Housing Crisis: The Amphi Panteras advocate for residents of the Malibu Apartments in Tucson

In 2022, Arizona Illustrated highlighted the Monterey Garden Apartments where the Tucson Tenants Union advocated for renters who had their leases terminated. The story looked at the lack of affordable housing within Tucson and how questionable landlord practices contribute to the growing housing crisis. The second piece of this investigation picks up in Tucson’s Amphi neighborhood where tenant activist group Amphi Panteras is focusing its attention on the Malibu Apartments.

VIEW LARGER At the Malibu Apartments in Tucson, AZ, tenants are fighting for their tenants’ rights.

AZPM

At the Malibu Apartments on First Avenue and Prince Road, palm trees welcome guests into a bright royal blue building. But inside, residents say they are subjected to health violations including bug infestation, mold, and broken heating and cooling systems. Our cameras even captured grass growing in one tenant’s apartment.

“I’ve been here a year and I’ve been pulling the grass for a year, and it’ll grow back,” the tenant said.

Malibu residents are expected to pay rent close to $1,000 before utilities despite living with these needed repairs that they say management has failed to address.

On sunny Tucson afternoons, Hassan Clement and the Amphi Panteras meet under the shade at New Life Community Church where they discuss the latest developments at the Malibu Apartments.

VIEW LARGER Hassan Clement is a housing advocate who helped form Amphi Panteras in 2022.

AZPM

The union, which is a subset of the Tucson Tenants Union, is focused on the Amphi neighborhood in central Tucson where tenants are especially underserved.

With the group’s mission “To inform tenants of their rights to fit and habitable housing,” Clement and his counterparts often spend their meetings strategizing on how to rally in support of tenants in need of repairs and other assistance. These efforts have been met with support from Tucson’s Vice Mayor Kevin Dahl, who is also the council member for Ward 3.

Some Malibu tenants have reportedly withstood months of health hazards before getting any help from management. In Steve Helman’s unit, a leak gave way to flooding which was then followed by a cockroach and mouse infestation. He sprayed Raid, a chemical insecticide, on himself and his dog and was unable to sleep on his infested bed, Clement said.

VIEW LARGER Damage inside a tenant's apartment.

Courtesy Tucson Tenants' Union

Tenants also told AZPM that a second-floor unit, now boarded up, used to be a trap house with heavy drug trafficking. Clement said tenants had complained for nearly a year, but Malibu management took no action until the Panteras organized and raised concerns together.

The Malibu Apartments are owned by Scott Brittenham who heads a private equity investment group called Clean Energy Capital LLC. In 2014, Brittenham had his license revoked in Washington when he made a $2.2 M payment to settle a case brought forth by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC said he failed to disclose certain fees and expenses to investors.

Clement said Brittenham, whom he calls “a slumlord,” is now able to carry on these practices in Arizona where his license is valid and where he owns many properties.

“He has a house in the foothills overlooking the slums that he oversees,” Clement said.

Brittenham’s lawyers told AZPM that they planned to make the requested repairs once tenants’ leases were up to “avoid inconveniences to tenants.” Two additional requests from AZPM to answer more specific questions and conduct an interview were met with no response.

Once the Amphi Panteras helped to establish the Malibu Tenants Association, the group held a meeting at the apartment complex in March. Soon after, the tenants involved were met with ten-day notices for termination of their leases or notices for non-renewal of their leases.

Amber Ward, who was elected vice president of the association at the meeting, was one recipient who believes her involvement caused this retaliatory act of the non-renewal of lease notice.

Ward’s unit had raised floors, likely due to flood damage, and the metal railing outside her second-story door wobbled with the touch of her hand, leaving her worried that anyone could easily fall from the balcony.

Modesta “Missy” Arroyo, who was elected president of the Malibu Tenants Association meeting, also received a 10-day notice for breaching the “two guest maximum” defined in her lease. But multiple Malibu tenants say that the Panteras in attendance were the collective guests of nine other residents of Malibu. A week later, Arroyo received a notice for non-renewal of her lease which she disputed because she believed that the notice was retaliation against her right to be part of a tenant association.

Arroyo, a single mother taking care of her daughter, said she had no heat this past winter and no air conditioning last summer. She said she now sleeps worried about where she has to move.

“I want to ask Scott [Brittenham]: ‘How do you sleep at night?’” Arroyo said.

The Amphi Panteras also received a cease and desist order from Brittenham and his lawyers stating other tenants had complained that the Panteras were harassing them. They claimed tenants felt that the Panteras' requests for old work orders were paternalistic and condescending, showing a lack of respect for the tenants' ability to handle their own affairs.

