OSCEOLA COUNTY, Fla. — Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody’s staff members drove down to Osceola County to meet with displaced Good Samaritan residents, the residents confirmed Thursday, putting the mess following Hurricane Ian’s destruction of their homes publicly on their radar for the first time.
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The meetings took place last Friday at the Red Lion Hotel, where many of the displaced residents are staying, and represented the first step in a process that could result in the AG’s office launching an investigation into the 55-and-over property’s management and executives.
READ: Good Samaritan tells residents to start paying rent as safety concerns are raised
However, the office appeared to be far from making that move as of Thursday afternoon.
“We are in the process of gathering information at this time,” Moody’s Press Secretary Kylie Mason said in response to WFTV’s questions.
Residents have been living in the hotel since late September, after rainwater dumped into Central Florida by Ian caused Shingle Creek to overtop its banks. Good Samaritan’s property had to be evacuated the following day as feet of contaminated water flooded into apartment buildings and mobile homes.
As of early November, more than 100 buildings on the site have been declared unfit for human habitation. More than 40 of them are designated for demolition.
A source said the AG’s staff member arrived to meet with a handful of residents, but wound up talking to roughly two dozen or more over the course of about six hours.
Residents said the staff member was mostly there to listen to everyone’s stories and have them sign official complaint forms. They said they discussed how the property had not told them to get flood insurance, despite being within a flood zone, and how managers encouraged them to sign liability waivers buried at the bottom of their lease termination agreements in exchange for returning their deposits.
“I’m gonna go all the way through,” Candida Quiles, one of the residents who was interviewed, said. “I hope they make them pay everything -- every single penny we lost -- and [for] all the suffering we go through.”
Good Samaritan executives said Moody’s office hadn’t reached out to them about the residents’ complaints.
On Thursday, a source who used to work for Good Samaritan confided that no resident was ever encouraged to get flood insurance, despite executives saying they told all residents and prospective residents to take the proper precautions. The source said executives never discussed making a policy change with staff after Hurricane Irma flooded the property in 2017, even though they knew it was in a flood zone.
The source said Good Samaritan received a significant amount of insurance money to rebuild the property and hired an outside contractor to complete the work. However, a $50 million plan to harden the property, including lifting buildings onto stilts, was shelved. FEMA officials said the property withdrew its application for assistance in January 2018.
The source called the current mess “avoidable” had flood insurance been required and some mitigation efforts been made.
So far, there has been minimal progress toward rebuilding most Good Samaritan residents’ lives. The ones remaining in hotels are set to move to a new, consolidated location Friday morning. Many are waiting for lawyers to begin filing lawsuits in court, and are now fighting managers’ attempt to force them to pay rent or lot fees while their homes aren’t safe to live in.
“The only two options that were given is pay the lot fee or turn over your titles and keys to them,” Norvetta Warren said. “Nothing in between, no conversation.”
READ: Attorneys join fray as Good Samaritan residents asked to sign liability waivers
Some of the mobile home owners said they told their banks to block any attempted withdrawals by Good Samaritan, which could move to evict them over nonpayment of their lot rents.
Apartment owners whose homes will not be rebuilt and who have not yet signed their lease termination agreements – liability waiver and all – will have their leases ended in December.
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