Mass Displacement at Tanglewood Apartments, Lamplighter Inn Shines Light on Negligent Landlords

A group of five people huddled in Archie Hoskins’ motel room off Freedom Drive on Nov. 27, with other people circulating in and out throughout the afternoon to check on things or ask a quick question before going about their daily tasks.

The gathering looked like so many families coming together on the day before Thanksgiving to catch up and share memories, but this was a family brought together by necessity — neighbors who had been living in Lamplighter Inn but were now facing eviction by no fault of their own.

Instead of memories, the group shared advice on how to best utilize the support being offered by community organizers like Apryl Lewis and Robert Dawkins, who were there at the motel that afternoon.

“Code enforcement is not with you, they’re against you,” Hoskins pronounced to the group.

“We’ve been over here suffering long enough,” said another resident named Natasha to no one in particular. “Something has to be done.”

Earlier that morning, about a 13-minute drive north on I-85 at the Tanglewood Apartments in the Derita area of north Charlotte, residents stirred about in the parking lot of a building on Wynbrook Way, unsure about their own futures as a Nov. 29 deadline loomed over each of them.

All of Tanglewood’s nearly 50 remaining residents woke up to letters left on each of their doors in late October informing them that their leases would not be renewed. The timing of those notices came as the final residents who didn’t have month-to-month leases neared the end of their agreements, allowing the property owners to end their residency with 30 days notice.

The new owners, Dalecrest PO LLC, bought the property from Tanglewood Owners LLC in September 2024.

For Shadavious Hopkins-Billings, who lived in Tanglewood with five of her children for the past year, the experience was all too familiar. She and her family had already been repeated victims of displacement due to negligent and in some cases criminal landlords in recent years.

Hopkins once lived at the Airport Parkway Inn, which was billed as “therapeutic housing for the homeless and people recovering from drug addiction” but was shut down in 2017 when it was found that the owner allowed drug dealers to operate inside the hotel and ignored squalid conditions. He was later alleged to be carrying out a Medicaid scam.

Hopkins then moved to Lake Arbor Apartments in west Charlotte, which became the site of a mass displacement in 2019 after the property owners there kicked everyone out rather than make the repairs needed to bring the complex up to code.

She then moved her family to a motel off Billy Graham Parkway but was forced to leave when the owner discontinued his extended-stay policy, then to Independence Place in east Charlotte before being forced out of there and into Tanglewood.

“It’s happened over and over and over and over,” Hopkins told Queen City Nerve. “It feels like I can’t. Like it’s starting to affect my health, to where my doctor prescribed anxiety medicine and then just referred me to a psychiatrist … I don’t know. I’m just tired. I didn’t even wanna come out today because I start feeling hopeless.”

Now residents and community advocates are asking the city to take action to prevent such mass-displacement events in the future.

In speeches to Charlotte City Council during public forums beginning in August, these residents have called on their elected officials to strengthen its code enforcement policies as a way to hold negligent landlords accountable.

Help on the ground

The Charlotte Housing Collaborative was formed as a result of recommendations from the Neighborhood Equity and Stabilization (NEST) Commission, put together by the city of Charlotte in 2021 in response to the displacement at Lake Arbor.

The commission was “charged with reviewing and recommending specific anti-displacement strategies and tools for protecting residents of moderate to high vulnerability of displacement.”

Read more: Grassroots Organizers Rally Around Displaced Lake Arbor Residents (2019)

Spearheaded by Crisis Assistance Ministry, organizers with the Charlotte Housing Collaborative (CHC) have been working on the ground to help residents at both Lamplighter Inn and Tanglewood Apartments find new housing, both in the short term and long term, alongside other community organizers such as Apryl Lewis, founder of Kinetic Works LLC.

At the time of this writing, organizers estimated that, of the nearly 70 people living in Lamplighter Inn when problems began over the summer, they’ve been able to move about 55 into hotels and will continue to seek more permanent housing for those residents, which can sometimes be a months-long process.

In Tanglewood, about half of the nearly 50 people living there have sought help through the Housing Collaborative. The process in that neighborhood continues; some have moved on but are still fighting for the return of safety deposits that were promised to them while others are fighting their forced eviction in court.

Multiple Tanglewood residents told Queen City Nerve they have enlisted the help of Legal Aid of North Carolina to help fight or delay the eviction proceedings the property owners had promised to start against those who did not leave by the Nov. 29 deadline.

Standing in front of Lamplighter Inn on Nov. 30, Lewis shared her vision for how the city could take over the property and make repairs, using it as a stabilization center for residents of both Lamplighter and Tanglewood.

