The heat and hot water finally returned late Thursday morning to Sherri Robertson’s apartment at Norwood Court, in north St. Louis County. But Robertson says she is still irked by the fact the company that operates the sprawling apartment complex has not offered any explanations or apologies for the ordeal she and her fellow tenants endured during this past week’s Arctic weather blast.
The brutal run of sub-zero temperatures coincided with Robertson’s apartment losing heat early on the morning of Friday, January 12. It didn’t come back on until late Thursday morning, January 18 — capping six days of shivering misery, according to Robertson.
“I had to stay in here and suffer the consequences,” says Robertson, noting that she’s the full-time caregiver for her uncle Arthur Rasheed, 72, who’s been incapacitated since suffering a massive stroke several years ago.
“I didn’t want to leave and let him freeze,” Robertson said of Rasheed. “I made sure he stayed warm. I put blankets all over him.”
During the stretch without heat, Robertson said she put in calls to the office of the property manager, Multi-South Management, “and they’d just tell me somebody’s working on the boiler.”
The only thing Multi-South did to mitigate the misery was drop off an electric space heater in her apartment, says Robertson, who’s lived at Norwood Court seven years.
Otherwise, she says, “I’ve been calling and calling.They’ve been horrible.”
Norwood Court sits just west of Lucas and Hunt Road, just south of I-70 and a few miles east of Lambert Airport. A man in Norwood Court’s office, who was identified as the on-site property manager, and who answered to the name “Michaelf,” declined to comment for this story Thursday.
Willie Robinson, who says he’s lived at Norwood Court for three and a half years, expressed similar frustration with the six-day run without heat and hot water, as well as Multi-South’s failure to respond to his calls for help or answers.
The lack of hot water meant he couldn’t take a shower for nearly a week, Robinson says.
“I have to be at work at a certain time. But I don’t want to catch a cold,” Robinson says. “It’s ridiculous.”
St. Louis County real estate records show that a company called AS St Louis LLC, organized by a man named Pinchos Shemano, 59, of Brooklyn, New York, bought Norwood Court in 2021.
Shemano did not return calls seeking comment to his offices in Brooklyn.
Shemano is also listed as the organizer of Multi-South Management, of Memphis, Tennessee, according to Missouri Secretary of State records.
Shemano’s name is connected to at least 53 companies and limited liability corporations that match his address of 2158 82nd Street, Brooklyn.
Four LLCs managed by Shemano bought a 25-building apartment complex in southern New Jersey for almost $18 million, according to the Philadelphia Business Journal.
Two years later, companies controlled by Shemano sold an 1,103-unit apartment complex in Jacksonville, Florida, to investors for $49.5 million, according to the Jacksonville Business Journal.
Ever since Multi-South took over Norwood Court’s operations, maintenance and upkeep have gone downhill, a man whose 67-year-old mother lives in the apartment complex tells the RFT.
Roaches have become a problem, while the elevator in his mother’s building hasn’t stopped at the right floors for months because of electrical problems, he says.
“And that’s unsafe as shit,” the man says. “It’s very unsafe for everybody. That’s not right.”
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