“I'm pretty sure — you know — that food, the food and drinks you bring every Sunday comes out of one of your guys' own pocket, you know? It's nothing but laughs and giggles even for the serious talk. I don't see how that's intimidation at all, you know?” Dylan Jump, a Malibu tenant, said regarding the Amphi Panteras.

There are four specific things that constitute retaliation from landlords, local attorney Alan Solot said.

“One of the four is being involved in a tenant's union or trying to organize a tenant's union or the like. It is recognized under Arizona law that tenant's unions may exist,” he said.

When renters carry out repair requests or other protected activities, “an eviction or a cutting of services or anything like that … within a six-month period … is going to be presumed as retaliation,” Amphi Pantera Nick Bruno said.

Solot said tenants typically have the following rights if their apartment fails to provide a habitable living space: They can terminate their lease and move, sue the landlord or fix the problems themselves and deduct those costs from their rent.

“But there's limitations on all of that and one thing I urge of anybody … is to never withhold rent from a landlord for habitability issues without legal advice,” Solot said.

VIEW LARGER Keith Bentele, Sociologist, SIROW, University of Arizona

Keith Bentele, a sociologist with the Southwest Institute for Research on Women, compiled data on eviction filings. He was tasked by the City of Tucson to author the needs assessment of adults experiencing homelessness and his research in the last few years showed that evictions are concentrated in low-income complexes like the Malibu Apartments. He added that people of color and single mothers are disproportionately affected.

For this reason, and because many tenants leave before evictions are officially filed, Bentele said, the true displacement of people becomes “invisible to us as a community” and “all of that economic activity spent evicting people then paying for the health and mental, physical, mental health consequences of doing this to folks … I view as a self-harm that our community is engaging in.”

Bentele hopes that “middle classes and above allies and people who don’t have the same vulnerabilities would more recognize the benefits of both creating more space, time and support for people who are experiencing housing insecurity to find a reasonable outcome.”

In mid-April, the Amphi Panteras and Malibu tenants held a rally to protest the landlord practices of Brittenham. Along the street outside the Malibu Apartments, they held up signs reading “Stop evictions” and “We have the power.”

They hoisted their fists in the air and chanted “Fight, fight, fight. Housing is a right.” Cars honked their horns as they drove by and the Panteras looked on, hopeful of making more change.

Transcript

(Narrator Cáit NíSíomón): Part one of this story aired in 2022 called Housing Crisis, a Microcosm, which left off with the Tucson Tenants Union stepping in to advocate for the tenants at the Monterey Garden Apartments, where the leases of all 52 units were terminated, forcing residents into a cycle of housing insecurity and homelessness. The story looked at the lack of affordable housing within Tucson and how questionable landlord practices contribute to the growing housing crisis, which has only intensified since.

And this is where part two picks up, broadening that microcosm to Tucson's Amphi neighborhood in Ward 3, where several housing complexes are located and whose residents are fighting to protect their tenants' rights. But they're not alone. The Amphi Panteras and their partners have stepped in to help.

(Hassan) "I'm going to stand up with her and we're going to fight to organize continually in this neighborhood."

"Yeah, hey, it's Hassan Clement with New Life Community."

(Narrator) The formation of the Amphi Panteras began with Hassan Clement, who in 2022 was living at at an apartment complex and confronted with a property manager who refused to make repairs in his unit, including broken air conditioning during a heat wave. He decided to take a more proactive approach and knocked on the doors of his neighbors, finding many more tenants whose apartments were under code.

(Hassan) I knocked on 79 doors and we found 16 more people with complaints like mine. We didn't get answers as individuals, but with our collective action, that we got all of our apartments fixed. And so from that, Ward 3 came to me and suggested that we do a pilot program.

(Kevin) Hassan came to us with a proposal, which we thought was brilliant, to train people in how to canvas renters, tenants, to give them the information they need to successfully complain about conditions that weren't right. And the fact that he organized a union after this training happened, it's been a powerful influence in the Amphi Neighborhood where he's working.

(Hassan) We started in December with six canvassers. They get paid $15 an hour. Our mission is to inform tenants of their rights to fit and habitable housing. We advocate with people when they have repairs that need to be made, and we organize those apartment complexes into tenant associations, and we bring those tenant associations into our larger Tucson Tenant Union.

(Narrator) The Amphi Panteras are currently focused on helping tenants at the Malibu apartments, located on First and Prince. There they found multiple tenants living with health and safety hazards, waiting months before anything is fixed or even repaired at all. According to the City of Tucson, a number of code enforcement complaints have been filed in the last few years.

(Hassan) From a leak upstairs, the ceiling flooded, and he had like this much water. You could see a water line in the whole apartment, messed up everything in the apartment.

(Steve) Mice, cockroaches, bed bugs. I haven't had a good night's sleep in a long time.

