We’re Still Waiting to Hear Whether Lease Is Still Binding
University of Central Florida freshman Albert Piedrahita may never have known the UCF-affiliated apartment he was living in was infested with mold, if he didn’t report how he was unexpectedly forced to move out to KnightNews.com’s new investigative unit.
The unit, called KnightNews.com Fights for You, was created after questions of fairness at UCF were raised when UCF officials told KnightNews.com reporters they couldn’t cover the SGA election outside of the Student Union’s “Free Assembly Area,” typically reserved for outside food vendors and large demonstrations outside UCF’s Student Union.
When Piedrahita told KnightNews.com Friday that he was recently kicked out of Pegasus Landing Apartments — a place where he was happy living because of its closeness to campus, private bathrooms and private room where he could study — and forced to move to the Towers where he has to share a bathroom on campus, he had no idea it was because mold was discovered in his building.
It was only after KnightNews.com started asking UCF officials questions that Piedrahita said he got a call telling him the reason he had to move was because mold was found in his building — not because of standard “renovations” as he was initially told.
Although the mold infestation sounds troubling, Grant Heston with UCF News and Information issued a release stating the relocation was done “out of an abundance of caution” and that “College Park Management told UCF it has taken air-quality samples in several of the affected units, and air-quality results were within acceptable limits.”
Heston’s release states College Park Management and UCF are assisting students with the move.
But Piedrahita said he barely got any help moving, and had to rely on friends with a truck to help pick up his life and move it on campus mid-semester. He said moving everything he owned disrupted his studies when he should have been focusing on school, and thinks the way UCF handled the situation was “sketchy,” especially because he said the university initially told him nothing about the mold.
“I feel it’s ridiuclous. I feel like I’ve been deceived,” Piedrahita said.
“I feel like I was done wrong you know. We pay all this tuition, we pay all this money … we never find out about anything, not just this, anything until months later,” Piedrahita added, referring to “tailgating” rule changes and “all that stuff” KnightNews.com has been covering.
Piedrahita’s family still lives in Columbia, and has fallen on tough economic times. He said he was hoping to take this opportunity to get out of his housing contract and move in with a friend to save money — but officials told him that wasn’t an option.
Piedrahita asked KnightNews.com to help him figure out why being forced out of his apartment in the middle of the semester didn’t void his contract. But when KnightNews.com asked that question in an e-mail to UCF’s News and Information Department, Grant Heston, its assistant vice president, released a statement which did not directly address it.
“Residents who are moving can relocate to other parts of Pegasus Landing or other area accommodations,” read the portion of the statement which came closest to addressing that question.
“Although some of the alternate locations have higher rents, students who relocate will not pay more,” Heston’s statement continued, which suggests displaced students, like Piedrahita, do not have the option of taking this opportunity to get out of their lease and live with a friend or family for free.
After KnightNews.com started asking questions Friday, Piedrahita said officials started to come clean.
“They called me and told me about the mold, and they said it would take a while longer for me to move back in,” Piedrahita said. “I didn’t know that in the first place, they just told me they needed to do ‘renovations.'”
Originally, Piedrahita said he was only given the option to move into the Towers on campus, but now that he has completed the move they are offering him a place to move to in Pegasus Landing — where he preferred to be all along.
“It’s just annoying,” he said. “They asked me and called me today to see if I wanted to move out of Towers and move into Pegasus Landing again.”
But Piedrahita doesn’t want to spend the time or money to move another time this semester. “Tomorrow, I’m gonna talk to them to see if I can get reduced rent for the couple months that I’m out, because this is annoying, it’s ridiculous.”
According to Heston’s release KnightNews.com received this weekend, it was UCF which requested that College Park Management TRS, Inc., the property management company that operates Pegasus Landing apartments, relocate the 21 affected students after mold was discovered in one building.
“UCF and College Park Management were informed on Feb. 23 that water intrusion into one part of Building 4 at Pegasus Landing led to mold being detected in seven apartment units,” the release stated. “More work is needed to determine the full extent of the damage…”
Although College Park Management operates Pegasus Landing, the UCF Foundation owns the land the buildings sit on. “The buildings are owned by CaPFA Capital Corp. 2000F, a Florida nonprofit corporation,” according to Chad Binette with UCF’s News and Information department.
As a precaution, UCF says it has requested that College Park Management immediately perform air-quality tests in comparable units in the complex, as well as come up with a comprehensive plan to address the problem. Residents who have further questions can contact College Park Management at 407-362-5190 or 407-362-5194.
The KnightNews.com Fights for You Investigative Unit is committed to asking tough questions and getting answers when you feel like you’re being taken advantage of. E-mail us at news@knightnews.com, or call our tip line: 407-5-Tip-UCF if you need KnightNews.com to Fight for You, too.
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Click next page to read our original questions about the issue, and also read the entire statement from UCF’s News and Information department.
