fix water damage he has been asking them to fix for months.

The man says management at Penn Station Apartments promised him they’d fix water damage in his apartment if he renewed his lease, but they never fixed anything.

On top of that, he says the new lease he signed includes a clause that would make it very costly for him to move out.

“I'm not looking for anything other than to be treated fairly,” the tenant, Kamal Weaver, told News 4.

But Weaver says the way Penn Station’s management has treated him the past five months has not been anywhere close to fair.

“I mean, and I feel like I'm owed at least my apartment being tended to,” Weaver said.

Since May, the bathroom in his apartment has had a large hole in the ceiling, caused by a leak in a bathtub in the apartment above.

Weaver says anytime his upstairs neighbors use their tub, water rains down through the hole.  

He also told News 4 a leak in his toilet has led to water damage on his bathroom floor.  

"The toilet leaks from the bottom and it gets under the tiles, all of that,” Weaver said.

He told News 4 he is concerned the water trapped beneath his bathroom floor could cause mold to grow.

He showed News 4 a work order he sent Penn Station management asking them to fix the problems back in May.

Around that same time, he says his lease was up for renewal.

He told News 4, Penn Station management promised him, if he signed a new lease, they’d make everything right.

“A fix to see everything, fix to the ceiling, reset the toilet replace the tiles that are down that are coming up off of the floor,” Weaver said.

A few days later, he noticed the work order had been marked “completed” in his tenant portal, even though nothing had actually been fixed.

“I got emails saying that they were completed,” Weaver said. “You know, we can go look at it and see that none of that was completed and it's just water dripping down.”

In the months since, he’s made numerous calls and visits to Penn Station’s leasing office.

“For the most part, everyone up there was pretty combative when you call them with problems,” he said.

News 4 tried stopping Penn Station’s office on Friday.

Staff inside refused to comment and quickly asked News 4 to leave the property.

News 4 asked the staff if they had a number for their corporate office.

They told News 4, “no.”

Weaver is to the point that he just wants to move somewhere else.

But some fine print in the new lease he signed makes that hard.

“Now it's $2,000 to break your lease instead of $750,” he said.

That’s money Weaver does not have, leaving him with few choices.

“I do feel stuck,” Weaver said. “I feel that it's beyond unfair to be being charged $2,000 to break the lease when those things haven't been addressed for months— I’m not looking for sympathy or handouts. I just want to be treated fairly.”