(Hassan) He couldn't sleep on his bed. We had to throw the bed away. He was spraying Raid on himself and the animal. We took two days, eight hours a piece. We cleaned his apartment. We sanitized his apartment. Through agencies, we got him bed and furniture. We had to fight with this place to make them take care and clean up this man's house. I could not walk away from him.

Don't make people live like that here. And we are making people live like that here. That's not right.

(Narrator) SB's Properties website shows the tenants pay anywhere from $725 and $950 a month before utilities, and tenants report bug and mice infestations, non-functioning heat and AC, black mold. Even one tenant has grass growing on the inside of her unit.

(Tenant) I've been here a year and I've been pulling the grass for a year, and it'll grow back.

(Narrator) The list goes on and all violations of Arizona health and safety statutes. Tenants also say that non-residents also use the laundry room to do drugs like fentanyl and say that there was a trap house located on the property.

(Hassan) A trap house is a house where people go do drugs. Whatever drug you do, you can go there and you can get busy.

(Tenant) It's like a crack house in the 80s, a trap house in post millennium. Yeah, basically.

(Hassan) That apartment was occupied for a year. A lot of traffic, a lot of dangerous stuff. It was kids that lived there too. Broken windows and the whole nine. People, the tenants here complained about it constantly, individually. Nothing happened.

We found out that the people that stayed there hadn't paid rent for a year. The management, now that we starting to organize, they got somebody with a gun in the parking lot out there now. But when this trap house was here and people was complaining about it, that it was unsafe, crickets. Nothing.

(Narrator) Hassan is referring to a tenant who was hired as a security guard who open carries a gun. A new tenant say "taps it" when he sees particular tenants, making them feel intimidated and scared.

(Security) I don't mind if you record, but if you keep distance, that would be great.

(Camera Operator) Yes, sir.

(Tenant) Cause he's right next door to the trap house that got boarded up and left.

(Tenant) He's telling on us that you guys are here and...

(Hassan) Brittenham, SB Properties. 2014 Washington State, they had a judgment against him for fraud. They took his license in Washington state.

Here in Arizona, he does the same practice. He has a lot of properties here, and he is a slumlord. He has a house in the foothills overlooking the slums that he oversees.

(Narrator) AZPM reached out to Brittenham for comment on the Amphi Pantera's findings and got a a response from his lawyers, King and Frisch. "My client is aware that certain units are in need of renovation and I've scheduled those units for renovation upon the expiration of their lease terms as to avoid any inconvenience to tenants and suggest the tenants purporting to have habitability issues with their units to contact the property's manager and to submit a work order.

AZPM followed up with Brittenham and Frisch, extending the opportunity for an interview or to be provided a written response to several questions we had.

- Can you respond to the accusation of a legal retaliation? For what purpose has the security guard been hired? And how long the average repair takes from the time of tenants' submission to completion? And how it's determined what repairs are put on hold until leases expire? We never received a response despite following up a third time.

(Missy) Since I've been here I think I've been through a good nine managers.

(Dylan) Ain't nobody here to talk to for anything. There's nothing getting done here at all.

(Amber) I just got to the point where I was like, I'm tired of relaying the message because apparently it's not getting relayed through whoever is going in there.

(Brandon) We come to you every day to your face to that office no matter if an appointment or not, we just have to see you and tell you things you don't do diddly-squat.

(Narrator) Several tenants have now begun to receive 10-day notices or non-renewal of their leases and say it's in retaliation for creating the new Malibu Tenants Association.

Amber Ward and her partner Dylan Jump have been living in need of several repairs that have remained unaddressed by management.

(Dylan) No, most likely what it is is a water leak under the floor.

(Amber) All it takes is just that one good hit and then the whole thing has going somewhere.

(Narrator) They received a non-renewal of their lease and believe it's because they were in attendance of the Malibu Association meeting where Amber was elected vice president.

-You think it was an opportunity because you're talking with the Panteras.

(Amber) Oh yeah, I'm not even the first one who's been getting them.

(Missy) Nobody has to worry about that little girl that lives up there in 32 but me.

(Narrator) Tenant Missy Arroyo, a single mother and resident of Malibu, joined the Amphi Panteras team because she said she and her daughter were living with no running AC last summer and no heat this winter.

She received a 10-day notice after the Malibu Tenants Association meeting where she was elected president. The notice states that she violated the two-guest maximum defined in her lease but multiple Malibu tenants say that the Panteras in attendance were the collective guests of nine other residents of Malibu. A week later, Missy received a notice for non-renewal of her lease to which she disputed because she believes that the notice is on the grounds of retaliation against her right to be part of a Tenants Association.

(Missy) I want to ask Scott, how do you sleep at night?

