Jo Buckley pulled up to Aurora’s Edge of Lowry apartments in August 2020. Fresh out of graduate school in Fort Collins, she was driving a car packed with her belongings as she prepared to start a teaching job nearby.
She’d toured her new home virtually and had already signed the lease. The rental company, CBZ Management, told her to be there at 8 a.m. But it wasn’t until 7 p.m. that she was finally let in. She quickly realized the reason for the delay.
“There was a crew there actively rushing and working to try to get things moved in,” she said. Her walls were freshly painted. “Right behind me, they carried up the stove.”
The next day, when her dad tried to push that new stove flush against the wall, it short-circuited and sparked. When her mom went into the bathroom, water seeped from the floor under the pressure of her feet.
Buckley’s father thought the unit was uninhabitable, so she moved out — starting a months-long fight with the property owners and a third-party security deposit company to expunge an eviction from her record and clear a nearly $2,000 charge.
Four years later, the same property in Aurora is among several at the center of a national firestorm about an alleged takeover of apartment buildings by a Venezuelan gang. It was made infamous by camera footage of armed men in the Edge of Lowry’s hallways — which went viral and stoked an intense election-year focus on immigration. The national attention reached its zenith last week, when former President Donald Trump inaccurately referenced the situation on a prime-time debate stage, and then at a rally.
But problems at CBZ Management’s local properties — three in Denver and four in Aurora — long predated any gang involvement.
Former tenants at four CBZ locations in Denver and Aurora, together with court records and municipal inspection reports obtained by The Denver Post through public records requests, portray strikingly similar issues across the properties, dating back to 2020. The problems have included black mold, water leaks, a lack of hot water, broken appliances, sagging infrastructure, fees for amenities that didn’t work or didn’t exist, rodent and cockroach infestations, poor building security and slapdash repairs.
At the Edge of Lowry, 1218 Dallas St., Buckley had noticed that the building smelled like cigarette smoke and mildew, and locks on some of the units she passed had been knocked out.
After she decided to vacate, her battle over the eviction record and security deposit created so much stress, she said, that it contributed to her leaving teaching.
At multiple CBZ buildings, the records obtained by The Post show that tenants and city inspectors repeatedly pressed property managers to repair heat and infrastructure, clear debris and trash, and, in one case, to clean up blood stains that had been ignored for weeks. In Denver, CBZ’s problems were significant enough to land it on the “radar” of the city’s top health inspection official.
Former tenants who spoke to The Post said the deteriorating conditions created security hazards and enabled nonresidents to enter, use drugs and sleep on the premises.
“I was really scared,” said Sarah Fahim, who lived in CBZ’s 1644 Pennsylvania St. building in Denver for two years, starting in March 2021. She had moved from California and wasn’t used to the cold. One winter, her apartment didn’t have heat.
“The few crazy weekends in Denver, where it’s like zero degrees, my windows would freeze over, even with the window sealed. I couldn’t see outside. It was freezing in my apartment. I had to wear three sweatshirts (and) leggings under sweatpants.”
TOP LEFT: Mold behind hallway floor trim at the Edge of Lowry apartments on Dallas Street in Aurora. TOP RIGHT: A hole in a bathroom wall at the Edge of Lowry apartments. BOTTOM LEFT: An image showing where radiant wall heaters were removed from the Edge of Lowry apartments. BOTTOM RIGHT: A hole behind a toilet at the Edge of Lowry apartments. (Images from City of Aurora via public records request)
Company blames “government failures”
CBZ has sought to blame recent problems at their Aurora properties on gang violence — including at an apartment building at 1568 Nome St. that the city ordered closed in early August because of persistent code violations. Tenants previously told The Post that gangs did have a presence in their buildings.
Law firms representing CBZ and a bank that holds a loan secured by CBZ’s properties told city officials this summer that a transnational Venezuelan gang had recently taken over the buildings, threatened employees and were collecting rent.
Last week, after Trump made his comments, a joint statement from Aurora officials said activity from that gang was limited and noted that police had arrested eight of the 10 suspected members of the gang, called Tren de Aragua, who’d been identified so far. While disputing that the city of 400,000 had been overrun, they wrote that gangs had “significantly affected” some properties.
Records and interviews show that CBZ’s Denver and Aurora properties were plagued by poor conditions and inattentive ownership well before gang reports surfaced.
Residents have raised concerns about the properties’ “slumlord” owners since at least early 2023, wrote Aurora City Councilwoman Alison Coombs in a post last week on the social platform X. In November, advocates showed images from CBZ’s Nome Street property, the one later condemned, to the City Council and urged its members to create a landlord licensure system — a proposal that did not advance past its first study session, advocates said.
