Complaint Review: Cara Florida Properties - St. Petersburg Florida

As a former tenant for almost 3 years at Cara Florida Properties I can confirm a lot of what has already been said about Janet Kaspar’s attitude and treatment of her tenants, the leaky roofs, and the termites in the buildings.

I have never encountered anyone in any area of my life who talks down to people the way Janet Kaspar does.

She talks down to and treats her tenants like dirt (I cannot stress this enough.) 

The only reason I stayed there as long as I did was because it was very affordable. But when it was no longer affordable I got out of there asap. 

I was not evicted, and I was never more than 2-3 days late on my rent.

I could honestly say I never had a pleasant encounter with Janet in the almost 3 years that I live there. And most of my neighbors (that I knew) in her community felt the same way. We avoided her like the plague.

She had her own building that she lived in behind all the other buildings kind of centralized between most of the other buildings, and the dumpster that all 6 of the buildings shared.

She has a reputation for making snarky demeaning remarks toward her tenants when they go to and from the dumpster. She also has large dogs back buy her apartment that are always barking at her tenants when they try to take the trash out.  

Some of us who lived there referred to taking out the trash as “running the gauntlet” Because it got to be such a hassle to do such a simple task.

Janet has a reputation for accusing her tenants of doing drugs, and calling them drug addicts.

She personally accused me of doing drugs on several occasions. And I know of at least 2 other tenants who lived in her buildings who she also accused. She even went as far one time to tell me “She caught me smoking weed, and knew I was the one in the building doing it.”

I was on probation for a DUI at the time and had regular drug test. Not only that but I suffer from extreme anxiety attacks, and have not been able to smoke weed for over 10 years because it triggers anxiety in me.

I was on my way to work the day she confronted me with this. And I was so upset by the time I got to work that I took an early break just so I could call her and straighten things out.

Her exact words were “I caught you.” I do some a vaporizer with nicotine juice sometimes. It had me freaking out thinking she was watching me or peeping on me to use such a bold accusation.  And that perhaps she had seen me smoking my vaporizer or something, and mistook it for drugs.

When I called her from work and asked her what she meant about “she caught me smoking weed” she denied ever saying it, and asked me if I had it on camera.

Moving on to the next major issue I had while living at Cara Florida Properties. When I first moved in I noticed a hole in the roof (about the size of a golf ball) in my shower. Water would also leak out of the hole when the tenants above me used their shower.

Shortly after I moved in I put in a work order. The maintenance man came out and patched the hole with some puddy. He told me that water was leaking through because the neighbors above me were not tucking in their shower curtain. So he went upstairs and said something to them which led to further encounters with them over the issue. They swore they were not leaving the shower curtain out, and I believed them.

The entire ceiling in the bathroom had several seams across the roof where drywall had been replaced and repatched. I was convinced that the pipes were bad.

After they patched the hole it reopened shortly after and got bigger.

Over the course of 3 years that I lived there I must have put in at least 5 maintenance requests regarding the hole. On one other occasion, one of her maintenance guys came out and looked, and told me that it was the seal for the drain to the tub in the floor above me. That made a lot more sense than the first excuse they said about the shower curtain. But he never fixed it.

By the time I had moved out the hole was about the size of a football, material was constantly falling from it. Materials that fell out of the hole included, drywall dust, chucks of drywall, clumps of caulking/sealant, and even slivers of pressure treated wood like that of a 2x4.

Throughout the remainder of my tenancy at Cara Florida, I’d met at least 2 other neighbors (one in another building) who had had the exact same problem with their roofs. And they were also told that it was from the tenants above them not tucking in the shower curtain.

This shower curtain excuse seems to be a standard excuse they use for what seems to be a very common issue with the piping/plumbing because they are too cheap or lazy to address the real issue.

Next issue I had was with the ac unit. It was leaking water behind the wall, and growing mold. The unit eventually went out and I put in a request. It happened to be during the winter and I was only using it frequently so it was not a big deal.

When the maintenance guy came out to check on the AC he told me that I should have reported the mold issue earlier and that Janet would be mad. I honestly didn’t know there was a mold issue because the “mold” looked like saw dust, and the building was infested with termites (all their building are.)

I put in a second maintenance order concerning the “mold” as he “the maintenance guy” suggested

Janet told me it was not a priority to fix the AC because it was winter and I didn’t need AC.

Come spring when it started to get hot I went into the office and said something to the office manager “Darlene” about the AC, and they replaced it the same day (but did not replace the damaged “moldy” drywall.) I was surprised that they would not do this since they replace the unit anyway. And they had made such a fuss about it “the mold” in the past.

I kept my apartment very clean and tidy. When I first moved in the kitchen was painted with food, and the apartment had roaches. I was able to get rid of the roaches the first year I lived there, and did a lot of extra cleaning (beyond cleaning up after myself.) Every time I cleaned the kitchen I would work on a new section of the walls to uncover the original paint that had been covered well before I moved in.

I took very good care of my apartment, and was so proud of its state when I moved out. I thought for sure that Janet and the management would be impressed and this was important because I wanted a good referral if I ever needed one in the future.

Boy was I mistaken.

On the day I moved out Janet, the office manager, and the maintenance guy all showed up in my apartment and made it a “big deal/spectacle.” From the  minute they walked in I felt like Iwas being put on the spot or "judged."

They complained that the linoleum tiles in the kitchen were bubbling up, and some were lose (this was something that happened over time.) The maintenance man said that it was usually from water damage (I’m assuming the pipes under the sink were probably leaking into the floor since their building had a reputation for leaky pipes and flooding.)

Janet was pissed off and told me I should have reported it earlier. The reason why I had not reported it earlier is because of the almost 3 years I lived there, and at least 10 maintenance request I had put in before. The maintenance issues were rarely addressed, and when so were only done “half way.”

The linoleum tile job in the kitchen was a poor job from the beginning anyway. There had actually been several layers of linoleum tile as I could see the previous layer underneath the existing layer where tiles were coming up. This was a cheap job that they had done which consisted of just “slapping another layer on top of the old one.” And I have no doubt that is exactly what they will do with the next one.

I honestly don’t think that Janet Kaspar is a committed landlord, and I think it is somewhat of an ethical issue that such a nasty person is allowed to run an operation which literally affects the livelihood of her tenants.  

Janet engages in all sorts of oddball activities aside from managing the property she is responsible for.

She tries to run her own coffee stand on the sidewalk by the community. And I have often seen here having yard sale type events up against the fence of the property facing the library. When I observed her and her daughter engaging in this, I noticed  it was a LOT of stuff that looked like it had been taken from evicted apartments. I had also heard rumors that Janet rummages through the property left behind by those she evicts.

This seems kind of unprofessional in my opinion. With a property as large as the one she is supposed to be managing, I think it is in poor judgement for her to invest in these other activities when she is failing as a landlord. I really hope that the propertie owners are made aware of some of the immoral business practices that take place under their current landlord.

I could write several more pages about other occurrences and issues I had in dealing with Janet, but I have covered in detail most of the major issues.

Be warned: Cara Florida Properties can be a cheap place to live (not sure for how long as the prices seemed to be going up beyond reasonable when I left.)

But you will lose a little piece of your soul for living there.