Moore family says landlord won’t fix issue leaving bedroom flooded every rainstorm
MOORE, Okla. (KFOR) — A family of 10 say their landlord has done nothing the past four years to stop a bedroom in their house from flooding each time it rains, leading some of their children to go without a bedroom.
Eight kids can be a handful.
“They definitely needed a little bit a of space,” Preston Sumner said.
It’s why, when Sumner and his wife were looking for a house to rent four years ago, they went with one they found in Moore—complete with four separate bedrooms.
“We wanted a place that was going to have enough room for all of us,” Sumner said. “Four bedrooms was as big as we can find here.”
His boys got to share the biggest room: a converted garage with lots of space to spread out.
“[It] is where we had their bunk beds, they could play with their toys everywhere,” Sumner said.
In theory, it was a perfect room. But in practice, it took just one rainstorm to change their mind.
“My oldest son, Jason, rolled out of bed, his feet hit the floor, he started screaming for us,” Sumner said. “And we came in here and he was like, ‘hey the floor is wet. I don’t know what’s going on.’”
The bedroom’s carpet was drenched with storm water.
“We initially thought it was just coming from the door because there wasn’t a weather seal on it,” Sumner said.
But he quickly learned the true culprit, when his landlord sent crews to air the place out.
“When they came into air dry the carpet, they pulled it all up and that was that was when we saw the drain.”
Directly beneath the carpet was an old garage floor drain, casually plugged with concrete.
“There's a lot of like little itty bitty, like pin holes in there,” he said, while showing News 4 the concrete plugging the drain.
The room flooded again the next time it rained. And the next time, and the time after that too.
The cycle continued for the next four years.
Each time, Sumner says he reported it to his landlord, who he says simply came out and dried out the room, without fixing the source of the problem.
News 4 reached out to his landlord, a company called Integrity Oklahoma, LLC.
A spokesperson for the company confirmed they’ve responded to numerous work orders for the flooding.
The spokesperson said the last work order the company received from Sumner related to the flooding in September.
Sumner says that’s because Integrity Oklahoma is in the process of trying to sell the house, and removed Sumner’s access to their online maintenance portal.
Sumner also says he’s resorted to emailing the company about the flooding issues, most recently on Monday. In response to that email, Integrity Oklahoma simply sent him a phone number for a plumber.
But, after News 4 reached out to Integrity Oklahoma on Tuesday, a spokesperson said the company will be getting back in touch with Sumner on Wednesday to address the problem further.
In the meantime, Sumner’s sons still don’t have a bedroom.
With several bunk beds damaged by the flooding, the boys have resorted to sleeping on their mattresses in the family’s living room the past several months.
“We have them wash the sheets during the day and then at night we pull them out and lay them on the floor,” Sumner said.
It’s a price Sumner says wasn’t included in the rent he’s been paying for four straight years.
“There's people out there that are, you know, charging an arm and leg for houses that are in a livable condition,” he said.