TENANTS WANT MORE TIME SOON TO BE EVICTED

Three Have Asked The Courts For Some Help

Tenants being forced from an alleged South Side "drug house" are asking the
courts for more time to move.

The tenants, who say troublemakers are gone and that they had nothing to do
with alleged drug dealing, may also ask the courts to force the city of
Madison to apologize, help them move, or even keep open the eight-unit
apartment building at 1909 Lake Point Drive, formerly Simpson Street.

Tenants and supporters have scheduled a rally for 6:30 p.m. today on the
steps of the City-County Building, 210 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.

The city took rare legal action in early September to close the building.
After a deal between the city and the owners, a Dane County Circuit Court
judge ordered it closed by Sept. 30. Six women and 11 children live there.

Three tenants, Genene McNeal, Joycelyn Rodgers and Yvette Walker, on Monday
filed a court motion to delay or stop closure of the building.

A hearing is scheduled before Judge Arnold Schumann at 10:30 a.m. Friday.

"They want things to slow down so they don't have to move out by Sept. 30,"
said the tenant's attorney, Hal Menendez, of Legal Action of Wisconsin.

Walker, a medical billing specialist with three children, said, "I'm a
hard-working single-mother. I don't want me and my children to be out on
the street and homeless."

The tenants, some who receive Section 8 housing assistance, are stigmatized
by their address and can't get paperwork processed quickly enough to move
by the end of the month, Menendez said.

"As a practical matter, they can't go anywhere," he said.

Several tenants have been turned down for housing, said Brenda Konkel,
executive director of the Tenant Resource Center.

The city warned tenants in June of a coming legal action at the property,
city attorney Eunice Gibson said. The city wants to close the building but
will support a practical solution, she said.

"The city isn't going to turn them out in the street," Gibson said.

But tenants don't like being branded as drug dealers and undergoing the
costs and hardships of moving.

"We're paying the price for what other people have done in the past,"
Walker said.

The city should apologize and help tenants relocate, said Konkel and
Michael Jones of Brothers for Change, a nonprofit group trying to fight
drug dealing and protect the interests of tenants.

"There was a mistake made," Jones said. "All we're asking is that the
mistake be corrected. We just want the city to do what is right."

The city, after sending repeated notices to the building owners, Thomas
Cothard and Jeanette Davis of Evansville, on Sept. 1 filed a drug abatement
complaint seeking closure of the building. The city's complaint details
criminal and suspicious activity, including undercover drug purchases. The
owners are accused of bad management, not personal wrongdoing.

Under a deal approved by Judge Paul Higginbotham, the owners are to close
the building for six months and try to sell it. The owners must hire a
property manager, install security locks, board windows and erect a fence,
hire security and evict all tenants by Sept. 30.