JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- A Jacksonville woman and her apartment complex are digging in their heels: she wants her apartment fixed, her landlord wants her out.
"Well, I’m going to stay right here," Monique Austin said Friday night, a day after the complex where she has lived for a number of years, Camelot Gardens, dropped off an eviction notice.
The letter claims, "You are in violation of your lease your children are vandalizing the property and unit as well as amenities. [sic]"
Monique had reported to First Coast News on May 31 that Camelot Gardens had refused to repair her air conditioning. That was part of a larger story the same day, about another building at the complex being condemned after interior ceilings had collapsed, apparently because of roof leakage. The next day, Monique told First Coast News her air conditioning had been fixed. At the time, many of the walls inside Monique's apartment were severely damaged, stripped of paint, wallpaper, and even of sheetrock in some spots.
"To my understanding, she has a grandchild who has a disability," said Mia Edmonds, an employee at the Camelot Gardens office. "and that disability requires her grandbaby to peel around the walls."
Monique's son Rick Austin, who lives elsewhere, joined his mother in bristling at that notion, saying the damage had been there when she moved in, and that her granddaughter -- who no longer lives at the apartment -- has epilepsy but is incapable of the floor-to-ceiling damage because she is only three years old.
"My granddaughter, she ain’t even that tall!" Monique said.
"She’s a baby," Rick said. "She’s only about that tall," he continued, gesturing to knee level, "so how can she do that? How? For real, she can’t reach!," he said, then pointing to the wall above his shoulder.
In room after room, wall after wall was peeled, stripped, or punctured. A toilet seat was loose. A shower was riddled with black mold under a leaking nozzle. But one item a child could easily reach -- a vertical hanging Venetian blind in front of a sliding patio door -- conspicuously appeared to be in good condition.
"She’d have tore it up," Rick Austin said if the little girl had been habitually destructive.
Meanwhile, at the office, Edmonds pored through Monique Austin's file, unable to find any checklist documenting the unit's condition at the time of move-in. I asked whether the landlord had photos.
"We probably don’t, not at that time," Edmonds said.
But Edmonds said Camelot Gardens isn't without proof.
"We do have witnesses who were here around the time of the transfer [from a different unit in the complex], that the unit was in living conditions, the walls had been painted properly," she said. "The witnesses are the employees that worked here around the time that she was transferred, that helped have her transferred."
The Austins dismissed the possibility of witnesses out of hand.
"Show me the witnesses," said Rick, followed by his mother: "I want to see those witnesses."
Edmonds said the complex also has other documentation to fortify its stance.
"We do have work orders prior to whatever issues she had wrong in her apartment," she said with assertion.
I asked Edmonds whether the complex would consider rescinding the eviction demand now that the toddler is no longer living in the apartment.
"Even if we were to go in and try to repair this unit, it’s going to happen again," she said insistingly.
The two sides were also at odds about whether rent has typically been paid in full and on time.
"Actually, she hasn’t paid for the past two months," Edmonds said of Monique Austin.
Monique says she’s only in arrears with her June rent, and that’s deliberate.
"Because they didn’t fix my air conditioner and my place still looks like this," she said, motioning toward the squalor.
It appears the situation is escalating to a stare-down, and so far no one is blinking.
"If she doesn’t vacate the premises within the seven days," Edmonds said, "then we will go further with an eviction."
Monique Austin's resolve and response were terse when I asked whether she is prepared to take legal action.
"Yes," she said.