Denver and Aurora inspectors have levied dozens of violations against CBZ’s properties in just the last two years. Many of them were repeat complaints after problems weren’t fixed.
William Penn Apartments at 1644 Pennsylvania St. in Denver on Friday, Sept. 13, 2024. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)
Fahim’s old building in Denver’s Uptown neighborhood has nearly $40,000 in unpaid fines, prompting the city to place a lien against it. Several tenants have sued CBZ or the constituent companies that formally own its Colorado properties, alleging uninhabitable conditions and illegal evictions.
Zev Baumgarten, described in inspection reports and court records as CBZ’s owner, also faced at least two Aurora municipal court summonses in 2022 and 2023 over code violations.
Related Articles
Judge orders managers of condemned Aurora apartment building to provide former tenants with housing
Frenzy over Venezuelan gang in Aurora reaches crescendo, fueled by conflicting information and politics
Former President Trump says he’d start mass deportation of immigrants in Aurora and Springfield, Ohio
Aurora’s plans to condemn apartment building over conditions leave Venezuelan migrants facing uncertainty
Former resident of condemned Aurora apartment building files lawsuit as move-out deadline passes
In the case over the closed Nome Street property, which has been called Aspen Grove and Fitzsimons Place, the city recently agreed to drop the charges against Baumgarten — so long as CBZ gives up control of the property.
Baumgarten, who has a residence in Lone Tree and didn’t return messages from The Post, was the registered agent for CBZ until November, according to its corporate filings. Most of the individual companies that own CBZ’s Colorado properties were initially registered to a home in New York owned by Shmaryahu Baumgarten. He is also a defendant, with Zev Baumgarten, in a tenant’s lawsuit over the recent property closure in Aurora, and he is the agent for companies that own some of CBZ’s New York buildings, according to business filings there.
In response to a list of questions about the years-long issues in Denver and Aurora, a lawyer from Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck — the powerful lobbying and law firm representing the Baumgartens — wrote that his clients “deny any claim suggesting that they operated the apartments in uninhabitable conditions.”
“But my clients believe that, at its core, this case is not about property mismanagement but about government failures,” attorney Matthew Arentsen wrote. “It’s the government’s responsibility to protect property and — more importantly — to protect the people who live there.”
In a response that didn’t name CBZ or the Baumgartens, Aurora city spokesman Ryan Luby said the “property owners” have not been cooperative with Aurora Police Department investigations. They also have not accepted an offer to have two off-duty police officers at each property from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.
“Contrary to the property owners’ assertions, this government has been consistent and persistent in its approach to addressing the public safety and health concerns that their properties create for their tenants and the surrounding community,” Luby wrote.
In a Sept. 9 Facebook post, Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman warned that the city would also order the closure of CBZ’s Edge of Lowry and Whispering Pines properties if the owners didn’t “start providing routine services.” Luby said there was “no timeline for next steps” when asked about Coffman’s warning, and he declined a Monday interview request for Coffman.
He said the city is trying “to work with the property owners and managers to the extent that they will even engage through their team of attorneys.”
For his part, Coffman — who at times has promoted the gang-takeover claims — said in a New York Times article published Sunday that the CBZ properties’ pattern of problems were really related to one “out-of-state slumlord.”
Images included as part of an inspection report by the city of Aurora from the Whispering Pines apartments on Helena Street, timestamped Aug. 22, 2024. (Images from City of Aurora via public records request)
“They would never fix anything”
Sean Reilly moved into the William Penn Apartments, 1644 Pennsylvania St., in late 2019, several months after a company registered to Zev Baumgarten purchased the Denver property. At first, Reilly said, the place was great. The building felt secure, and the location was ideal.
Then conditions began to deteriorate.
People broke into the building’s garage and began living in it. Broken doors would be given Band-Aid-like fixes; fuller repairs took months of badgering, Reilly said. Residents would call the police to have the people in the garage escorted out, he said, but police told them the property owner needed to be involved.
That never happened, Reilly said, and eventually the property managers just locked and closed the garage entirely.
He described the property owners as “just horrible, horrible, horrible.”
“Our ceilings were all peeling. Water was leaking through our light fixture in the kitchen,” Reilly said. “They would never fix anything. Never, ever, ever fix anything.”
He said his heat would regularly go out. So, too, would the hot water, a frequent complaint of tenants at several CBZ properties. Reilly said he spoke with the technicians who came to fix the water heater, who he said told him that the property owner wouldn’t pay for the needed replacement.
