April 15, 2006
Saturday

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Alaska - A group of Mountain View renters and former renters say their apartment management "terrorizes the tenants."

The group of four has filed a lawsuit seeking to bar their landlord and property manager from being allowed to manage any rental property in Alaska. And they want the landlord and manager to pay them damages.

The tenants contend owner Jason Wooten and senior properties manager Dennis Ray Skan at Glynwood Manor have used racist and abusive policies against them, including sending out "vulgar notices containing threats ranging from running drug-sniffing dogs through apartments to making false reports to the police, employers or the Office of Children's Services."

The apartment house is a two-story grey building stretching over a block in Mountain View. It has 38 units, according to online property records.

Lawyer Frank Cahill, who handles evictions at Glynwood, said he thinks Skan was just trying to "run a tight ship in a situation where he's got a lot of people at the lower end of existence, low income. Maybe some alcohol issues, various problems. He wants to keep a tight rein on things."

Cahill said he has seen the lawsuit, but will not be the lawyer defending it. He said he recommended the company take it to its insurance company to handle. Wooten did not return repeated phone calls. A man who answered Skan's phone said, "We have no comment here," and referred a reporter to Cahill.

Written remarks attributed to Skan make up most of the exhibits in the suit, which is filed in state Superior Court.

In a letter to tenant Lydia Martinez last month, Skan chastised her for calling Wooten, the owner, directly with a problem, and also claimed she used her government job to obtain information on how to contact Wooten.

"Nobody knows how to contact him (as a tenant) but me," Skan wrote in bold type.

This part was underlined: "Everything goes through me and the decision to evict or work with a tenant is mine."

He told Martinez he planned to call her employer and report her. He said in the letter, "If you want this to get ugly, I will also report you to Child Protective Services for consuming substances."

Martinez, now 8 1/2 months pregnant, said she doesn't know what he's talking about, and isn't consuming any illegal substances.

Other participants in the suit are Robert Brandon and Samantha Moffet, who live in one apartment, and Jason Hinton, who moved out under threat of eviction.

In November, Brandon and Moffet returned to their apartment one day after sledding and found a window broken, according to court documents. They called the manager sometime between 8 and 9 p.m. to ask that it be repaired.

A day or so later, they got a handwritten note with Skan's name typed on the bottom.

It said, "If I ever hear of you harassing the property manager again I will have you removed off this property within 48 hours. I will keep stopping by until I get in your face. ... Besides, who ... are you to tell me to come over here in the middle of the night?"

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