Over the summer, Lewis had been in conversations with the owner, Chandreshkumar Patel of Comodo Care LLC, in an effort to mediate the situation. Her original discussions with Patel’s wife saw some progress, Lewis explained, but eventually fell apart. Since then, they have continued to let Lamplighter Inn fall deeper into disrepair, shutting off essential utilities such as water and power regularly.

“I really just think [the city] should make an example out of this owner here, because they know that there’s no real accountability or enforcement,” Lewis said. “So if you make an example, it should be something that’s going to benefit the community … If a bad acting landowner or owner allows property to go in this much disrepair and we have these types of issues, they should be in a streamlined process to enforce or be able to take over that building and turn it over to a stabilization center.

“Because the community was directly affected by whatever they allowed to happen at that property, so the community should benefit in having the reverse, something that’s going to bring more positive energy. I think that’s a fair trade-off,” she continued.

During a public forum at Charlotte City Council’s Dec. 9 meeting, Lewis presented a more detailed plan for how the city should address these mass displacement events before they occur: mandatory code enforcement hearings for negligent property owners, a community stabilization fund to protect displaced residents, and comprehensive tenant protections with real enforcement power.

“The stabilization center model offers a new paradigm, one where we prevent crises instead of just managing them,” Lewis said. “Tonight I urge this council, let’s transform this crisis into a catalyst. The property is ready, the community is mobilized, the residents are willing to be partners, the time for bold action is now. Let’s create a Charlotte we can all be proud of.”

Lamplighter Inn was fully shut down and boarded up on Dec. 10.

Who has the authority?

Some confusion has been added to the chaotic series of events at Lamplighter Inn and Tanglewood Apartments due to the split in responsibilities between city and county government. Some of the issues at each of the locations seemingly fall under the purview of the Mecklenburg County Public Health department while others must be addressed by the city of Charlotte’s Code Enforcement.

Queen City Nerve spoke to Charlotte City Council rep LaWana Mayfield on the morning of Dec. 5 when she visited Tanglewood Apartments with some local pastors to get a grasp on the situation residents were facing there.

Mayfield said that, while the county is better prepared for finding residents housing, she would like to see the city use its authority to push back against corporate landlords and negligent property owners who put people in these situations to begin with.

She said that simply issuing fines isn’t enough to curb the business practices of property owners who buy properties that could be made into naturally occurring affordable housing in the hopes that the city will buy them for that purpose.

“My concern is that we’ve created a space where slumlords know the government is going to come in and pay me, so I’m going to just sit on it, versus I’m going to be penalized and I’m going to be penalized to the level where I need to sell this and get out, because shame doesn’t help,” Mayfield said. “It doesn’t work to shame people anymore. People have no shame in the disgusting things that they do to other people.

“As this city continues to grow, there is no reason anyone in America doesn’t have access to housing if that’s what they want,” she continued. “But yet the wealthy have become wealthier, the poor have become poorer, and the middle class is almost eliminated. So let’s use the legal ability and the policy language we have to make a difference.”

There are no shortage of areas in Charlotte where residents remain vulnerable to the same type of mass-displacement events that have affected those living at Tanglewood and Lamplighter.

Mike O’Sullivan, chair of OneMECK’s Affordable Housing Committee, sorted through the city’s public housing code violation database with his team and found 916 housing code violation reports issued over the last two years that remain open. He added that there are 12 multifamily complexes with at least 11 open reports, and some single reports have up to 40 violations included in them.

“Take a minute to imagine what a family living in a squalid apartment with 40 violations is suffering through,” he told Charlotte City Council members on Dec. 9.

During that public forum, one expert presented a way that the city could begin to take action against negligent landlords and property owners.

Ted Fillette, a retired attorney who spent 45 years helping low-income residents with tenants’ rights cases at Legal Aid of NC, said the code already exists that would allow the city to put out bids for contracts and award them to contractors who could go in and do the repairs in multifamily complexes where owners have ignored the need to do so themselves.

According to Fillette, if the owners don’t pay for these contracts, the city can place a lien on the property, then foreclose on the property and become title owner if the lien isn’t satisfied. He added that, for more urgent matters such as inoperable plumbing, no working heat, or collapsing floors and roofs, a judicial injunction can be ordered against the owners to do the repairs that must be done immediately.

“We already have the laws we need to do this, now we need the political will to take action,” said O’Sullivan.
In the meantime, residents like those being forced out of Tanglewood Apartments and Lamplighter Inn will continue to feel ignored by their leaders.

“We’re being treated like this is something we did but this is something that just happened to us,” Tanglewood resident Andrea Farris told Queen City Nerve when we visited on the day before Thanksgiving. “The only difference between me and people with money is my pocketbook.

“I have four daughters that have graduated college or touched college, you know,” she continued. “No one thinks about why you’re in the situation that you’re in and they don’t care, but through this process, we’ve been made to feel like we’re nothing.”