UPDATED: Feb. 7, 2018 at 11:40 a.m.

A group of about 20 Syracuse University students and Syracuse Quality Living tenants marched Tuesday night to the company’s leasing office near University Hill to protest what they say are unsafe living conditions.

Tenants of SQL apartments said they have dealt with rodent infestations, broken appliances and ceiling leaks. Some tenants also said maintenance issues at SQL properties have only been fixed temporarily or not at all. The group delivered a list of demands to the leasing office on Tuesday.

SQL tenant Phalande Jean said she set up a meeting with SQL’s landlord, Ravi Saluja, but the meeting was canceled Tuesday just hours before it was set to start. SQL owns 42 properties near University Hill, according to its website. Many of those properties are in the Westcott Street area.

“I have now been living in the premises for a month now, and I just now got my furniture,” Jean said. She added that she had to assemble the furniture herself after it was dropped off.

Several women ran out of their SQL-owned apartments during the protest when they heard tenants marching by, throwing on shoes and coats to join the rally.

“We hate it here!” one of them said. “Our cabinets fell off the wall.”

The rally comes two weeks after a group of tenants delivered another list of demands to Saluja, who manages the company’s properties.

Hieu Nguyen | Asst. Photo Editor

Protesters gather outside of Syracuse Quality Living’s leasing office to deliver a list of demands.

A video of the first meeting in SQL’s leasing office was posted on Facebook. When asked by tenant Benesemon Simmons if he would look at the letter during that event, Saluja said, “I’ll look through it,”

But he never responded to the letter, said Simmons, a Ph.D. student in the College of Arts and Sciences studying composition and cultural rhetoric. Simmons has lived in four SQL properties since summer 2016, she said.

“They don’t ever solve the problem, they just move you around,” Simmons said.

Simmons started a new SQL property tenant association with her former roommate, Susima Weerakoon, a human development and family studies master’s student at SU. Weerakoon has lived in two SQL properties since 2016, she said.

Simmons and Weerakoon lived together on the 300 block of Lexington Avenue, which had a mice infestation, they said. The infestation became too much for Simmons after she found mice feces in her bed, she said.

After complaining to the landlord, Simmons was moved to the 300 block of Columbus Avenue, which cost double the rent she paid for her apartment on Lexington. At the new apartment, her toilet stopped working, Simmons said.

Maintenance did not respond until the fifth day after the complaint, which was the same day her ceiling started leaking, Simmons said. As a result, Simmons was displaced from her apartment for several days, she said.

Code enforcement records show there are two open code violations at Simmons’ Columbus Avenue apartment, including an “interior surfaces” violation and a “mechanical appliances” violation.

Simmons and Weerakoon, who helped organize the Tuesday protest, both called SQL’s maintenance department “unresponsive.” The only way to request maintenance is to text a phone number detailing your issue, they said. Half the time, tenants don’t receive a response, Weerakoon said.

“When an issue happens, one strategy is to go to the leasing office and try to talk to someone directly,” Weerakoon said. “But often there is a line of people trying to talk about their issues, and you can hear office staff getting yelled at.”

Weerakoon said the tenant association, which includes at least 20 people, has been canvassing SQL’s properties to hear what other residents are experiencing.

“You see a pattern here. We aren’t the only ones who have mice issues,” Simmons said. “A lot of people have mice issues. I’m not the only one with ceiling issues or roof issues.”

Code violation records show that one SQL property recently had 17 code violations, at one point. That building was 1526 E. Genesee St., records show. Code violations included accumulation of rubbish and garbage. That particular violation was closed last year.

SU graduate student Eli Gebler lived in that property last fall. Gebler said the apartment was “a nightmare from the beginning.”

On the day he moved in, the sinks started leaking, he said, and the ceiling started leaking soon after.

“I would call code enforcement, and Ravi would just get the same people who had done the problem improperly to come back and do it again,” Gebler said.

In an interview on Monday, SQL leasing manager Stephanie Brown apologized to tenants who she said think maintenance is unresponsive.

“There might be a disconnect between when they think maintenance is going to come and when the call is actually accepted,” Brown said.

SQL usually responds to maintenance requests within 24 hours, she said.

When asked about the rally, Brown said she was unaware that it would be happening but respected the tenants’ right to congregate.

“We’re really sad that the ball was dropped both in communication and with us failing to meet their demands, their requests, so we’re just really sorry about that,” Brown said.

— Asst. News Editor Kennedy Rose contributed reporting to this story.

Published on February 6, 2018 at 10:21 pm

Contact Casey: casey@dailyorange.com | @caseydarnell_