Mamedy Doucoure has lived in a townhouse at the Kirby Apartments, tucked away in a wooded valley in Cincinnati's Mount Airy neighborhood, for a few years now.
During that time, he's dealt with a lot of maintenance issues: he recounts a stretch where he and his family didn’t have hot water for more than a week. He talks about the raccoons that get into the ceiling sometimes.
Standing in the parking lot of the complex recently, he said getting maintenance from the owners has been very challenging.
"There's nobody in the office," he says. "If you've got a situation, you've got a problem."
That's a sentiment echoed by other residents who live there who reported issues with a lack of heat, water leaks, and other problems.
About a month ago, Doucoure had a big problem that still hasn't been addressed. He walks up the stairs in his neatly kept townhouse. At the top, there's a locked room his son used to sleep in before the ceiling started falling in.
"Of course my kids are scared, my wife is scared," he says as he unlocks the door.
Large pieces of drywall dot the floor. A section hangs down from the ceiling, stained from water damage. He says he was shocked when it happened.
"That day, I almost wanted to cry," he says.
The search for help
Who exactly is responsible for fixing Doucoure's ceiling, and the many other problems at the property? That's a tangled web. The 116-unit apartment complex has been caught up in a protracted legal battle after its owners, a real estate investment group called Vision & Beyond, allegedly abandoned it and about 70 other properties last fall. All told, those properties account for more than 630 units of housing home to hundreds of Cincinnatians.
Stanislav “Stas” Grinberg and Peter Gizunterman founded Vision & Beyond in Cincinnati in 2018, previous news releases from the company say. The idea behind the business: that middle American cities like Cincinnati would see spikes in housing demand as people moved away from expensive coastal areas.
The founders claimed the company was novel in that it is vertically integrated, with separate subsidiaries dedicated to renovation/construction, property management, and building material procurement. A fourth subsidiary — called Vision & Beyond Israel, based in Tel Aviv — is responsible for attracting investors.
Vision & Beyond invested millions in Cincinnati and other cities in Ohio, Kentucky, Texas and elsewhere. Some estimates place the value of its portfolio as high as hundreds of millions of dollars at its height.
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On Jan. 3, the city of Cincinnati asked Hamilton County courts to appoint a temporary property manager for Kirby Apartments and many of the other properties once owned by Vision & Beyond. After the city's request, a company called Peak Properties had been working at some of those buildings, including Kirby.
But the extensive maintenance needed and complications in the cases facing Vision & Beyond have meant help hasn't come yet for many tenants.
Confusion at Coachwood
Until recently, Vision & Beyond owned another small West Side apartment complex called Coachwood on McHenry Avenue.
A resident there, who didn't want to be identified, said the place felt "apocalyptic" because no one was removing trash, severe water leaks were going unaddressed, and it was unclear where to pay rent.
On Feb. 7, each resident there got a notice saying they needed to leave their unit by Feb. 11. The notices claimed they owed thousands of dollars in back rent. WVXU viewed a copy of one of those notices.
"You are being asked to leave the premises," it read. "If you do not leave, an eviction action may be initiated against you."
The notice threatened a $300 "attorney/court fee" if residents didn't comply.
But it was murky who left the notices, which were simply signed "Coachwood Landlord." There was no phone number listed on the notice, and an email sent to a listed email address had not received a reply at the time this article was published.
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During a hearing on the various legal matters affecting former Vision & Beyond properties Tuesday, Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Robert Goering said the notices weren't valid.
Greater Cincinnati Legal Aid attorney Nick DiNardo says the situation at the McHenry building is emblematic of the confusion the company — and subsidiaries under names like "Management & Beyond" and "Property & Beyond" — left behind.
"We're really not sure what's going on," he said. "Not just at the McHenry property, but at all the properties that were previously owned and managed by Management & Beyond. It's really not clear what's happening right now."
'It was freezing in here'
At the heart of the chaos is a legal battle over who actually owns the properties. Lawsuits by Vision & Beyond investors allege the company fraudulently shifted ownership of houses and apartment complexes out of LLCs the investors paid into and then took out mortgages on them without investors knowing it.
When Vision & Beyond failed to pay back the mortgages, creditors sued to foreclose on the buildings. Investors, however, insist they're the real owners.
That’s left a vexing situation for former Vision & Beyond renters like Melissa Staley. She says the heat in her Price Hill apartment went out on Thanksgiving.
Staley says she spent 16 days without a functioning furnace and had to rely on electric heaters. WVXU reviewed texts between Staley and the property managers who took over after Vision & Beyond left that support that timeline.
Staley says two of her pet parakeets got sick and died due to the cold.
"It was freezing in here," she says. "I had one, two, three heaters going in here, and my oven. Just to keep it in the 50s."
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Staley is trying to get money taken off her rent for the time she went without heat and for the extra electric costs she racked up running the space heaters.
But she also said she wasn't even sure who to pay rent to. She showed WVXU a notice she says she got on her door in November from the city saying the building was in receivership and she should pay Peak Properties.
But her current building manager who came in after Vision & Beyond continued to ask for rent, too. She says it's a frustrating situation.
"Property & Beyond [another subsidiary of Vision & Beyond], who I originally rented from, these people who claim they own the building, and then the city says they have control of the building," she says. "At this point, I'm ready to go to court because I have no idea who to pay. I'm not going to pay you and then you pocket the money and then everyone is looking at me like, 'Where's my rent money?' "
Clarity could be coming
Reached by phone, the post-Vision & Beyond property manager acknowledged the time Staley went without heat but said the unit needed a whole new furnace. He said the situation is confusing, but that the investors who hired him had worked out the management responsibilities with the courts.
More clarity and oversight for the former Vision & Beyond properties could be coming soon. During the Tuesday hearing on the multiple foreclosure and receiver cases against Vision & Beyond, Judge Goering approved new local property managers for many of them, including the Kirby complex where Doucoure lives and the McHenry property. Staley's apartment in Price Hill will continue to be managed by the property manager she struggled with to get her heat fixed.
Legal Aid's DiNardo says the situation tenants face has gotten more common as investment groups buy up more residential properties locally.
"Unfortunately, we're seeing this more and more often," he said. "Where large, out-of-town entities who own a large amount of rental properties here in Cincinnati don't maintain them, then leave town and the tenants have to suffer. We've seen that at the Williamsburg Apartments. The only thing that's unusual about the situation with Vision & Beyond is that the ownership and management have just completely disappeared, left the country, so we've heard. For a lot of these tenants, there simply is no manager now."