-True. How do you sleep at night when my girl gots to move? How do you sleep at night when my girl's in her room saying, "Mom, it's cold tonight." Do you sleep worried about where you're going to go next month? I do.

(Marshell) I asked about putting a safety bar in the shower so I can get it in out safely and a ramp here so I can you know get up and down okay and they're like, "No, you gotta get yourself." And I said, "Well then I'm going to take it and make sure it's removable." "Oh no, if you put it in the bathroom you gotta leave it there." I'm like I'm not paying for it if I have to leave it.

(Narrator) Marshell Oliver, a Malibu tenant who has a disability, was also given a 10-day notice for failing to pick up after her support dog but also believes the reason is for attending the Malibu Tenants Association meeting.

(Brandon) They say we're supposed to have tenant rights but where are they at? And when we try to practice our tenant rights this is what we get. How in the heck do we go around that without getting evicted or without living on the damn streets? You tell me how the hell we do that.

(Narrator) The Amphi Panteras also received a Cease and Desist order from Brittenham and his lawyers stating the tenants have complained that the Panteras are harassing them and that they find the Panteras' request for old work orders paternalistic and condescending and that it shows a lack of respect for tenants' ability to handle their own affairs.

(Marshell) No, I didn't feel harassed at all in fact they welcomed an extra voice.

(Dylan) I'm pretty sure you know that food, the food and drinks you bring every Sunday comes out of one of your guys' own pocket, you know. It's nothing but laughs and giggles even for the serious talk. I don't see how that's intimidation at all, you know. If that's the case then intimidate the **** out of me.

(Alan) There's very specific things that amount to retaliation. There's four actually and they are specific. One of the four is being involved in a tenant's union or trying to organize a tenant's union or the like. It is recognized under Arizona law that tenant's unions may exist.

(Nick) Renters in Arizona are protected from retaliation when they want to organize a tenant's union or association, amongst other activities like submitting repair requests, things like that, and that anything within a six-month period, if they are doing those protected activities, if it's like an eviction or a cutting of services or anything like that, is going to be presumed as retaliation.

(Hassan) So we had the meeting that you tried to stop and you called the cops and the cops came late and the cops went to talk to Missy and you came back 10 minutes later with a 10-day notice to quit and it's not all tied up. I don't think so. I think that you're retaliating, bud.

(Narrator) This is an eviction heat map showing filings in Tucson from 2021 to 2023. It shows why evictions are invisible because they're concentrated in low-income complexes like the Malibu apartments. This data was compiled by sociologist Keith Bentele, who examines the drivers of state-level poverty rates, inequality, and homelessness. In 2023, he was tasked by the City of Tucson to author the needs assessment of adults experiencing homelessness.

(Keith) Evictions are like a small part and many many people leave before an actual eviction is filed and so that is very invisible to us as a community. There's a massive over-representation of people of color amongst those tenants.

I was quite shocked to see you know the negative impacts on people's mental health, their physical health, hospitalization spike before and after. Most unfortunately there's lots of negative impacts on the children in those homes both in terms of their food security, their mental health and also unfortunately like child maltreatment and things like that tend to increase.

(Hassan) If I went into an apartment complex and there were a hundred units and that apartment complex was condemned as it should be, where do a hundred families go? There is no place in the system.

(Alan) Failure to provide a habitable residence is not so easy to remedy. The tenants rights are ranging from terminating the lease and moving, suing the landlord for money and then in some cases maybe depending on lots of things fixing the problem themselves and deducting that cost from the rent because there's limitations on all of that and one thing I urge anybody who's watching this to never withhold rent from a landlord for habitability issues without legal advice.

(Keith) All of that economic activity spent evicting people then paying for the health and mental, physical, mental health consequences of doing this to folks, all of that to me I view as a self-harm that our community is engaging in.

(Kevin) I believe that if the city of Tucson could we would put rent controls to stop this madness. State legislature has prevented us from locally deciding that we need rent controls so that's not an option so thank goodness for Hassan and his group for doing what we can to protect tenants, to protect renters, keeping them in their apartments.

(Keith) My hope is that you know middle class and above allies and people who don't have the same vulnerabilities would more recognize the benefits of both just creating more space and time and support for people who are experiencing housing insecurity to again to find a reasonable outcome. It's to all of our benefit for that to be a compassionate resolution for the folks.

(Hassan) Power to the people.

(Narrator) Despite the continued pushback from landlords like Brittenham, the commitment of Hassan, the Amphi Panteras and their partners has not wavered.

-Power to the people.

(Hassan) This is a machine baby and they grounding us up and what we gotta do is be like Mario Savio said we're gonna put our bodies upon the gears we're gonna make this stop.

-Everybody say "fight, fight, fight"

Fight, fight, fight.

Watch the full story on Arizona Illustrated.