Cody Cross was excited to move out of the Edge at Lowry apartments last summer.
There were the rodents, the broken heat, the trash and the shootings. The city had been fighting the landlord, CBZ Management, for years. And that’s not to mention the national uproar about a Venezuelan gang on the premises.
But as it turned out, Cross would be heading to another CBZ building — this one in Denver on Jewell Avenue — with some of the same issues. Three months later, he said his living situation is still pretty rough.
“It's a slightly better improvement. But there's a lot of things I still think that need to be fixed,” he said. “It's just [the landlord] not having enough money to actually be able to. Or if he does, he just doesn't care.”
The heat in his new place is often broken. The exterior doors aren’t secure. Squatters have moved into vacant rooms and use drugs in common areas. And it’s part of a pattern that stretches across multiple cities.
Similar issues have unfolded at another CBZ property on Pennsylvania Street, which Denver officials shut down last week in a rare flex of the city’s growing power over property owners. (Aurora officials had already shut down the landlord's Nome Street property, and they're closing the rest of the Edge at Lowry on Dallas Street next month.)
Meanwhile, the company’s third property in Denver also has garnered complaints from residents, and an apartment it operates in Edgewater was the subject of a lawsuit over mold, sewage and an "extremely painful rash."
CBZ declined to comment for this story, citing ongoing litigation. The company's website has been offline for some time, but its owners still hold the titles to its properties across the metro. The company also has had a presence in Pueblo, Colorado Springs and Brooklyn, N.Y.
Two of CBZ’s Denver properties are racking up violations.
Amber Campbell, spokesperson for Denver’s Department of Public Health and Environment (DDPHE), said CBZ owes over $2,000 in unpaid fines on their property at 4470 E. Jewell Ave., where Cross now lives.
Reported violations include broken heat, broken locks, water damage, pests and “solid waste strewn about the property.”
She also said CBZ’s third Denver property, at 1399 N. Vine St., has $750 worth of unpaid citations for broken windows and lighting, leaks, mold and “inadequate heat/hot water.”
Katharine Bogardus, who lived at the Vine Street property from 2019 to 2022, said she “couldn’t wait to move anywhere else.”
The nice garden in the courtyard deteriorated after CBZ bought the place in 2019. The building had persistent plumbing problems, which meant maintenance workers were constantly in and out of her unit to access the crawlspace. She said things “turned a corner” in her last year there.
“My apartment stunk like sewage for four months,” she said, “like human feces.”
Her rent was $1,300 a month.
Other former residents, who asked to remain anonymous, reported similar issues.
But the unpaid fines for CBZ’s Vine Street and Jewell Avenue buildings are a far cry from the $280,000 owed on the company’s Pennsylvania Street building. Campbell said investigations and fines result from formal complaints, which residents don’t always know to file. (Housing complaints can be filed anonymously via the 311 phone service.)
Campbell added DDPHE did recently begin proactive “extensive, full-scale” investigations of the Jewell Avenue property.
“I should have reported things,” Bogardus said in retrospect.
For now, the Vine Street and Jewell Avenue properties are not under imminent threat of closure by the city.
An “extremely painful rash” in Edgewater.
Two former residents of the company’s property at 6815 W. 24th Ave. in Edgewater brought a lawsuit against the company last January. They said their unit flooded four times in 2021 and 2022. It's one of two buildings that CBZ has operated in Edgewater.
“Specifically, water was pouring into the Home from the ceiling,” it said of the first instance.
The suit alleges that CBZ failed to fix structural issues that led to the flooding and denied the residents’ requests to move into another unit. It alleges the plaintiffs developed depression and experienced panic attacks as a result.
“Plaintiffs reported that the Home constantly smelled like mold and sewage, and that they had to keep their window open 24/7 because of the smell,” the filing reads. “They were being forced to keep their clothes in the trunk of their car or they would smell like mold.”
It also alleges they developed medical conditions like trouble breathing, “itchy welts on their skin,” and an “extremely painful rash” they suspected were related to the mold. Testing in the unit found it “exceeded the threshold for a ‘high’ mold spore count” and “it was determined that the Home was not safe for habitation.”
The case was settled in December, according to court records. A lawyer for the plaintiffs did not respond to a request for comment.
Other residents are still waiting for justice.
Tashaira Williams and her two children were residents of CBZ’s property at 1568 Nome St. property in Aurora in 2021 and 2022, years before CBZ's properties were in the national spotlight.
For the first month, things were fine. Then she started noticing rats, mold, feces and roaches.
Her children were afraid to sit on the couch, it was so infested with bugs.
“Me and my kids were living in nothing but filth,” she said.
In the years she lived there, she estimates, she trapped more than 100 rats. Monthly rent, despite all of this, was $2,200 for her family’s one bedroom.
"I was so embarrassed I couldn't even have family members come over to my house,” she said. “It was just so embarrassing to where we just didn't want to sit nowhere. We was mainly gone because we didn't want to sit in the house.”
Williams has been representing herself in a lawsuit against the company, but she recently told the court she had a problem.
She couldn't find the landlords to serve them the papers.
Do you know more? Drop us a line at [email protected]. Complaints about residential living conditions in Denver can be filed by calling 3-1-1.
