UPDATE: Texas attorney Eric Pullen is present at today’s hearing to represent Himbola’s owner. Himbola Manor Apartments Manager Quoizael Green is also in attendance.
Lafayette officials are set to bring their case against Himbola Manor Apartments Wednesday afternoon in administrative adjudication court. Despite facing the possibility of thousands in fines for 132 cited code violations, it’s not clear the Texas-based nonprofit will show up.
An Administrative Adjudication Bureau hearing is one of LCG’s strongest code enforcement strategies, but that may not be enough to bring Himbola into compliance, as fines and deadlines did not sufficiently motivate American Agape Foundation and its President David Starr previously in Texas.
Residents have long complained of unlivable conditions at Himbola, the Martin Luther King Jr. Drive apartment complex, and LCG officials documented dozens of code violations in two inspections of the complex this year, deciding earlier this month to bring the company before LCG’s adjudication court.
Agape President Starr and his legal team have not confirmed their attendance or sent any documentation to defend against the violations, according to LCG compliance manager Kathy Trahan.
“I have not had contact with any of their representatives,” Trahan tells The Current.
Himbola’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.
The complex is also under pressure from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which gave Starr until Aug. 19 to submit a thorough action plan to address “serious deficiencies” and placed it in default of its Section 8 contract with the federal housing agency.
Starr and Himbola have largely left Foresight Asset Management — the company founded by Matthew Starr, David Starr’s son, that is paid to manage Himbola — to deal with the LCG and HUD. Foresight’s management staff were the only ones present when LCG did follow-up inspections on the property in July.
This is not the first time a David Starr housing complex has ended up in arbitration. In San Antonio, when a complex owned by Starr failed to return to code and was sold at foreclosure, Starr turned around and bought the complex with his own nonprofit.
The AAB, however, has limited penalties its appointed judge can administer, with fines the most aggressive recourse available.
“The hope is they would see the seriousness of this and respond,” says Trahan.
How AAB works
An AAB hearing is much like a regular municipal court, with a judge, a verdict and legal representatives on both sides. Until 2021, local building compliance violation proceedings went through municipal or district courts.
In 2021 LCG created the bureau to quickly deal with compliance issues and avoid cases getting stuck behind other proceedings in court.
“The bureau is set up specifically to hear these types of cases. So we’re not competing with placement on the docket,” says Trahan.
The threat of an AAB hearing typically motivates landowners to get up to compliance with building code, but that hasn’t been the case with Himbola. Threats of punishment have not been an effective push to get the complex up to code in the long term, resulting in a large number of current violations.
“We have had success with apartment complexes with this process,” says Trahan. “We had an apartment complex that was able to avoid fines at all by getting everything taken care of.”
This may be true for some complexes, but Himbola has been on the compliance division radar since at least 2021. LCG officials claimed success in getting Himbola to repair collapsed ceilings at the time, using the episode to indicate that more aggressive code enforcement was working.
Trahan says this is partially due to the landlords covering up long-term problems.
“There has been a lot of deferred maintenance in the last couple of years; it’s really starting to show now because sometimes these things take a little while to become so noticeable because sometimes landlords can hide certain things,” says Trahan, explaining why compliance is just now taking Himbola to an AAB hearing.
LCG plans to present a case with 713 pages showing 132 violations with photos and descriptions by inspectors. The inspectors could testify to the individual violations.
If Starr’s legal representatives appear, they would get to muster a defense and call their witnesses, with a city rebuttal if needed. Starr’s representation has not sent any evidence or documentation in its defense, according to Trahan.
Lafayette officials will present their case against Himbola today (Wednesday) at 2 p.m., 220 W. Willow St., Bldg. B.
The judge could find Himbola ownership not liable, reset the case or grant a continuance that would push the trial back, giving Starr’s lawyers more time. Or the judge could find Starr liable.
“He could find them liable for all the violations. He could find them liable for some of the violations. He could find them liable for none of the violations,” says Trahan.
Each violation is considered separate, so the judge could find Agape liable for up to 132 violations. The fines are capped at $500 per violation, so limiting violations would be one of Agape’s aims.
AAB Judge Stuart Bowie, appointed by Mayor-President Monique Blanco Boulet on the recommendation of City-Parish Attorney Pat Ottinger, can issue an order of abatement. This would give Starr and his nonprofit yet another deadline to come up to code, punishable by fines. The judge has no power to remove Agape’s tax-exempt status — Himbola avoided nearly $350,000 in local property taxes over the past eight years — or take the property from the nonprofit.
HUD did not respond to questions about the status of its action against Starr.