Tenants of a Newark affordable housing complex, which was plagued by a rat infestation three years ago, are once again pleading for help, this time mainly over what they say is a lack of heat aggravated by the recent cold snap.
“When I have the oven and stove on, and I put enough clothes on, I’m okay, but the radiators are cold,” said Linda Hobson, 65, a retired nurse’s assistant who lives in a townhouse at the Georgia King Village complex with her 15-year-old grandson. “I’m not trying to get nobody in trouble. All I want is some heat.”
Hobson welcomed a reporter into her home on Thursday, when the temperature was not particularly chilly. It was warmer than usual, Dobson said, because she had her stove and burners on and some of the baseboard heaters were working.
But most of the heaters were tepid to the touch, and the basement of the townhouse was noticeably chilly.
Hobson and others said the cold weather had prompted a resurgence of mice and rats that never went away entirely despite extermination efforts by Georgia King Village’s former owner, L + M Development Partners of Larchmont, New York.
The recent complaints are reminiscent of those by tenants who appeared before the Newark City Council in January 2023, while L + M still owned the site, describing an infestation they and others attributed to new construction on the property and pleading with city officials to “do something.”
They did. And following inspections and citations for scores of code violations that also involved water leaks, mold, peeling paints and other problems, officials threatened to rescind a property tax abatement. The city also filed a lawsuit to place the property in receivership, under which the city would collect rents and use the money to fund repairs.
But L + M acknowledged the problems and addressed them sufficiently for the city to drop the suit and leave the abatement in place.
L + M no longer owns Georgia King Village, having received permission from city, state and federal housing officials to sell it in September. The new owners are a joint venture of Clifton-based Joined Management, which has managed the complex since December 2024, and the Tangram Group, a nationwide real estate firm specializing in subsidized housing.
“L+M transferred ownership of Georgia King Village to a joint venture, including affiliates of Joined and Tangram, in September 2025,” L + M said in a statement Friday.
A spokesperson for the city, Susan Garofalo, on Friday identified Georgia King’s new owner by the name of the newly created joint company, Selene Affordable LLC.
Garofalo added that city code enforcement officers had inspected Georgia King Village on Friday and had issued a complaint citing violations she did not specify.
In the Georgia King Village management office on Thursday, Joined employees declined to comment. A spokesman for Tangram released a statement Friday asserting that “providing safe and comfortable living conditions for all residents is a top priority.”
“Access to utilities, including heat, remained available for the vast majority of residents at Georgia King Village during the recent winter storm,” the statement added. “Fewer than 4% of apartments experienced a heat concern during this significant storm, and all issues were promptly addressed.”
Valentine added that, to prepare for the cold weather, several new boilers were installed at Georgia King Village before winter began.
“There is no evidence of a property-wide heating outage,” Valentine stated. “When a tenant alerts us to a service issue, it is addressed promptly.”
Gee Cureton, a longtime resident and informal tenant organizer at the complex, said she raised the heat issue with Joined personnel on-site in December after compiling a list of 28 residents who told her their apartments were cold.
“I was getting a lot of calls about heat,” said Cureton. “My biggest concern was finding somebody dead in their apartment.”
Cureton said she got no response from Joined’s on-site representatives, and was doubtful conditions would improve at the complex as long as Joined continued to manage it.
The company’s communication with tenants was “horrible,” she said, and the complex was understaffed. For example, Cureton said there was no one assigned to regularly check on the many elderly and disabled tenants, especially those vulnerable to extreme heat, cold, or other conditions.
Cureton also reached out to Council President Lawrence Crump and to Amiri Baraka Jr., the chief of staff and brother of Mayor Ras J. Baraka.
She said Crump and Amiri Baraka responded with requests for the names of tenants without heat, and on Thursday, the mayor’s brother hand-delivered portable space heaters to residents.
One of them was Sabrina Colón, who lives on the 12th floor of the 200 tower.
“I sleep under a fur blanket and a rug, fully dressed, with a hat,” said Colón, 47, an eyelash technician and transportation aide for disabled children. “The rats were crawling into my sofa, on top of my bed.”
Colón’s apartment was immaculate when a reporter visited on Thursday, just after Baraka was there. But she showed pictures of rodent droppings on her floor and ice crystals on the inside sill of her window.
Like Hobson’s townhouse, Colón’s apartment was far from frigid on Thursday, with the radiators ranging from warm to room temperature. Like Hobson, Colón also said she had been heating her place with the stove.
The hallways and lobby of the building were noticeably brisk on Thursday, however, even compared to the bitter cold outside, when temperatures were in the low 20’s.
Cureton said Friday that she was still awaiting word from the mayor’s office and the council on what, if any, formal action the city would take on behalf of Georgia King tenants. Crump did not respond to a request for comment, and a spokesperson for the mayor could not say as of Friday what additional action, if any, would be taken.
The 422-unit Georgia King Village apartment complex was built in the 1970’s, and includes 144 townhouses and two 18-story apartment towers in the city’s West Ward.
The complex was purchased in 2016 by L + M, which was granted a tax abatement by the City Council to offset millions of dollars in capital improvements the company made to the aging complex, where rents are subsidized by federal Section 8 vouchers.
Since then, L + M has completed or launched several market-rate projects in Newark, including the redevelopment of the Hahne’s Department store site on Broad Street; conversion of a Rutgers high-rise parking garage into market-rate and affordable housing; and the construction of mixed-use projects in collaboration with the New Jersey Performing Arts Center and the Newark Museum of Art.
In 2024, then-City Council President Lamonica McIver, now a member of Congress, delayed the eventual approval of a tax abatement on the Newark Museum project — a 250-unit residential tower and additional gallery space — because L + M had not resolved all of the issues at Georgia King Village.
Councilman Carlos Gonzalez, who chaired the council’s tax abatement committee when it threatened to rescind Georgia King Village’s abatement, said a half-century-old residential complex made up entirely of subsidized apartments was bound to have maintenance problems. He also said it did not seem to fit the image that L + M wanted to convey in its Newark portfolio.
“When you buy a building that is 40-50 years old, problems are going to arise,” said Gonzalez. “That’s an outlier for them.”
