Apartment Look

A Cedar Ridge Apartments tenant shows a respirator she claims she sometimes needs due to alleged mold issues at the south Sacramento apartment complex . Code Enforcement is continuing to inspect the complex to determine if there are violations. PHOTO BY MICHAEL MOTT Nancy Avalos watched as her 5- and 8-year-old daughters danced and chased each other. Their laughter filled the living room. “My daughters don’t want to move out,” Avalos said in Spanish. Her voice broke. “I feel like I’ve let them down.” Avalos moved to Cedar Ridge Apartments six years ago. After sharing a living room of an apartment together, the single mother wanted to give her three daughters room to play and moved to a place they could call their own. But now the family is moving out of its two- bedroom apartment , after Avalos’ monthly rent rose from $802 to $1,086. For Avalos and her neighbors, sharp rent and utility bill increases hit the past two months as the property owner, Torrance- based Cedar Ridge Apa...

Nearly every day, Kristen Bass travels to the Park Meridian apartments in Northgate, seeking reassurance that important pieces of her life are still intact. The 30- unit apartment building where she lived for 18 months was badly damaged in an Aug. 5 fire, leaving Bass and about 70 other tenants searching for new homes while the insurance company documents the extent of the damage, and the landlord makes plans for the building’s demolition. Bass is certain that irreplaceable belongings survived the fire — her family photos, childhood mementos, and a box of her late sister’s belongings that she can’t talk about without breaking into tears. But she can’t retrieve them from the fenced and partially boarded-up building because the landlord says it’s not safe to let her back inside. Most Read Stories Unlimited Digital Access. $1 for 4 weeks. “We are so grateful no one got hurt,’’ building owner A. Mark Vanderveen said in an interview Monday. “The last thing I want to do is put someone ...

The advertisements are everywhere. On television, a sleek black sedan pulls up to a sprawling estate with a rolling green lawn as a mother recounts how Recovery Centers of America saved her child from drugs. On Facebook, radio, highway billboards, and commuter trains, people are urged to call the company’s instantly memorable hot line : 1-800-RECOVERY. The marketing blitz and an infusion of private equity money have helped make Recovery Centers of America into the self-described fastest- growing addiction treatment provider in the country. Launched less than three years ago by a high- end real estate developer , it’s part of a rush of entrepreneurs who see opportunity in the treatment business as the opioid crisis sweeps the country. Advertisement But an investigation by STAT and The Boston Globe has uncovered evidence of shoddy care and turmoil inside the walls of the company’s two Massachusetts treatment centers . This report is based on interviews with more than a dozen fo...