At first glance, there is really nothing special about the Fountain View Apartments on 13th Avenue S., just down the street from the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg.
The 40-year-old off-white, boxy structure looks like dozens of other complexes in the city, with its sea-green window trim, chipping paint and abundance of weeds. And, like many such dwellings, the name contrasts wildly with reality: There is no fountain at Fountain View, and there certainly isn't a view, unless you count the two trash-strewn vacant lots behind the buildings or the porn store to the south.
What makes this apartment complex stand out is its relationship to landlord Scott W. Snow.
Snow bought the Fountain View Apartments, and nearby Park Place Apartments, two years ago for an estimated $1.25 million. One year later, he bought the Chinook Apartments — the complex that made headlines this month after city fire marshals declared it unsafe and booted all the tenants out the day after they paid their monthly rent.
The ensuing media circus has focused a spotlight on Snow's other properties, including Fountain View, all of which have active code violations.
Fountain View residents, though hopeful, are worried about the outcome.
Suspicion hangs in the muggy air.
Nobody wants to talk to a "white boy" with a notebook. After an introduction, residents claim they don't live in the apartments, even when I'm looking straight through their screen doors.
Others shake their heads and mumble, "Naw, man. I don't want none of that shit."
One young man hustles a box of Newport cigarettes. Transients, some with the telltale signs of crack addiction, itch and wander between the apartments and the meat market around the corner.
The parking lot collects piles of random junk. Broken glass litters every square foot. A baggie full of marijuana seeds lies on the sidewalk.
The complex is notorious to the neighbors.
"Tarzan," resident of a nearby bungalow (he declined to give his full name), warned me against poking around.
"Yeah, you don't want to go door to door there, man," he said, giving me a wary look. "They might think you're undercover, with that notebook and all. Once you go in there, I can't save ya, man."
Police roll past the complex a few times a day. On most Friday or Saturday nights, police keep a squad car parked in the lot.
At an anti-drug march late last month, young kids pelted marchers, and an accompanying police officer, with rocks.
"This is the hood," says one apartment dweller from Haiti. "It's the projects."
Two sisters, Melissa and Tameka (they declined to give their last names), moved in about two months ago. Transplants from Louisiana, they were urgently looking for a cheap place to live, and Fountain View afforded them that. They each paid $475 for an efficiency apartment, one of the lowest rates they could find in the area.
Even though she had to clean the apartment herself when she moved in, Melissa says everything seemed OK.
"When you first move in, it's working," she says.
She noticed the roaches first.
"I get them from next door," she says, pointing to the vacant apartment next to hers.
Melissa says when she complained, the property manager, who lived at the Chinook Apartments, told her it was the tenant's responsibility to control pests.
Then a group of men robbed one of the downstairs apartments. One of the men, armed with a pistol, tried to break into her unit.
Melissa says she asked Snow for a refund of her rent so she could move somewhere safer.
"Every time I called him for my money, it was a runaround," she says.
Six children run down the stairs past Melissa's sister, Tameka. The running kids remind her of the hole in the lattice on the second floor.
"They need to fix that," she says. "Before someone falls through."
Tameka says her apartment troubles started right away. A week after she moved in, her stove stopped working.
"We had to eat out every night for three and a half weeks 'cause of my stove," the single mother of three claims.
Until last week, when Snow fixed it.
In fact, the sisters say all their problems — broken windows, unhinged doors, sparking circuit breakers — have been fixed in the last week.
"They seen a camerawoman over here," Tameka says, leaning forward in her chair and grimacing. "All they trying to do is keep it looking good on the outside. It's 'Operation Illusion.'"
The tenants' stories about problems at Fountain View are consistent with code violation reports filed with St. Petersburg's Codes Compliance Assistance Department.
Last year, Fountain View's two buildings had problems ranging from missing smoke detectors to a malfunctioning power outlet. The complex currently has 20 active code violations, including a citation for junk piled in the parking lot and an inoperable smoke detector.
"He don't give a damn," says Tameka indignantly of Snow. "All he wants is rent money."
Last Sunday, a handful of residents sat on their stoops, watching Scott Snow's second wife, Gayle, and her two teenage sons, lay down new sod and water some new plants.
"We do this every year," Gayle Snow says. "Every penny that's taken has been put back in. Our salary is paid not by these rentals."
Snow paints a picture of a misunderstood couple, attacked by vote-hungry city leaders for providing much-needed affordable housing.
"The main thing is these people can only afford so much rent," she says. "You can renovate the place, and it's all wonderful, but they can't live there. The bottom line is these people need a place to live."
She says stove problems were a rare occurrence, and that if something is broken, it gets fixed if the landlords are made aware of the need for repairs.
"If [the tenants] haven't paid their rent, they don't tell us [about the problems]," she says.
As Snow waters the sod, her children sit down by the car, anxious to leave.
"This isn't done yet," the mother says, gesturing to the parking lot full of bottles and potato chip bags. "You don't get to go until it's done."
"That's not my job," the younger one fires back. "I didn't come out here to do that."
City Councilman Bill Foster says the city is already looking at Snow's other properties.
"We're still trying to get over the shock of what we had to do," he says about the Chinook Apartments debacle. "This isn't something the city has ever done and is not used to doing."
But it is something they will not shy away from, he says.
"We don't have a happy ending yet," he says. "I don't think we'll have a happy ending until we find all these slumlords."
While residents seem to be encouraged by such rhetoric, they are also worried.
"I'm scared," Melissa admits. "They might be about to kick our ass out."
Tameka agrees.
"Everybody is concerned about that," she says. "We're wondering if we should pay the rent this month, because we don't know."
If they are kicked out, they will face the bigger problem affecting St. Petersburg: rising rents.
"What they have to do is control these rent prices," Tameka says. "What about us single parents who is working? We can't afford $700, $800 rents. We have to work two jobs and we end up in a place like this."
Melissa looks over the railing at a man spraying the dirt off the sidewalk. She laughs, showing her four gold teeth.
"What's next?" she asks. "What are they going to do next? Turn these apartments to condos?"
Tameka shakes her head.
"Operation Illusion."
This article appears in May 17-23, 2006.