A 2023 Denver inspection report at another property, the Courtyard on Vine, 1399 Vine St., detailed a technician telling a city inspector the same thing. Tenants there complained about a lack of hot water for the rest of the month, records show.
The Courtyard on Vine apartments at 1399 Vine St. in Denver on Friday, Sept. 13, 2024. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)
“What’s going on in Aurora, that’s essentially what’s happening to their properties in Denver,” Reilly suggested. “It just hasn’t gotten the same attention.”
Dozens of tenant complaints and violations issued by Aurora and Denver officials are replete with complaints of leaks, pest infestations, holes in the walls and infrastructure concerns.
Reilly and two other former tenants at CBZ buildings told The Post they were frequently sickened by what they described as black mold infestations in their units. Vienna Thomas, who lived in an apartment on East Jewell Avenue in Denver, has severe asthma and said she twice went to the hospital because of mold.
In 2023, residents at the Jewell Avenue apartments complained to the city of sagging ceilings, including in a child’s bedroom, and high moisture readings in the walls.
One undated list of complaints from the Edge of Lowry apartments, provided by Aurora to The Post via a records request, includes a plea from a tenant that they “haven’t had heat in (the) last 2 years, pls help us.”
An image included as part of an inspection report by the city of Aurora from the Whispering Pines apartments on Helena Street, timestamped Aug. 22, 2024. (Image from City of Aurora via public records request)
Aurora inspectors found extensive problems
In March 2022, Zev Baumgarten was issued an Aurora municipal court summons over unfixed problems at the Edge of Lowry.
A city inspector wrote that one unit’s thermostat wasn’t connected to a heat source, and the property manager gave tenants space heaters because the owners didn’t plan to repair the heating system. One tenant said she was staying warm by keeping her oven open.
The inspector also visited the company’s Nome Street property, where some tenants had received space heaters, too.
“I spoke with Mr. Baumgarten on 3/9/22,” the inspector wrote. “He did not understand why a space heater was not enough of a heat source.”
A seven-month-long “comprehensive housing inspection” at 200 Columbia Apartments, another property owned by CBZ on the same block as the Edge of Lowry, revealed that “almost every unit had some type of deficiency,” including lack of heating, infestations and missing smoke detectors. The assessment began in January 2023; in July 2024, officials reported uncollected trash and drug sales.
“The violations were eventually corrected,” the report states, “but it took several inspections.”
Nadeen Ibrahim, the organizing director for the East Colfax Community Collective, which has advocated for CBZ tenants, described “horrendous living conditions” at its buildings.
“I would say there’s one or two (landlords) that are similar to them,” Ibrahim said, “but they are the worst in terms of lack of property management and engagement.”
While CBZ’s Denver properties have also faced extensive complaints and inspections, one case has dragged on for nearly a year. A complaint about 1644 Pennsylvania in November led an inspector to find mold and broken appliances in one unit and excessive water damage on multiple floors, among other issues.
The issues compounded. In January, inspectors returned to the property and identified a “blood-like substance” in a stairwell, among other concerns.
An image included as part of an inspection report by the city of Aurora from the Whispering Pines apartments on Helena St., timestamped Aug. 22, 2024. (Image from City of Aurora via public records request)
The stain remained uncleaned for at least two months, and during that time, feces were identified and left uncleared for nearly a month. Laundry machines were broken, and there were pools of water in the basement. Water damage and mold appeared to have spread, and one “haphazard” repair began to leak. Evidence suggested people were living in a serially unsecured crawlspace under the building.
Some of those complaints were eventually resolved. The most recent inspection, from late August, found high moisture readings — indicative of water damage and potentially mold — as well as missing handrails on stairs “and a strong smell of urine.” A homeless person was sleeping in the laundry room.
Denver officials have not ordered the closure of any CBZ property. But Danica Lee, the director of the Denver health department’s inspection program, said CBZ was a frequent-enough concern that it had risen to her radar, above individual inspectors and their supervisors.
She said the city looks at complaints in silos: If one tenant complains about a lack of heat, for example, the city investigates and then orders the property to fix it. If they do, the city checks and then closes the case — even if the heat goes out again soon after — without considering it against other, similar complaints at the property.
“It’s a tricky thing,” Lee said. “If we just roared in and tried to pull a license, then we are reducing the housing stock. Our ideal situation is we increase responsiveness for the responsible party of that property and that they are maintaining it” at adequate levels.
Asked if CBZ was meeting that standard, Lee said it wasn’t.